Winder House, Sedbergh School
Five-Year Diary. Didn’t sleep properly. Not nightmares or anything dramatic. Just disturbed sleep.. The wooden cubicle partitions might as well have been paper. Every cough, every bedspring, every groan overheard. Radiator banging. Someone snoring.
Wrote one word: Groggy.
The school day.
Maths first. Did the teacher use a whiteboard? Did they exist in 1976? He wrote everything in an immaculate italic.
Reflections. Rotations. I wrote “searing.” Fifty years on I haven’t a clue what I meant; my poor spelling never helps.
Break.
Rumours about No field day.
Evans House in quarantine. Flu.
One boy has been sent home as he is so unwell.
The school handled illness but not homesickness.
Chemistry. Test back. OK. Not brilliant. Not awful. We were doing nitrogen. See more in Basic Chemistry published by Arnold.
History. The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Six men were shipped to Australia for trying to organise. Sedbergh was a kind of transportation too. Dropped somewhere far from home. Expected to adapt. Everyone is a convict. I called it posh prison. Most people thought it a privilege. For me, it felt like a punishment.
JC ran back to Winder for a book. We timed him. He took 9 minutes thirty-five seconds. About 1.2 kilometres there and back.
Physics. Convection. Warm rises. Cold sinks. I’d got it all wrong at Mowden I recall doing a detailed plan of how the swimming pool was hotter or colder in every part.
Ordinary Level Physics A F Abbott.
Break. Rain. Of course I had no Mac. Rain here doesn’t fall. It attacks sideways. Jacket soaked through like piss through a mattress. Toast with too much Marmite. An Orange. Later there would be Coke and Maltesers.
Latin. Approach to Latin, Second Part. I’d been clueless for years but turned up for lessons regardless, like doing time. Trudgery.
Lunch back at Winder.
Then a race. Too wet for rugby.
My first run since Mowden. I didn’t trust my legs. My first run since I broke my leg last March. Cross country, mud sucking at shoes. Lungs are sharp with cold. The first half-mile always feels like punishment. Then something steadies. Not graceful. Just stupid.
Finished 8th in the House.
First Junior.
Didn’t make a fuss. But it mattered. A small territory claimed. JC fast over 1.2 kilometres, slow over distance. We kept notes on each other without admitting it. Silent accounting.
After: Maltesers. Coke. Sugar forgiveness.
Evening prep. Turn pages. Pretend to absorb knowledge. Fog still behind the eyes. I wrote one more word: Inhalation. I can see myself standing by the window, breathing in hard, as if the air might fix something. Reset.
No fights. No triumphs. Just triangles sliding. Flu moving through houses. Rain sideways. Latin advancing like an army. An eighth place that proved I could keep going longer than some of the older boys.
If I look closer, I see a boy measuring everything.
Speed. Illness. Marks. Distance. Status.
Trying to prove he occupies space.
Groggy.
OK.
8th.
First Junior.
Evidence, in pencil.
Bare with me. Diary entries get much more interesting. Say day in 1977 I’m buying copies of Knave and taking an interest in girls.
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