Fifty years ago: Wednesday, 26th May 1976
(Sedbergh School. Age 14)
It was one of those days when the school day got me between the bells – I carried the pain with me from class to class.
Bell #*^=#>!
House Breakfast: cornflakes, boiled eggs and toast.
Bell #*^=#>!!
Assembly in Powell Hall
Bell +#*#*>#!!!
First class – English: A test on Twelfth Night. I hadn’t revised, so there was no great mystery about the result. I relied too often on bluff and instinct when it came to English – reading out loud was a joy. I never remembered anything unless I had to appear on stage.
Bell =+#*#*>#!!?
Second Class – French: Mécanismes, Chapter 13 — another small section of a system that failed to connect with real France or real people. <A decade later, I live and work in Paris for a year – that works!>
Bell +#*#*>#!*!*
Third Class – Divinity: We were told off for not doing our preps. I remember feeling irritated at the whole arrangement. Did my parents know they were signing me up for a weekly Bible class when they sent me here? We get religion morning, day and night.
Bell +#*#*>#!!!
Break back at House
Bell +#*#*>#!
Fourth Class – Latin: I finished my carving of a hedgehog on the old oak school desk. ‘Ericius, said my Latin teacher, who told me he had sat at this same desk 100 years earlier. He showed me his carving of a nun in her habit.
Bell =>#*^#!!!
Fifth Class – Music: This is in the sitting room of Guldrey Lodge, a large Edwardian House in town, an oddly domestic setting for school. We were made to listen to “The Pirates of Penzance”-culture. There was a coffee table, so we put our feet up, lounging about, until we were told off. I didn’t enjoy the music. To my fourteen-year-old ears, the women’s voices sounded like “forty-year-old bags”. To the music teacher, this was ‘Greatest Hits’ of the 70s – the 1870s rather than the 1970s.
Bell ~+#*^#!?#!*#!?!!~
Lunch back at House
Bell: #*^=#>!
Double Biology: supervised reading
I’m reading Emmanuelle. I am too young to get into an X-rated film. It’s a double Biology after all. Supervised reading. Human biology, in a manner of speaking. I had it inside my Nuffield I Biology book. It is erotica. Even before the sexy stuff, the descriptions are saucy. The sexy stuff is outside my experience. It’s like describing an adventure story that would benefit from a map, like The Lord of the Rings. Where is Mons Pubis? It’s not as if I can ask. There’s nothing in the library that provides a diagram.
Swimming gala: I was only in the relays, and we lost them all. Afterwards, tea was laid out in the cricket pavilion. Sometimes the visiting school stayed on, and we’d knock a cricket ball around on the cricket pitch or play pirates in the gym. Best of all, we’d play water polo. Not this time.
Then back to House for supper.
Bell #*^=#>!
Preps
Then I ‘bathe’ – that is to say – soaking in a bath with my paperback copy of Emmanuel.
“After you”, asked an older boy. I don’t know if he wanted the book, or the bath, or both.
Bell: #*^=#>!
Evening prayers
Bell: #*^=#>!
Juniors to bed
Bells in my head all night!
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