Monday, 18th October 1976
(Sedbergh School, Winder House
Age 15 years)
I woke early at 7:00.
Not particularly early for me. In the summer I was often up before six. Breakfast was at eight, so there was an hour to spare.
I got up to revise Chemistry with two other boys, Branston Pickles and Colin Park.
Branston was writing to a girl!
He had met a girl, spoken to her, written to her and received a letter in return. Branston was such a slight lad, physically immature for his age and short. He could have passed for a twelve-year-old.
Where had they met? What was her name? Did he have a photograph of her? What was he telling her about? What was she telling him?
A girl had written back to Branston!
Someone had forgotten time fagging.
This was a fag, one of the chores given to junior boys in Winder House. At ten minutes to eight, a junior was supposed to run through the building shouting, “Ten minutes!” in his unbroken soprano voice.
Breakfast was at eight.
It was more a tradition than a necessity. Boys had alarms and clock radios, and the middle and junior boys rarely failed to get themselves up in time for breakfast. The trouble was that sometimes the boy who was supposed to wake everyone else couldn’t get himself up.
All lessons good.
That was something. I’d survived the day without being particularly bored or confused, and perhaps I’d even learnt a thing or two.
English with Mr Mercer. Got a ghost story.
A bit early for Halloween, wasn’t it?
Prep on words had been bad, I thought.
We were reading George Eliot’s Silas Marner, and I kept a list of words whose meanings I had to look up or which I found interesting.
Avarice, for example. Extreme greed for wealth or material gain. Silas became obsessed with hoarding his gold coins after withdrawing into his isolated life in Raveloe.
Profligate. Recklessly extravagant or wasteful, even immoral. Like Dunstan Cass, or Dunsey, as he was known, and his reckless behaviour.
Phantasm. A figment of the imagination, an illusion or a phantom. Something seen, or thought to have been seen, in the darkness or fog.
Vicissitude. A change of circumstances or fortune, particularly an unwelcome one. The unexpected turns that life could take.
Rectitude. Morally correct behaviour or thinking. Righteousness. The rigid moral expectations of the religious community at Lantern Yard, or the churchgoers.
Capricious. Given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour. Fickle. The unpredictable decisions people made, or the turns of fate that changed their circumstances.
They were interesting words, and I liked coming across them in a book, discovering what they meant and adding them to my vocabulary.
What frustrated me was the way English could be broken down into exercises, rather as we were taught French or German. All those formal requirements. I wanted to hear, read and experience the language, not spend all my time taking it apart.
I swam in the afternoon.
We did 5 × 100m FC sprints.
That was only part of the session. Five 100-metre freestyle sprints were gruelling enough, especially if we were diving in and being timed. There would have been other swimming to do as well.
I did quite well.
I lived up to Mr Stuart’s expectations, which was something. He knew what I was capable of.
I much preferred swimming to rugby. In fact, I had no desire to play rugby at all.
Unfortunately, that didn’t mean I could avoid it. If rugby was on, I usually had to play, sometimes in the juniors or seconds, but more likely for a junior House team. There were fewer boys to choose from, so I had to turn out whether I wanted to or not.
Swimming was different. At least I wanted to be there.
Choral Society.
At some point we were singing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, from Messiah. I can’t remember whether that was what we were rehearsing that particular Monday.
Then there was evening House assembly. Announcements, a hymn, a short prayer and roll call.
Another Monday over.
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