Five-Year Diary: Saturday 13 March 1976
I woke up and carried on reading 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s getting really good now. Much better than most of the things we’re supposed to read for school. Out there in space, everything feels enormous and mysterious, like anything could exist. It’s much more interesting than sitting in classrooms all day being told what to think.
Chemistry: a test. I got 14 out of 20, which isn’t bad really, though it’s never clear what counts as good here and what doesn’t. After that, we had French and continued with Le Petit Nicolas. It’s meant to be amusing, but doing it line by line in class makes it feel more like slow torture than a story.
English: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We were working on the part with Demetrius. Shakespeare is supposed to be wonderful, though the way we do it mostly means copying notes and being told what everything means instead of actually enjoying it.
At break, I escaped for a bit.
Project Centre
Afterwards, I started making a pepper pot in metalwork. That was actually quite satisfying because at least you’re trying to make something instead of filling exercise books. Filing metal requires skills that I may lack; I need my grandfather looking over my shoulder. It feels like the sort of thing that will either look quite good or completely awful. It mostly looks crap.
Lunch came and went.
Games
In the afternoon, I ran to Thursgill, one of the named runs. It’s about a mile and a half out towards Cautley Spout and then back again. It rained so I got wet, and my feet were completely soaked though my cross-country trainers. I had to walk most of the way back because if you run in wet shoes, you end up with blisters and then everything becomes miserable for days.
Project Centre
Afterwards, I ransacked my tuck box and then went to the Project Centre to continue with the pepper pot. I carefully marked S for salt and P for pepper so people would know which was which. As if the holes, or hole ik the top wasn’t enough.
Then supper.
House Play
In the evening, there was a Hart House play, Arsenic and Old Lace. It started a bit dull but got better. Nick Tomlinson was very good, and Rogers as well. Various boys had to dress up as women, which always looked faintly ridiculous.
My friend Steven played Elaine Harper, Mortimer Brewster’s fiancée, who is supposed to be young and romantic. Steven clearly didn’t know how to play it, or didn’t want to play it at all, and spent the whole time looking terrified and extremely virginal, which probably wasn’t the idea but was quite funny anyway.
2001
Once back in bed, I read more of 2001. I didn’t want to stop because it’s getting properly exciting now. I’ve always been fascinated by space — black holes, other worlds, intelligent life somewhere out there.
The universe feels unimaginably massive and full of possibilities, which is a depressing to think about when you’re lying in a narrow, metal boarding-school bed with sixteen other boys snoring in their cubicles. What is Sedbergh a launchpad to? Fell running? Sheep worrying? Drag? The Army? church?! God forbid! Not metal work; not me at least.
For people brought up in the past so that they can live in the past.
Leave a Reply