Fifty years ago: Friday, 4th June 1976
(Sedbergh School. Age 14.)
Up and at it: I woke to bright sunshine pouring through the dormitory windows. For a moment, the world is mine and mine alone. If I lived on a desert island, I’d be content. The sty on my eye has finally gone, though the eyelid still feels bruised and sore.
Break: no letters again. Damn. I enjoy the anticipation: letters from somewhere beyond the hills surrounding the school indicate that there is life, that it remembers me, and that I will be here forever.
Divinity: I did well.
PE: rushed, as we had to go down to the cinder athletics track at Buskholm. We only had time for a single hundred metres. I did 14.6. Times put you in a slot – I wouldn’t make the athletics team. They should have given me a discus.
Flute lesson: it went surprisingly well. The sound had improved noticeably. I think it’s because my teeth are moving with the brace. The tone felt fuller, cleaner, less shrill. We worked on scales and a new study, and for the first time, I wondered whether I might actually be good enough to play in the orchestra.
Later, I returned the beret and badge from Corps Day.
Geography: Mr Priestley taught us about the Sahara. Deserts suggested weather systems, distant cultures — they hinted at escape routes from the enclosed routines of boarding school life.
Latin: The teacher is elderly and has boobs.
In the afternoon, I read Many Dimensions by Charles Williams — a thriller about a stone from King Solomon’s crown that could bend time and space.
I found this on the shelf of “acceptable” Christian fantasy for sale in the School Chapel, alongside The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. Looking back, I can see why these books appealed to me. They offered hidden dimensions beneath ordinary reality: secret powers, parallel worlds, ancient knowledge. For a boy confined by timetable, rules and institutional routine, they suggested that the universe of the mind contained many doors.
Leave a Reply