Thursday 21 October 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School, Cumbria. Age 15 years).
It was raining – it was Persistent and it was cold, with temperatures around 8°C to 10°C during the day, falling to somewhere between 2°C and 5°C overnight.
Someone said the CCF field day might be cancelled. Wishful thinking. Rain wasn’t an issue. Not the cold. A storm might have been another matter.
I had two eggs for breakfast, my choice and the maximum allowed, and we got packed lunches.
I took my time getting washed, enjoying the slower start.
Our CCF kit for the day: beret, waterproof parka over an army jumper, camouflage trousers and polished corps boots.
The Combined Cadet Force was compulsory at Sedbergh, as essential to the school’s ethos as Chapel. The prospectus made this clear to parents. There was CCF once a week and a compulsory week’s Corps Camp at Okehampton on Dartmoor in the summer holidays.
Sedbergh had a reputation for educating the sons of military families and sending boys into the Army or Navy. A few boys had military haircuts and played the role. They intended to join up. One was the retired headmaster’s son; another was the son of a naval officer who wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. There was also a group of younger boys who spent a great deal of time at the rifle range playing with their guns.
But having a military father didn’t necessarily mean anything. My friend Ben Cradock was the son of a naval commodore, yet he and his brother could hardly have been further removed from the military-service types.
There was no shortage of patriotism. We sang Rock of Ages, Onward Christian Soldiers, Jerusalem and the National Anthem with gutsy enthusiasm. There were Prayers at every opportunity and Grace at meals.
CCF, like Chapel, was worship of a different kind: Britain and its long-gone Empire.
There was plenty of role-playing at Sedbergh. We played the hearty Berghian, the rugger bugger, the contrite Christian on his knees in Chapel. Even in staff plays, young boys were dressed up as girls to play the role of the female love interest! Roleplay. Faking it.
Now we were pretending to be soldiers, so of course we were ordered to drill, shoot at targets and escape from a wood armed only with a compass and a shared bar of Kendal Mint Cake.
We drilled and did weapon training on and off all morning, even when it rained. I was competent enough by now and simply went through the motions. We had already spent a week at Corps Camp on Dartmoor that summer, with reveille, parades, map reading, rifle practice and orienteering.
We handled .303 Lee-Enfield rifles, bolt-action service rifles, without bayonets. On the rifle range we fired three rounds each.
Then Milkie made us trek out to the location of our orienteering exercise.
Milkie was possibly Mr Mildrew. Mild-mannered in the classroom, he now appeared in uniform, parading about and issuing stern orders. Quite a transformation. Roleplay.
Instead of taking us to the orienteering location by bus or truck, he made us hike.
We were somewhere off a section of the Ten Mile, Sedbergh’s notorious Long Run, heading out towards Cautley Spout and the infamous Muddy Slide. We had to climb the Muddy Slide, which was considerably easier in corps boots than in cross-country trainers.
I enjoyed running across the countryside, provided it wasn’t being timed. Walking was another matter. I could have been an outdoorsman on my own terms, but having it crammed down our throats took away much of the appeal.
Orienteering: we got off to a very bad start.
We must have been divided into groups of three or four from the platoon. I had done this sort of thing at Mowden Hall, my prep school in Northumberland, so it should have been quicker with the Ordnance Survey map reading.
I made some basic error that took us in the wrong direction.
It’s difficult to remember precisely what happened. I think we somehow found the fourth checkpoint before the first three. We punched our card there, then had to retrace our steps, complete checkpoints one, two and three, and move on to five.
We solved eight more, finished early because it was a short course, and walked back.
I don’t remember what happened to all our wet kit when we returned to Winder House. We certainly didn’t hang it around the common rooms. Perhaps it went into the washroom or our cubes. There was an enormous airing cupboard full of laundry, although getting special permission to use it was another matter. Permission was granted with great reluctance.
In the evening there was a film in Powell Hall, shown on a 16mm projector: Puppet on a Chain.
After three professional murders, an American agent went to Amsterdam to investigate a heroin ring. He discovered widespread drug dealing and an ineffective police force. With his undercover female partner, he began shaking things up.
I remembered the chase around the Amsterdam canals in speedboats. The lead actor wasn’t particularly Bond-like, certainly not the typical handsome Hollywood leading man.
A bit sad and typical.
Same old, same old. Bond by another name.
Violence on screen, except in horror films, was always lame, almost like pantomime. Someone was shot, they fell over. No blood. No pain. No slow death.
But what was the school allowed to show us?
Certainly, no sex please, we’re British!
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