Fifty Years Ago: Monday, 28th June 1976
The heatwave was beginning to change everything.
It felt too warm to sleep. Even sleeping under a sheet or on top of the bed didn’t work. The dormitory held the warmth all night. Eventually I gave up and got up at 6:30am.
As usual I headed outside and lay on a bath towel on the grass by the grass tennis court.
The grass was still green, though there was a noticeable lack of dew. Normally the mornings around Sedbergh felt chilly, damp and fresh – even in summer. The River Rawthey was slower and quieter than usual. Even the landscape appeared unusually still.
Sedbergh felt almost like its own self-contained town, surrounded by hills and fells. Normally those hills framed a landscape of cloud, rain and changing weather. During the heatwave everything seemed baked beneath the same blue sky
I was usually on my own at that hour. I enjoyed being awake before everyone else. It felt like getting one up on the sleeping world. While everyone else slept, I had an extra hour or two every morning. It felt like extra time.
I revised Physics and Chemistry.
Back inside I wallowed in a shallow cold bath. The cold water was less about washing than relief. My back was sunburnt from spending so much time outdoors.
The weather dominated everything.
Cumbria was typically cool, overcast and wet for much of the year. Sunshine lasting more than a few days was unusual. Now we had week after week of heat. Water shortages were beginning to be mentioned. The school itself was struggling to cope.
The old Victorian classrooms, with thick walls and high ceilings, remained reasonably cool.
The modern block was another matter. All glass and 1960s panelling, it soaked up the heat and held it. Working outside became an option, though there was ample opportunity to fool around.
Chemistry had to be in the labs: revision meant going over the periodic table and multiple-choice questions.
English was spent under the trees behind the cricket pavilion. They offered shade, though not enough to stop the heat draining everyone’s energy. I felt lethargic. I found a way to sneak off to sunbathe – on other words sleeping. I was supposed to be reading Silas Marner.
Looking back, I wonder why the school worked so hard to put us off the delights of reading by making us struggle through what felt like the most turgid texts imaginable. Presumably it was because they were “good for us”. At fourteen that argument carried very little weight.
Physics followed, going over work questions.
Break: I had a chilled Coca-Cola and two sandwiches. The Coke felt magnificent.
After lunch there was more English under the trees and more reading.
French brought good news.
“Hamy back, rah!”
A class without its teacher was an orphanage. Stand-ins rarely taught properly. More often there was supervised reading or some other holding exercise. It wasn’t a proper lesson at all, the class was more like a holding pen until the proper teacher returned.
Divinity concerned the trial of Jesus. I wrote “rough on Jesus” meaning the Romans being rough on Jesus—his arrest, trial, torture and treatment before the crucifixion. My fourteen-year-old vocabulary wasn’t always equal to the task.
The heat was tiresome abs sleep inducing.
Mid-twenties here in the South Lakes and North Yorkshire was hot enough. Reports from southern England suggested temperatures in the mid-thirties, which sounded horrendous.
Shooting
I have a faint memory of going down to the flrifle range and firing several rounds with a .22 rifle at paper targets with a friend from the House. The rifle range was the coolest building on the campus.
Maths was on tangents.
Then there was a casting for the House One Act play.
I went along.
I suspect this was a preliminary casting for the following term’s production of John Plater’s Close the Coalhouse Door. What stands out now is that a teacher’s wife was in charge. At an all-boys boarding school, any occasion involving a woman immediately felt unusual. Their presence was rare enough to be noteworthy: matron, cook, kitchen helpers.
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