Fifty years ago: Thursday, 28th May 1976
(Sedbergh School, Age 14)
My teeth still feel sore from adjustments to my brace. Playing the flute, the embouchure becomes painful, tight-lipped and pressed hard against the silver flute mouthpiece after a lot of playing.
I’ve been playing the flute for several years now, have Grade V, and have played in festivals and in the school orchestra. I was entered for a music scholarship, but didn’t get it. I also play the piano, though only to Grade III. I can read music and was a chorister for five years.
More recently, I’ve been teaching myself folk guitar and getting lessons at home so I can play and sing pop ballads.
The music teacher normally produces the music studies, but this time I found a Mozart piece I liked myself, and I finally seem to get the breathing right.
P.E: Athletics. I have the aerobic capacity to run well from all my swimming, and I’m reasonably good at hurdles and discus. High jump less so. Athletics always feels like a minor sport here. Feelschool puts an emphasis on cricket during the summer term, which even a clutz like me has to play from time to time. I can neither hit nor catch a ball and find it so boring I take little interest in what is going on. Usually someone shouts my name if a ball is headed my way, and I also bat last, scoring only one or two runs if any.
I handed in a ‘map’ signed six days ago. Maps are a punishment for minor misdemeanours. You have to create a map of a country and feature six rivers, a coastline and several towns, perhaps 25.
Geography: Deserts – simply one more landscape amongst all the landscapes we study, but I like the imagery: wadis, oases, sand dunes, strange rock formations.
Latin: yuk.
Lunch: yuck.
Physics: magnetism with a film loop – pre-video, this was shown via a projector with the lights down. Before lessons start, or if a teacher leaves the room, or the lights are dimmed, chaos can break out. We all use fountain pens, often filling them from bottles of ink rather than cartridges, and boys flick ink at each other from the nibs. Some have managed to get hold of syringes and squirt ink across the room that way.
By late May, discipline is beginning to fray. We don’t get a proper half-term break, only the occasional rationed day out on a Saturday or Sunday, and everyone feels it.
I came across a careers brochure about the RAF in the House library that appealed to me. A year ago, I’d been imagining aircraft of the future, and there’s still a science-fiction element to it in my mind — pilots of the future, perhaps even space travel. My grandfather served in the RAF during the First World War and trained as a fighter pilot, which adds to the fascination. Unusually for me, I recently had a short back-and-sides haircut, which looks oddly out of place beside the longer 1970s haircuts around me. I don’t mind differentiating myself. I feel like an outsider anyway.
Maths.
Supper. Yuk!
Preps.
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