Fifty years ago: Saturday, 15th May 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School. age 14)
I slept badly—everything contributed: noise, light, thoughts, even the change in diet with Mum over yesterday.
We had to put on our Sunday uniform. We look and feel smarter, like young squires. This, despite it being a ‘normal’ school day for us, which includes a morning of lessons.
I finish Dark Inferno, reading it in bed, then later down in the junior common room and finally in the House library. I like how sexily the female characters dress – the female space stewardesses are ‘virtually topless and well-nigh bottomless’ – which sounds more like a bikini. The idea of disappearing off into space with a girl my age is often on my mind. My Dream. Men have all the best jobs – that sounds wrong.
I miss the congregation practice. I cannot for the life of me understand why we have it at all, let alone as a regular feature. It is bad enough having to go to Church every week.
Chemistry: We wear lab coats. We do pH and hydrogen. Chemistry had made sense in my first year until I started to fall behind.
It rained hard—as it so often does in Cumbria. It’s the norm. If I don’t mention the weather, it’s raining – is the unusual sun!
French: mécanismes.
English: we read chapter 13 of Silas Marner and do vocabulary.
Back in the House.
I ate a few of the Mars Bars from Mum—she had left a bag of them.
I have tea in my brother’s study with Mum; it’s the first and only time I’ve ever been in his study; why would I? Just as I would never go into his room at home. Most days, our paths never cross.
These sixth-form studies are small and closet-like, with a single window, filled with whatever a boy has brought from home to tart it up—drapes, cushions, posters, a lamp, a kettle. It was not very sophisticated. I read.
House swimming league: I won both my races, no IM, but front crawl over 50m and 100m. I rely on a natural feel for the water and good technique; we do not train anything like often enough or hard enough.
At the Cross Keys, where Mum is, my brother and I have ham and eggs.
Back in the House, I let off steam – I do this by practising the flute, then whacking a tennis ball against the side of the House. Three or four of us can do this at once. Balls are often lost over the top of the House—three storeys high—or roll into the gutter and disappear until someone has the nerve to go up onto the roof. An older brother once did just that, appearing on the roof one evening and freeing a dozen balls from the gutter.
There was a thriller on TV.
I spotted Mary Nicholson—the Housemaster’s daughter, a year or so younger than me, the only teenage girl in a building of over sixty boys. Just seeing her, watching her go off to school, matters. She is a connection to the outside world and what it offers.
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