Fifty year ago: Wednesday, 2nd June 1976
(Sedbergh, Age 14)
Up and at it: I’m up early from habit and went outside before breakfast, sitting on a bank above the River Rawthey looking south as the sun rose over the fells. Thus early quietness matters to me. Before the school, before bells and voices and the machinery of the day begins. I have this part of the world to myself.
After that, I got on with preps.
Branston (George Pickles) still hasn’t brought my case back. I lent it to him and have not seen it since.
English: Full marks in the test. This is so unusual I wonder if i’d inadvertently been cheating – you’d think is know. We are tested every day on something we had revised the evening before in prep: usually facts from whichever book we were reading — Silas Marner. I’m not good at retaining information like this unless I make a supreme effort and out in a lot of hours – I’m not one for supreme effort or fastidiousness in prep: I would have been hopeless on something like University Challenge. Stories I could remember – that’s the purpose of stories. To be memorable.
French: passé composé.
Divinity: I’d revised (in my own way) for a test which never happened.
At break, I had a strawberry sandwich.
Latin: I handed in some notes on religious books as an extracurricular assignment. Who knows why? I was rubbish at Latin and had no interest in religion either, except from an historical and psychological point of view.
‘Good notes’ mattered enormously because to the school, they represented knowledge successfully transferred from teacher to pupil. Yes, if I could take my notes into an exam. My form of note taking is more akin to being a scribe – just because I have put coherent marks on the page doesn’t mean I know what they mean. There always seemed to be copying, transcribing, and note-taking. In reality, we were simply copying down from the blackboard, from textbooks or dictation – I would daydream my way through it. Neatness counted because one day we would sit in an exam hall and try to regurgitate everything onto paper. I used to joke that the moment I put my pen down at the end of an exam, my brain flushed the contents away, ready for the next wave of “learning”. Even then, I think I sensed something flawed in the method. Had I actually learned anything? What did I now know? Not much.
Music: Greasy (on account of the orduxr he lurinnhis hair) – the Head of Music was ill. Bramley (Mr Applegarth) stepped in, put on The Pirates of Penzance, and had us sit in a circle following the libretto. I remember reading the lyrics and mentally placing myself among the orchestra as the music played. It’s not exactly Saturday Night Fever or Never Mind The Bollocks.
English: the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Good lesson. Good story.
Biology: good notes.
It sounds like I’m having a ‘good day’ – don’t count on there being any more.
I sent The Screwtape Letters home. I’m not sure why. Perhaps for Mum to read. The School Chapel had shelves of books for sale beside an honesty box, and I’d occasionally buy something from there — often without seeing much connection to religion at all. C. S. Lewis, odd paperbacks, bits of theology or philosophy. None of it shifted me from atheism – I was searching for something intellectual rather than spiritual.
Swimming: I got out of the pool early. Perhaps I was struggling with the training, getting cramps, or simply wanting to escape. Even in the middle of school life, I was always alert to small opportunities for withdrawal and solitude.
Leave a Reply