Wednesday, 13 October 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School. Age 15).
Geography: we were taking notes on Africa — new frontiers, newly independent countries, thriving Kenya, tea, coffee, chemicals and game reserves. But I enjoyed it.
I liked Geography anyway. I liked the subject and the calm endeavour of sitting there working, if we could achieve it without too much disturbance. I liked to keep things within my head and not be troubled by what was going on around me. A clean page in my notebook was good, particularly when my ink pen was flowing properly.
P.E: basketball, but I enjoyed it. Though P.E., as far as I was concerned, ought to have meant press-ups and pull-ups, not some foreign ball game where we were supposed to behave like the Harlem Globetrotters — or girls in gym slips — skipping about and calling each other’s names all the time. I was terrible with a ball until I was allowed to throw it with two hands rather than one. Even so, I enjoyed it.
Chemistry : I was worried about a test, but again I didn’t get it.
I ought to have cottoned on by then that Mr Barrett frequently threatened us with a Chemistry test and then didn’t follow through. It irritated me. Preparing for one of his tests stole time from other preps. I assumed the masters knew what work everyone else was setting, so that we didn’t end up with five preps on Monday and none on Thursday, but Chemistry seemed able to usurp everything else.
For me Chemistry was becoming a matter of survival. I could fret about a Chemistry test, neglect other preps because of it, and then still do badly. I needed to understand Chemistry. Learning it as if it were multiplication tables and then being tested on it wasn’t working for me.
Afternoon Games: I had to play A2 Rugger. I am surprised I was playing so much rugby at all, because swimming already mattered far more to me. A2 sounded perilously close to serious rugby. If anyone involved in the senior game got their eyes on me, I could imagine my future being sealed and turning into the sort of rugger bugger I had no aspiration to become.
But we won. It was quite a good game.
That wasn’t really surprising either. I had played rugby for years and enjoyed the physical exercise and the rough-and-tumble of it once I was actually playing. I came away with sore ears from the pressure in the scrum. There was no ear protection. I did at least have a gum shield because I wore a brace.
Injuries were simply part of rugby: broken fingers, cut eyes, cauliflower ears, concussion, being winded. Nobody seemed particularly surprised by them.
I still went swimming, but I only had twenty minutes. Some swimming was better than none, and I resented missing it altogether. I managed 450 metres, doing broken sprints.
Then I copied out my swimming log. Mr Stuart had introduced the idea of keeping one, and mine was in a blue exercise book. It recorded the swimming I was doing and was becoming part of taking the sport seriously.
Projects: my tea tray handles were too thin, so I had to redo them. The whole thing was in danger of being too feeble to carry very much. I blamed the bad wood, although clearly I was getting it wrong myself.
Redoing the handles meant starting the process again: choosing the timber, marking it out, sawing, planing, filing and sanding until I had something substantial enough to work.
Band practice: we signed a card for the tuba player who was in hospital after getting kicked in the face in rugby.
That was serious enough to put him in hospital, but injuries were so commonplace that even this could feel like just another one. Someone was always getting hurt playing rugby.
It had been an ordinary Sedbergh Wednesday: Geography, basketball, Chemistry, rugby, swimming, Projects and Band. The things I enjoyed most were generally the things in which I could get on with something — taking Geography notes in peace, swimming my broken sprints, working towards something of my own. What irritated me was the uncertainty of Mr Barrett’s threatened Chemistry test hanging over everything else.
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