(Gosforth, RGS, age 18)
English: I felt frustrated—caught in my own arguments and unable to say what I meant about Coleridge. I told our wonderful English teacher as much – we called him by his surname, Worral.
We went over Chaucer again. I wrote what I was told. I did not feel I understood it, or that it was mine. I couldn’t read the lines the way others seemed to, and I wanted to get beyond writing what I was asked to write.
The system here, at the RGS, unlike at Sedbergh, was doing what it was designed to do. I had the teachers’ time and attention. They explained clearly what would be required to achieve the high grades I wanted. That mattered. They were ambitious for me. A year earlier, I had visited the BBC in London and had been told that Oxbridge was the starting point if I wanted to be considered. That became the goal. What I thought about Coleridge mattered less than what I needed to write.
Had that not been the case, I would still have been on a quest for something. Through performance, I had already taken lead roles in The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Dracula Spectacula. I might have pursued acting further—perhaps RADA, via the National Youth Theatre. Or fine art, retaking the A-level to achieve the A grade my mother and I had expected. I would still have kept a diary. I would still have typed up stories.
History: I wasn’t in the top set, having quit Economics for History in the first weeks of my first term at the RGS (thank God). We called the History teacher by his first name; he was younger and less officious – Tony had decided to push us through the syllabus as quickly as possible. We’d finished nearly all of it the previous term. Now we could focus on revision. My era was the Tudors to the Stuarts.
Swimming. I sort out the washing line in the Newts’ changing room, then swim some practice lengths—front crawl arms with butterfly legs. After that, water polo: four-a-side, attack and defence. My friend Ben is off sick. I am captain of swimming but it is simply a position—assigned to the most senior and strongest swimmer. This is school swimming, not club swimming. The pressure is off. I trained as much as I could, with extra lengths at Jesmond or Gosforth baths on the way home, but it was not the same. In the water, it still feels like a pretence.
I go into Gosforth and buy flowers for Thea.
I first give several hours to homework. I finish Chaucer, then do some History. By now, I know how to deliver. Work that once earned C or D grades is now consistently earning A or B grades. It is there in the papers and exercise books, and in the teachers’ comments. They reward effort and application. Mastering the system feels like a necessary step—understanding how the best minds think, before learning to think for myself.
Later, I sit in Thea’s kitchen, and we have coffee. It feels simple and important. I am aware of how much of this I missed while away at school—the ordinary business of going round to a friend’s house. I had known grander places through ‘posh’ school friends—large houses, sometimes palatial—but this feels closer to the real world of my grandparents’ and more in tune with something real, attainable and sustainable. Here I am simply myself. Thea’s mum had been at school with my mum—of course, she had, both at Central High School. Serious girls in their brown uniforms. Thea was a Church High girl – green. I am green to the core.
Then we went to Thea’s brother’s party and stayed until one.
There is balance now.
School and everything else no longer feel like separate worlds. I can stay out late without risking a caning or being expelled!
As a day boy, no longer sent away for months at a time, the two worlds, school and home, begin to meld naturally into each other. I have more agency now, more motivation, a clearer sense of purpose. I have already taken and gained an A-level in Fine Art, thanks to my mother.
And yet, I have been away nine years—since I was eight. It is impossible to make that up, or even to know fully what was missed. It must change a person
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