Fifty Years Ago: Saturday, 26th June 1976
I was up early as usual and had a bath before breakfast. I went round to the house, kitchen, and asked Cook for a packed lunch. Any break from routine was welcome. A packed lunch meant travel, a day out, a few missed lessons (we have Saturday morning classes, remember) and an escape from some of the normal restrictions of school life.
Chemistry: We got our marks back, and I was pleased to find I was still near the top of the order position.
French: I asked Mr Catsford, our French teacher, if I could leave at ten o’clock. Permission granted, I was away by 10.07. I collected my packed lunch and filled a bottle with orange squash for the journey.
As I was leaving, I noticed Mary and Holiday in the yard behind the house. Mary was our Housemaster’s daughter, about the same age as my sister, while Holiday (my year) had only recently turned fourteen. Looking back, it amuses me that I regarded myself as older (I was) and more mature (I’d had five years away at boarding prep school) than either of them.
We set off for Kendal. On the way, we passed through Casterton to pick up a member of staff who was helping at the event. Reading the diary fifty years later, I initially wondered whether this involved picking up girls from Casterton School, but I’d have said more had girls been involved. It was simply another stop on the journey.
At some point, I managed to ring my father and told him not to come to Kendal. This would have been from a payphone. I have no idea now why I did this. My father never attended school events. Not once, as far as I can remember – certainly not to anything at Mowden: not a sports event, not a school play, not even prize giving. Perhaps I had only just learned that I would not be swimming any individual races and would only be needed for the relay. So I told him not to bother. There may have been a misunderstanding about the arrangements.
Most of the day then consisted of waiting. I hope I had a book with me. Anyone who swam competitively at school will recognise the pattern. The racing occupied only a fraction of the day. The rest was spent sitting on poolside benches, in spectator galleries, or outside in the sunshine, growing bored and restless as they waited for events to begin.
The relay was not until seven o’clock in the evening. Then we had to get back.
In the end, the Seniors won, so I assume the Junior team lost.
Typical of my diary, I recorded the result but not the details. What survives most vividly is a bottle of orange squash, a packed lunch, Mary and Holiday playing in the yard, a phone call to my father, and hours spent waiting for a relay that finally took place at seven o’clock (that we lost) on a warm June evening.
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