50YON: Saturday, 10th April 1976 — Appleby (Age 14)
Five-Year Diary. It was deadly quiet when I woke—the sense that the day was mine, but moving around the Castle corridors meant noise; everything creaked. But as there’s no one to hear me, am I as good as silent?
I had cereal and a Mars bar for breakfast – then straight out into a cold, needling wind to carry on with painting the estate fencing.
Dad was out and about. Rarely spotted. He worked from home and moved seamlessly into his study to work.
A boy from Castle Park came over. Same age as me, at Barnard Castle. He would drift across while I worked on the estate fences, looking for conversation more than anything else. Looking back, he probably should have been handed a brush and set to it. His twin sisters were close friends with my younger sister.
By midday, I stopped.
Pulled the boat in. This was a Canadian canoe we kept in the boathouse.
I bought an Ordnance Survey map—NU72— which covered the area around Dufton and Murton. Was I given a lift? It’s an awful long way to walk there and back from Appleby. I took a camera and a sketch pad. The Eden Valley had once been filled by a glacier. Melt water accumulates around its side. Knock Pike, like a grass-covered pyramid, was apparently a feature.
Officially, this was a geography fieldwork, a study of glaciation in the Eden Valley, but it felt like something else entirely—closer to undergraduate work than school. Independent. Self-propelled. No master standing over you.
The wind was relentless up on the old Pennine ski slope, and stronger still as I made my way partway towards High Cup Nick. That landscape was vast, exposed. Was Dad my driver? Our stepmother had left him by then, hadn’t she?
Back later, I hit a few tennis balls on my own.
My brother’s motorbike came and went—hidden from Dad, part of an ongoing joke that sat just beneath the surface of everything. There were always these parallel tracks: what was allowed, and what was happening anyway.
Then shooting.
We had access to a .22 rifle. Using it brought a distinct thrill. It felt powerful. Business-like. You aimed, you fired, you hit. And if you did, you followed through. I’d always go straight to the animal (only ever rabbits), check it, and if it was wounded, break its neck cleanly. That, too, felt like part of the same code—efficiency, responsibility, no hesitation.
The rabbits went to the gun room, where Harold, the falconer, would collect them. He lived in the lodge at the main gates and looked after the rescue birds—an eagle, a buzzard, a falcon, barn owls, and a short-eared owl. Usually, they get day-old chicks for food. I’d help with the feeding sometimes.
I went out shooting again after supper, as there was still light.
TV
Rising Damp
Two Ronnies
Sale of the Century
The Protectors
Company of Killers – a thriller surrounding the murder of a police officer
My brother was asleep when I went up. Were we sharing a room with twin beds? I wanted to read, so I slept in the sitting room.
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