Thursday, 7th October 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School. Age 15).
I got a variety of letters from Realm Records, which eventually agreed that I had paid my dues. They seemed to struggle with the fact that I had one address at home in Gosforth and another at Sedbergh, and kept chasing subscriptions I had already paid.
Realm Records was supposed to be a slightly cheaper way of buying records, though sometimes what they offered was not really what I wanted. They would send something out each month whether I had requested it or not. On the other hand, I had found things through them that I might never otherwise have come across, like Paice Ashton Lord’s Malice in Wonderland. Otherwise I was buying the usual things I knew I wanted — Genesis, Supertramp, even ABBA.
The letters had been going backwards and forwards for a while. In truth, I wanted to cancel, but even that was proving tricky. At least they had now admitted that I had paid.
I also got a letter from Granny V, with a £1 note each for my brother and me. This was a bonus. Granny lived only about half a mile away from us in Gosforth, so when we were home we saw her every week. A pound could be put to good use — probably a music magazine and tuck, perhaps even fish and chips, with plenty of change left.
She said she had a new dog, another Yorkshire terrier, also called Scamp. There had already been one Scamp, barky and excitable, and now there was another.
English, or General Studies, with Mr James was a bit of a red herring. At least that was the expression I wanted to use, though I wasn’t sure I understood it properly. What I really meant was that the lesson felt like a filler. If it was English, we didn’t have a text to read on anything specific. General Studies would have been a better name for it.
Maybe Mr James had been briefed to engage us in critical thinking rather than teach us a particular subject. He replaced a teacher whoniswd to sit cross legged on his desk to deliver the lesson. Most formal lessons at Sedbergh were prescriptive and tied to a particular textbook, so this was unusual. Mr James would raise a controversial question and get us talking. If I could get a word in, I joined in. We seemed to end up talking about battles, and sometimes art and opera. It must at least have got us thinking about politics, philosophy and culture, even if I was never quite sure what the lesson was supposed to be about.
Geography: a lesson outside. It was a rare dry day after weeks or rain – so instead of sitting in a classroom we went out and mooched around. Sedbergh had the Howgills, rivers and becks, meadows and the built environment so there was plenty that could have counted as Geography. I cannot now remember whether we were talking about human or physical geography — urban and rural settlement, perhaps, or rivers and meadows. We may even have sat beneath the copse of mature cedars behind the cricket pavilion.
Physics: we got our tests back. I did not do so well.
Physics itself was done completely by the book. Literally. We worked chapter by chapter through A. F. Abbott’s Ordinary Level Physics. There was no mystery about where we were going next because the textbook provided the route.
Preps were good. A good prep was something engaging, a challenge but achievable, something that fed my curiosity, crossed a bridge and got me somewhere.
For English Literature prep, I took my time because Mr Mercer was away, so he would not be looking at it for a while. His absence changed the urgency. I could make a start, or do the work and still have time to review it and perhaps redo it before he saw it. This term we were doing Richard III and a novel, possibly Silas Marner.
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