Friday, 8th October 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School. Age 15)
Physics: carried on with equations. We’re early in the Fourth Form and had already had a year of Physics, so this was more of the same. I had Abbott’s Ordinary Level Physics, and we’re working our way through the course. Looking at Abbott again, there were equations everywhere once you got into mechanics — speed, acceleration, force, work, power — but I don’t want to assign this lesson to a chapter just because it would be convenient.
History: we discussed the electoral system. This was not politics in the sense of me having political opinions to air. It belonged in its historical context: constitutional monarchy, Magna Carta, Civil War, Parliament, parties, first-past-the-post, perhaps proportional representation. It was another part of understanding how the British political system had come to be what it was.
Our teacher was back for English. We did Richard III, then discussed it. We’d been at it for about a month by then, so I think we must already have completed one full reading of the play and were now going back over it. Shakespeare generally appealed to me. I didn’t regard it simply as another tiresome school text.
Maths: was my flute lesson. Instrumental lessons took precedence over ordinary classes, however disruptive that was. I could disappear from Maths because it happened to be time for the flute. By this stage I should probably have stopped completely. I wasn’t sufficiently committed to it for all the disruption it caused.
German: dull. German always seemed dull. I might as well have been collecting stamps. I tried to learn what I was supposed to learn, and rarely, today, it went well, but whatever vocabulary, verbs or grammar it consisted of has completely disappeared.
Geography: mucked around. That sounds odd given how important Geography became to me, but a boring teacher giving a boring lesson could flatten even a subject I liked. Or were these flat days in ‘posh prison’ when almost everything seemed dull, regardless of what class or activity I was in – this feels like one of those days.
Orchestra: a bit better. “Better” did not mean that I had suddenly become a useful orchestral flautist. I could sit there looking as though I was playing and rarely risk actually making a sound. Presumably I managed the performance of belonging to the orchestra slightly more successfully than usual.
Games: went swimming. That was regular training, and at least swimming was something real for me by then rather than another school obligation to be endured.
Preps: quickly done. There was no particular triumph in that. Prep was simply a slot of time to tick off, and on this occasion I got through it without much difficulty. I learnt my German ‘well’ whatever that meant that evening: months of the year, counting up to 30? Something like that.
Then I had three ‘fags’ to do with behind the House. This is one of the strangest parts of the entry because I have no recollection at all of having to undertake chores such as this by the Fourth Form. I had thought fagging belonged mainly to my first year. “Three fags” sounds as though we had been given three separate tasks — perhaps litter picking, brushing away leaves, clearing drains or something of that sort — somewhere behind Winder among the yard, bins, paths and service areas. But I don’t remember what the jobs were, who gave them to us, or why I was doing them with another boy.
Afterwards I had a bowl of cereal – tuck-box fodder rather than anything supplied by the House. It was simply something to eat at the end of another rather flat school day.
What strikes me now is not any one lesson but the tone running through all of them. Physics, German, Geography, orchestra, preps: none of it caught fire. I have other diary days like this. It was not necessarily that every lesson was objectively dreadful. Sometimes I was simply in a mood in which everything was dull, and I couldn’t get much pleasure from whatever was expected to do.
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