Five-Year Diary: Up earlier than expected because the clocks went forward—robbed of an hour, though I wasn’t sure what I’d lost.
Band practice, then chapel. They used the new organ—finally. It sounded like the old organ. £90,000.
Dad picked Nick and me up after Chapel to take us back to Appleby for the day. My sister was in Ambleside, so it was just us. Driving away from school always felt like being extracted. We were out on day release only.
Appleby Castle is extraordinary and full of character. It’s where my father now lives and works. The Keep from 1172. A Roman well, which makes even that seem recent. Seventeen bedrooms, cottages, lodges, a Great Hall, a chapel, thirty-two acres of grounds, a boat house, swimming pool and kitchen gardens.
The chikdren, four of us, are put in an apartment at the top, with access to the roof. From there you can see the River Eden winding away and the fells stretching out in every direction. It feels like you’re above everything, including your own life.
I wander around for hours.
I manage to find the needle for my sister’s record player. She’d hidden it to keep us out of her record collection. The days I would draw over the vinyl with wax crayons is long gone.
Lunch is laid out properly in the dining room. Dad talks news: about employment, about what’s happening, about what will happen.
But I don’t really have anything to say.
I don’t follow the news. I know Harold Wilson has resigned because someone must have mentioned it, but it doesn’t connect to anything I recognise. Dad’s a Liberal, which seems to matter to him in a way I don’t yet grasp. Politics feels like one of those adult systems—like the castle itself—fully formed, already in motion, and not requiring my input.
So I listen, or appear to. Nod at the right moments. Wait for it to pass.
After lunch I tape a few of my records in mono, carefully, trying to get them right. Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple. That feels more real—sound you can capture, replay, control.
We drive back to Sedbergh in heavy rain, down the M6 via Orton and Tebay. The wipers beat time. The hills close in. Whatever that other world was recedes behind us.
Back in the dorm, things contract quickly. Sixteen boys, wood partitions, noise. I get given of four maps for maps (a tedious punishment) for telling another boy to be quiet.
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