Five-Year Diary: Saturday, 6th March 1976. It blew a hoolie last night. The wind rattles the window frames. You hope the whole lot might come loose and fly off into the fells. This is the North Yorkshire Moores, after all. We’re ringed round by fells, dark shapes against a darker sky. Wind and rain, that’s what we get. Not gentle rain either, but the hard sort that slaps against the glass and runs in crooked lines. You can hear it before you see it. It feels like the weather is the main character and we’re just stuck in the background. The sheep appear to relish. No idea why, but we call them ‘rolling bolders’.
First job this morning was clean sheets. Again. My diary would show how often this seems to happen. Strip the bed, tug the corners free, old sheets into the laundry basket. They always feel heavier once they’re off, like they’re sulking about it. Then down the corridor to fetch new ones, folded and irons, stiff and cold. Making the bed requires skill: five years of hospital corners at Mowden so I knew what to do.
Tuck, pull, smooth, redo the corner because it’s not tight enough. I don’t see why it matters so much, but it does to someone. The Housemaster never checks, does anyone?
Congregation practice in Powell Hall.
I don’t really know why. For whose benefit exactly? We all have to trudge over from Winder House, shoes scraping on the gravel, coats pulled tight against the rain. We stand about, shuffle papers, sing or say whatever it is we’re meant to. It feels like a lot of effort for a religion I don’t believe in.
Chemistry revision. Valencies. I got 10 out of 15. Not dreadful, not brilliant. Just there. I can never quite remember which element bonds with what and why. It all seems very certain in the book and much less certain in my head.
French was Chapter 10 of Petit Nicolas. I don’t mind that so much. At least there’s a story in it. English prep went all right. I did well on the back work, apparently. Took notes properly for once. Of course, I forgot my book, which rather spoils the effect. Typical.
“Do denting.” I’m not even sure what I meant by that. Probably some job or other that needed doing. There always is one.
Lunch was the usual. Noise, clatter, somebody dropping cutlery.
I’ve got a name for 1/S now. Not sure it will stick.
We couldn’t find the tennis ball this afternoon. We’d been playing that game in the back yard again, the one where you fling the ball up onto the roof and then have to catch it before it hits the ground, wherever it decides to fall. It’s half skill, half luck. Sometimes it shoots off the tiles and comes down miles away. Today it just vanished. Probably in a gutter.
“Scab.” That’s what’s written in the margin. I must have skived off something. Games, most likely. I just can’t be bothered to go for a run or find someone for a game of squash.
Piano practice. I never do enough. I sit there, pick out the notes, stumble, start again. I know I should practise properly but I don’t. I’ll probably remain useless forever at this rate.
Read for a bit. Listened to Lost Horizon and Judy Collins. Her voice is calm and clear, nothing like the wind outside. It feels like another world entirely, somewhere without mud and compulsory bed-making.
My brother wants to go out with Dad for a Sunday Exeat. I think he’s due one. I’ve been out too often lately, apparently. There’s a tally somewhere, I’m sure of it. Twice a term only, maybe three at most?
In any other situation you pay for a service, say at a hotel, and that’s what you get. Not at a public school. Not in posh prison. We are not clients; we are clay to be moulded.
Grubber.
Supper. More food, more noise.
Then change into Sunday Best. Tie done up tight and the tweed jacket on for the London Opera Players in Powell Hall. There was a termly or annual subscription to attend these things – nothing like being expected to behave as if you were middle-aged.
It always feels odd, dressing up as if we’re going to the Opera House in London. OK. Not a review, more like tolerance.
Talked for a bit after. Nothing much. Just talk.
Then bed.
Fresh sheets, tight corners, wind still hammering away at the windows. Boys in neighbouring beds hammer away too. What else is there to do on a Saturday night when the House Prefects have sent you to bed at 10.00 O’clock?
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