Five-Year Diary: Thursday, 11th February 1976
I always had plenty of sleep. We had a routine. Junior boys were put to bed at 9:30, lights out at 10:00. The sixth formers had lights out at 10:30. I would normally be asleep by about 10:15 once the dormitory settled.
The dorm held about sixteen boys aged fourteen or fifteen. Each bed had a wooden partition and a small door. This setup gave the semblance of privacy. However, in reality, it was still a shared dormitory.
Seven and a half hours of sleep has always been enough for me. So I would wake around six in the morning, sometimes earlier. I often felt a sense that I should simply get up and get on with the day.
Cold and damp were more of an issue than noise. I had spent at least six years at boarding school by this point. I had already learned how to deal with it. I often slept wearing socks and my dressing gown. I may even have worn a woolly hat.
The dormitory had large sash windows on opposite sides, not double glazed, and condensation gathered on the glass. From my bed, I could look south down a grassy bank to trees. I saw a river and then more trees. Beyond them, I could see the fells.
The dormitory smelt of dampness: damp hair, bodies, cheap aftershave, socks. You could hear snoring, asthmatic breathing, boys talking in their sleep, and farting.
By early morning most of this had settled.
Lying there, the imagination could entertain itself. I might replay a dream, think about girls, or imagine things in an idealistic way. Sometimes I wondered whether my mother and father might ever get back together. I imagined my younger sister at home, perhaps bored, compared with the life of a boarding school boy.
Letters From Home
The post arrived around Break, between 11:00 and 11:30.
It was placed on a wide shelf beneath a tall bay window that looked north over the school yard. Boys simply gathered around and picked through the letters. Occasionally someone might hand them out.
I don’t recall anyone opening someone else’s letters or mocking them. That seemed to be respected.
I usually recognised handwriting instantly. In fact I still have many of those letters today. I kept letters from home, from girls, from pen pals, and from girlfriends. My parents and grandparents’ passing made me the archivist of their letters. These were the letters my brother and I had written to them.
Grandparents sometimes enclosed stamps to encourage replies.
Girls often wrote on decorative paper. Sometimes there was perfume. Sometimes little notes like “SWALK”.
I paid close attention to letters and the styles people wrote in. My father had an interest in graphology and at some point I acquired a book about it myself. It made me look at handwriting differently.
I was receiving letters from a few different girls.
One girl from home had a predictable, suburban, middle-of-the-road style of writing.
Two others I had met two years earlier on an “educational” school cruise. One lived in Littlehampton in West Sussex, the other in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh girl was by far the smartest and I liked her for that.
Receiving post had a certain cachet. It showed you had not been forgotten. School felt like endurance. We were in uniform the entire term and were not allowed “home clothes”.
I often wrote replies early in the morning when the house was quiet and I had space to think.
English Test – 11/18
I hadn’t revised the spelling words.
In truth I didn’t really know how to revise. Do you just stare at the page? Underline the words repeatedly? We were never taught how to learn or how to remember things.
The teacher called the spelling words out. Afterwards we swapped papers and marked each other’s work.
I was terrible at spelling. I tended to write words exactly as they sounded.
I cared about doing badly, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I gradually labelled myself as one of the boys who couldn’t spell.
It seemed to sit alongside other labels. The boy couldn’t throw properly. However, he was good at drawing and swimming.
I didn’t sit at the front or the back of classrooms. I wasn’t a swot and I wasn’t a troublemaker.
Where I sat varied by subject:
Front — Geography, Maths, Art
Rear — Latin
Side — French and German
The classrooms themselves varied across the school. Some were old Victorian rooms with high ceilings and oak desks. Others were in newer blocks — science block, project centre, music rooms.
Latin – The Imposition
The Latin teacher was almost the opposite of the kind of teacher I needed.
He was in his seventies and seemed proud of teaching as though it were still the 1930s. The classroom had a drafty atmosphere. It was a Victorian room with heavy oak desks. The desks were worn smooth by generations of boys.
My translations were often laughable and easy to mock.
I had studied Latin since I was ten and had even received an A at Common Entrance. Yet now it felt as though my brain was rejecting it, as if expelling a poison.
The teacher probably thought I was doing it deliberately.
The punishment was additional work — extra prep. Studying by punishment killed my enthusiasm entirely.
I felt annoyed. If this was education, it seemed pretty poor. I responded far better to teachers who were enthusiastic and imaginative and who wanted you to succeed.
Still, there were always boys worse off than me.
Despite all this, there were moments when something clicked. When I understood the story, the characters, or the historical setting, I genuinely enjoyed it.
The Dog Incident
Two boys were chased by a dog on Lupton Lane.
The lane ran along the spur above the town from the chapel. It passed the bursar’s house, the sanatorium, and the squash courts. Then it went up toward Winder House.
The bursar kept a couple of beautiful auburn labradors. I suspect one of them escaped — probably a young dog eager to play.
We walked that lane constantly:
to school
back for break
back to school
to games
back to the house
back to school again
In the evening we might walk down again for Powell Hall, chapel, the swimming pool, or grubber.
It wasn’t really the place for a loose dog chasing boys.
The dog didn’t bite anyone. It simply chased.
Having grown up around gun dogs and black labradors myself, I wasn’t remotely frightened.
The boys who ran were teased for it. They would probably have been called “a couple of girls”.
Lifesaving at the Pool
This took place in the school swimming pool — the only pool in Sedbergh.
We practised the usual lifesaving drills:
towing a casualty surface dives resuscitation techniques
Although I already held my Bronze Medallion.
I suspect we spent a fair amount of time messing about. At some point we certainly swam wearing our striped pyjamas.
Lending Trainers
Lending kit was common. Sports kit was expensive and not every boy had spare items.
Looking back, I suspect some boys were aware that their families were working within a budget.
Helping someone by lending trainers might be friendship, but it could equally be survival. You did someone a favour today and they might return it tomorrow.
Cleaning
I never recall seeing caretakers or cleaners. We must have done nearly all the cleaning ourselves.
Sweeping dust
Collecting rubbish
Wiping surfaces
The youngest boys performed “fagging” duties. Cleaning baths and toilets would have been part of that. House prefects allocated the jobs.
Music was probably playing while we worked. Boston or the Eagles comes to mind.
Evening Prep
Prep took place in the junior common room.
Desks ran around the walls — essentially a continuous shelf at desk height. Each boy sat facing the wall with books on the shelf in front of him.
There was always a senior boy supervising us. It felt a bit like prison warders watching prisoners.
I worked on Maths and struggled through Latin.
When Latin made sense — when the story or characters emerged — I actually enjoyed it.
Later I read.
Around this time I was reading 2001: A Space Odyssey.
We had bedside lamps, but after lights out I often used a torch.
The Emotional Undercurrent
Mostly it felt like just another day to endure. I had not yet figured out a way out of the system. But within the next year I would begin developing a plan.
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