Five-Year Diary: English first. Poems. We read them out in turn. Nothing very exciting. Nothing we’d written ourselves; shame. I can’t remember whose they were, only that they all sounded worthy.
French. A sidetrack at first (we encourage the teacher to wax lyrical on a matter and keep him off subject for as long as possible). He’s a young Frenchman on a teacher exchange. He should have been warned. Fourteen-year-old boys have a gang mentality in a boarding school that can become vicious. He needs to read Lord of the Flies. Then back to mécanismes, which we seem to be doing endlessly. I can follow it well enough, but it doesn’t feel as though I’m getting anywhere. Somehow, the way languages are taught in school is anathema to how I would like to learn a language. I want to live it – and a French girlfriend would help.
Divinity. A talk about the Church. The usual sort of thing. I’ve heard it all before and don’t believe a word of it. Every hour here is an hour wasted – an accumulation of nonsense.
Break: Coffee and a scone back at the House.
Latin: Grammar test. I get 15 out of 25, which is better than 2/25, which gets me into trouble. If I struggle with French, then this is worse, ten times over. I have no desire to get better, which is a great incentive to do badly. So I do. A bad result is the one I’m aiming for. SMART.
Music. I can’t really play the flute because of the brace on my teeth, or at least that’s the excuse I’m using. I do piano instead. And by ‘do’ I liken it to woodwork; I jab my fingers at the keyboard, hoping to construct something meaningful and ignore the instructions (sheet music) in favour of doing ‘my own thing’.
Unison practice after that. A lot of ghastly unharmonised singing. I have five years as a chorister, a choir that had Decca in recording us for an LP – this is singing in the ditch by comparison to the lofty heights of Christmas Concerts as a chorister, as the head chorister no less.
Games: interval training for the Ten Mile Run below Fell Gate. Hard work. The wind comes straight down off the fells, the rain is in your face, and to cap it all, the sheep laugh at our stupidity. If I could run in a sheepskin coat, I would; that would take the smile off their pregnant faces. And it feels colder than it looks.
Back to the House for a shower. I couldn’t face climbing into a bath with another boy, especially as the bathwater looked as muddy as the rugger pitches in had been dragged from.
Then cereal and biscuits.
Practice piano again for a bit. Or at least, that’s what I called it. I was making up tunes with one finger and seeing how many pieces of cutlery I could lift from the dining room and hide amongst the strings to challenge the next musician. The serious ones.
Maths: I’d forgotten both my slide rule and the maths book, which doesn’t help. But pocket calculators are on their way in, we are told. So our miniature guillotines can be put away forever.
Biology: looking at cheek cells and animal cells under the microscope.
English prep later: back on letter writing, the formal kind, because we will, of course, all end up bankers, lawyers or teachers, so letter writing is important. After that, more poems to digest and misunderstand.
Supper.
Prep: finish the German work.
Then biology notes and start reading a book.
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