Fifty years ago: Thursday, 13th May, 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School, age 14.7)
One of the junior boys, and a fag—woke everyone at 6:40 am. We called this fagging duty ‘tapping up’ – going along the cubicle doors and bashing them all to wake the occupants. It was too early. He was supposed to come around at 7:20 am. Twenty last seven, not twenty to. There are groans, muttered threats, and the usual talk of revenge that will materialise after games in the washrooms or after prep: this evening.
I remember feeling oddly relieved. It provided me with an unexpected dollop of extra time —a chance, in theory, to get ahead on a looming German test.
German: I found German conjugations mind-bogglingly dull – like banging my head against a German brick wall:
1. Present Tense – Indicative
- ich beiße auf Granit (I am biting on granite / hitting a wall)
- du beißt auf Granit (you are biting on granite/ hitting a wall)
- er/sie/es beißt auf Granit (he/she/it is biting on granite/ hitting a wall)
- wir beißen auf Granit (we are biting on granite/ hitting a wall)
- ihr beißt auf Granit (you all are biting on granite/ hitting a wall)
- sie/Sie beißen auf Granit (they/you formal are biting on granite/ hitting a wall)
I drift instead into reading about Bach. He was German, which had to count for something. It was an act of defiance—substitution rather than engagement. I listened to Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, the “Air on the G String” on a cassette – I was so lost in it that, as a joke, no one reminded me to attend the House breakfast. I’d go hungry until Break at 11:00.
English: A test on the Tolpuddle Martyrs. The question was about Charlton Down. No one seems to get it. I did. Charlton Down, near Dorchester in Dorset, was historically the site where the Tolpuddle Martyrs were held before and after their trial for forming a trade union in 1834. Full marks. Evidence that I could do it when the material made sense, when it connected and I had read around the subj,ect – just looked something up in ,e Britannica Encyclopedia.
French: Mécanismes.
Even now, fifty years later, the word lands with a kind of dull thud.
This was the method: the mechanical building blocks of French grammar, practised through repetition until they became automatic. The key idea—though never stated as such—was automaticity over understanding. We were being trained to respond quickly and correctly, almost like a reflex, rather than to respond in a way that is personal or meaningful.
Tedious. Disengaging. Overly formal. Repetitive, teacher-led, performance-focused, low on real communication. Linguistic muscle training without any sense of play.
We would chant verb conjugations—je suis, tu es, il est…—or run through avoir, aller, faire in multiple tenses. We’d take a model sentence and substitute elements: Je vais au cinéma becomes Il va au théâtre, then Nous allons à la piscine. We’d transform structures on command—from present to past, from affirmative to negative. We’d shuffle pronouns about—Je vois Marie becomes Je la vois. We’d contort statements into questions using inversion or est-ce que.
And always at pace. Always under watch.
We would repeat in chorus, the teacher announcing ‘avec moi’ or some such. It felt like doing call-and-response in Church. I had had this kind of nonsense for the best part of six years as a boarder at prep school and now public school. In the choir, Chapel every Sunday, morning assembly with prayers, evening assembly in the House with a sermon, hymn, prayer and roll call. I’m meant to be in a French lesson, but already I am drifting into a daydream, and I hear instead The Greeting: The priest says, “The Lord be with you,” and the congregation responds, “And also with you”. At any moment, I might break into song; indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point I sang je suis, tu es, il est… got some giggles and kept doing it just to make a nuisance of myself.
The comparison is exact. It wasn’t language—it was liturgy.
At prep school (Mowden Hall), the teacher had set the pace with a ruler, or even a cane, making the point that failure to learn what was being taught in this fashion would result in a beating.
Back in class in Sedbergh, we droned along with it like galley slaves. We were the bottom set. What did the top set do? Discuss Sartre?
I felt powerless, and tearful – genuinely upset and bothered that a language I adored was reduced to this. It made no sense to me. It still makes me angry – I was eager to learn French, but couldn’t if it was taught like this. The teacher might as well have thrown handfuls of gravel at my face.
At some point during a French prep, I abandoned the set task and wrote poetry in French. I created a song with a long rhyme or lyric, more like. The French teacher was genuinely charmed, held me back to go through it, and then kept it to work on. He’d done one of his best, but of course, what he handed back to me a few days later was more red ink than my blue. It was no longer mine. It may have been French, but it was no longer poetry. I couldn’t set it to music: the rhythm has gone.
A few years later, though not studying French, I went on a French exchange. My exchange partner introduced me to Jacques Prévert – that is what I had been looking for.
It’s hard, looking back, not to feel a certain incredulity. Did the teachers not sense that something was fundamentally wrong? That if an entire room of boys was disengaged, then the fault did not lie with the boys?
During my gap year in France, I found myself on local French radio discussing my songs and performing several with French lyrics – now that’s a turnaround!
Maths probably. It was. We worked on probability. It struck me as handy if I took up gambling for a hobby like Dad.
Break. I devoured a loaf of Marmite on toast and a soft boiled egg.
Then the gym.
soft-boiled style against a rival from another House. I’m nervous—more than usual. He might reach the record. I’m behind him in training. That’s not like me. My late breakfast might have had something to do with it. If you want to create the smelliest of farts Marmite and egg is the answer.
German: No test. Relief. We go over the chapter. I understand page numbers – the extent of my German comprehension.
Latin: I drift. I spend the entire lesson looking at the patterns cast on the wall by the Victorian leaded glass windows. If you held your gaze long enough, you could just catch the movement of the sun—time itself inching across the surface. I tried desperately to desperately to make time stand still. A times I’m sure I succeeded. Unusually the Latin teacher left me alone with my thoughts. He knew when it came to Latin I was a lost cause. I’d spent the best part of five years climbing to A grades to have collapsed back into a relative Z-Z-Z-Z.
Leaving me to sleep through lunch was deemed funny by my classmates and due punishment for being absent throight out his class by the Latin teacher.
Having slept through lunch, I risked missing the start of Games. I was due back at the swimming pool.
I requisitioned a pair of trunks from lost property that looked like they belonged to a prep: school soprano.
These were tighter than budgie smugglers.
I won the 100m freestyle in a new record by 1.3 seconds. I’m thrilled. We celebrate in the gym yard. My worrying about it for a couple of hours had helped. And the ultra-brief trunks as well. It crossed my mind that swimming naked might be faster still. I’m not sure how or when I could test this theory. Might you even engage your dick as a rudder or centre board?
My conclusion on the day? In the classroom, particularly in language classes, I am passive, resistant, and diminished. In the water, I am precise, competitive, and devious.
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