Saturday, 6 November 1976
(Winder House, Sedbergh School, Cumbria. Age 15 years).
I got up early to revise German and History. Saturday was a normal school day, with lessons in the morning. I could work in the middle common room, the library or my cube in Winder House. Ideally, I wanted somewhere away from other boys who were being disruptive. I found it impossible to concentrate with music playing or a fight going on in the background.
I also had to hand in a Divinity essay on John Wesley.
History: another essay on John Wesley!
Sedbergh had been a centre for Quaker and Wesleyan chapels in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It felt at times as if the same preachers, now several hundred years old, were running the school. There was no escaping religion.
Prayers morning and evening, Chapel and Evensong on Sundays. Blind belief and the constant excitement about getting a new organ in the school chapel, news that was supposed to excite us too. It didn’t.
I’d already been arguing about religion with the Reverend Harris, who at least seemed prepared to listen. I had little patience for being expected to believe something simply because the school thought I should.
As far as I was concerned, an essay on John Wesley was a History essay, whether it was for Divinity or History. I was interested in the facts: what he said, to whom, and when. What was the impact? What were the consequences? I could write about religion without having to believe in it.
I didn’t expect to do well on the German test. I only got 13/20, though anything over 50% was good for me.
Last year I’d been doing Latin, which I couldn’t stand. This year I’d switched to German. There wasn’t much about German that appealed to me either, unless it was the prospect of reading Mein Kampf in the original. I couldn’t say that learning German was proving much more enjoyable than Latin.
I played YS (Yard Soccer) with my brother Rick, and we were deemed the useless Fosters!
Yard Soccer was played on the grit yard behind Winder House. Was it five-a-side, or sometimes two-a-side? It was rough and required ball skills, and we had none of those.
Neither of us was much good when expected to kick or catch a ball. We’d never done either with our father when we were growing up. He’d taken us shooting, fishing, skiing, gardening and birdwatching, but not kicking a football about.
The grit was unforgiving. You didn’t want to go down on your knees, let alone your face. And if you were in goal, you certainly didn’t dive for the ball!
We could both play the clown, though. Being the useless Fosters was probably something we could make a performance out of.
I went down for a short swimming practice. A shower and a swim were preferable to the communal washroom in Winder House, where boys queued to get into one of six baths or one of eight showers, all in the same open washroom.
The swimming pool was communal too, but there were fewer people, and I preferred it. I’d already been using the pool regularly, sometimes swimming considerable distances, sometimes simply enjoying the opportunity to get away from everything else going on in the House.
Unfortunately, the water was too cold, and I didn’t feel inspired. Usually, with cold water, I just got in and got on with it.
Dickie was very keen.
He was a swimmer from another house who had decided to make butterfly his stroke. He swam butterfly all the time until he became one of the best at it. I admired his determination. There was something to be said for choosing one stroke and concentrating on it relentlessly.
In the evening there was a concert at Powell Hall.
These were the subscription concerts, open to the public as well as the school, and an eclectic range of performers made it to Powell Hall.
We had to wear our Sunday best and be on our best behaviour. The Sedbergh boys had their own block of seats, and there was a balcony that could accommodate about forty people. At least there was a different audience from the usual school assemblies and concerts.
Tonight it was folk singers: Dave Paskett, Dave Evans and Bridget St John.
Pleasant ballads and guitar picking.
I could do that.
Well, I couldn’t yet. I had no particular guitar-playing skills, although I’d started with a simple classical guitar. But watching someone picking out a tune made it look like something I might be able to learn.
I liked Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac and Heart. There were LPs around the House, and I listened to whatever interested me. I wasn’t even much into Judy Collins or Barbara Dickson.
The subscription concerts brought all sorts of musicians to Powell Hall. It wasn’t necessarily what I would have chosen to listen to, but there was plenty of music around, and this was something different.
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