the green, green grass of home....

Ever since I was a teenager, I think it's fair to say that I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with my dad. This is hardly a unique phenomenon, I'm sure, but to this day, we barely have to be around each other under the same roof for longer than a day before we start rubbing each other up the wrong way. I'm not sure why this is. Superficially, we're quite similar. For starters, at first glance, we look physically very similar, and are unmistakably father and son. Look a little more closely though, and the differences become more apparent: as well as being bald where my dad has a full head of hair, I'm a lot taller and actually have quite a different physical build to my dad. It wasn't until my mum lost a load of weight recently that I realised quite how much I actually resemble her in terms of our physical stature - tall, thin, broad-shouldered.

I think something similar is true of our personalities: on the face of it we're both untidy, impatient and irascible, with a tendency not to listen and to interrupt, but when you look at things a bit closer, the differences become a lot starker. At least I hope they do.... My dad is a doctor and a man of the sciences; I am very much inclined towards the humanities. My dad is religious and I most certainly am not.... and so on. I love him to bits, of course, but I just don't think he understands me because, although we're superficially similar on the face of it, I am ultimately put together in a quite different way to him. Somehow, after all this time, he still gets angry when I react to things differently to him (and, I suppose, vice-versa). It's as if he keeps expecting me to be more like him than I actually am.

I was given a stark illustration of this when we last saw my parents: my dad was talking to C. and was describing how I used to drive him mad when I was a teenager by deliberately doing a bad job of mowing the lawn, leaving tufts of uncut grass all over the place. This, he said, was absolutely typical of me. This is not the way I remember things. It's absolutely true to say that I used to drag my heels over being told to cut the grass. What teenager doesn't? It wasn't so much that I disliked the job itself or had anything better to do with my time, it was more to do with the fact that I was being told -- ordered -- to do something, and I objected on principle and took my time getting it done. There was never any question that I wouldn't do it; it was always only a matter of how far I could push it before I actually went and did it. If you've been a teenager, then you've probably been there yourself and I'm sure you know how it works. However, once I was out and cutting the grass, never once did I deliberately set out to do a bad job, to piss my father off or otherwise. I may have DONE a bad job, but I never set out to do so intentionally. The idea that my dad has spent the last twenty years or so stewing on that as being somehow typical of me is something that I find a little disturbing. It is entirely possible, I now think, that my dad has based his assessment of my personality on a presumption of a premeditation, of a malice of forethought, that has simply never been there.

Based on a conversation I had with C. over the weekend, what really worries me now is that she has taken my father's misreading of me on-board and is applying it to me herself. I've no one to blame for this misreading of my intentions but myself, but I still find it alarming that my actions (or inactions) are interpreted in this way. I'm surely not that inscrutable, am I?

it was acceptable at the time.....

I had my annual phonecall yesterday evening from my old University. They wanted money, of course. In spite of being one of the richest educational institutions in the UK, they're not above trying to make me feel all nostalgic about my student days to tap me up for some money.

Having gone to a boarding school, it wasn't the first time I'd been away from home for any length of time, and so university was never really all that big a deal for me. As a result, I'm perhaps not as sentimental about my time there as I might be, and I'm not the kind of person who plans his life around the next reunion. Perhaps the university knows this. Their trick to get my attention is to get a current student on my old course to ring me up. They still want my money, of course, but they get to wrap it all up in a nice conversation about old times.

Although I have absolutely zero intention of giving any money, I always feel for the student in this situation. They are presumably doing this primarily because they need a job to help pay their way through University. They haven't volunteered to talk to old graduates out of the kindness of their hearts, they are doing it because they are paid to do it. I get no thrill at all from being rude to people at the best of times, and I'm certainly not about to get on my high horse about the begging policies of a stinking rich University to some poor kid trying to raise a bit of beer money. Instead, the student will enquire politely about my time at the University, and I'll politely respond.

The best part of my undergraduate course was the term that I got to spend studying the Renaissance out in Venice, and the student who called me last night was particularly interested in finding out about that: where I lived, whether I had to speak much Italian, how hard the coursework was... that kind of thing. We also talked about tutors (she has the same one that I used to have), how the union had changed (they're knocking it down to build a new one over the summer, apparently) and the merits of living in Leamington over living in Coventry. Small talk really, and in its own way it was perfectly pleasant. I made it clear right from the start that I wasn't going to be committing to a donation on the phone, and she didn't push it too hard. We got on fine.

The thing is though, every time I found myself being drawn out of my reluctance to talk in any depth about my time at University, I remembered that I was talking to a kid. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, it's just that she was in the second term of her first year. This means that she is probably little more than 18 years old and was likely born around 1989. I graduated from that University some 13 years ago, and in 1989 I was sitting my first GCSE. In other words, I'm nearly twice her age and I'm more or less old enough to be her father. She was politely interested in what I was saying, but to her, I must have seemed absolutely antique.

Bless her for trying, but my God it made me feel old.

no words of consolation....

I went to the dentist this morning. As I'm sure many of you are all too aware, it's actually quite hard to get yourself onto the lists of an NHS dentist, so if you're lucky enough to have one, you stick to them like glue in case you can't find another one who'll have you. So it is then that even though I moved long ago and there are probably hundreds of dental practices closer to me, I am still visiting the dentist I registered with when I first moved to Nottingham ten years ago. I now live on the other side of the river in a much nicer part of town down by the cricket ground, and every time I make the journey to the dentist, I always get a slightly sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's not because I have any great fear of the dentist - God knows I had enough orthodontic work done as a teenager to have no great worries about that. The feeling comes from the history I have with that particular part of town.

I didn't really know the area at all when I first moved down here from York, and I ended up living in a little off-shoot of the city up near the motorway junction. It's not a particularly nice part of town, and certainly not as nice as leafy West Bridgford, but I didn't really know any better at the time and it seemed quite convenient for work, so that was that.

My then-girlfriend moved down to Nottingham with me. Unlike me, she didn't have a job lined up, but we'd been going out for nearly two years, so without ever really talking about it, we just kind of assumed that we'd make a go of it and drifted down together. We made the journey down the M1 on the same day that Princess Diana died and moved into a comfortable but fairly basic semi-detached house with the satellite dish that had been it's major attraction. I started work a week or so later and, after a bit of searching, she found a job too and we began to settle into a routine: we registered with the doctor and the dentist, worked out where the nearest supermarket was and, through a process of elimination, decided which curry house we liked the best. The job was good and we seemed to be doing okay. We were okay.

After a little while, we started to talk about buying a house. She was really keen and wanted to put down roots, but without ever really understanding or being able to explain why, I was totally opposed to the idea. We carried on as normal, but I increasingly found myself stewing on this. I thought I was happy and I knew that buying a house and settling down properly was probably the logical next step. I was puzzled at my intransigence on the subject, and eventually it dawned on me that it wasn't that I didn't want to buy a house per-se, it was just that I didn't want to buy a house with my girlfriend. At the time I realised this, I still thought that I was in love with her, but this revelation highlighted a pretty fundamental lack of commitment to the relationship made me realise that I was drifting and that this couldn't go on. To my regret, I made this realisation and did nothing about it for a year - I certainly didn't discuss my feelings with my girlfriend . I think perhaps I was trying to fool myself: we got on very well and we made a good, solid couple. I also got on really well with her family and she with mine. We seemed so settled that breaking up seemed ridiculously drastic, and so I pretended that everything was going fine and hoped that I'd get over it in time.

This limbo went on and on, and most of the time I was able to dismiss my doubts as background noise to the everyday routine of our lives. Her job was going well and, on the face of it, everything was tickety-boo. Then, one week, I went away on a residential course down in the Mendips and everything changed.

I'd known C. for a couple of years by this point and although she tells me that she'd had her eyes on me from the start, I remained utterly oblivious... until we went on this course, and it became apparent even to me that we had a connection. Nothing much happened, but as I drove back up to Nottingham and to my girlfriend, I knew I had to end it, and the sooner the better. I walked back into our little house in this grimy little town on the edge of the city and I was greeted by my loving girlfriend who was delighted to see me after a week away. For a couple of hours I kept my thoughts to myself and was clearly a bit withdrawn, but eventually I just came out with it: I wanted to break up. I'd been thinking about this for a year, but the poor girl never saw it coming. At first she didn't believe what I was saying, then she tried to suggest that we live apart for a little while, but finally it sank in and she was absolutely crushed. For the first time in my life, I felt as though I had done something genuinely bad to someone else. It probably sounds arrogant of me, but I was everything to her. She had moved her life to be with me and now I was bringing the whole thing crashing down around her feet. There was nothing I could say or do that would make her feel any better.

Throughout the whole, awful conversation I felt dreadful, of course, but I was also absolutely certain that I was doing the right thing for both of us. It was difficult and it was painful, but once it was done we would both be able to move our lives forwards.

Today, on the way back from the dentists, instead of heading back up towards the motorway junction and heading back into work as normal, I drove through the town to try and avoid the traffic I had seen coming the other way. Along the way, I was unable to resist taking the turn that would take me past our little house to have a little look. It's not really changed much over the years. The gates have been replaced with a wooden fence and the windows are now double-glazed, but otherwise it's much the same as it was when we lived there. I looked at it for a minute or two before getting back onto the road and heading into the office.

I saw her once or twice after the breakup, but I haven't seen her now in eight years or so. I think she still lives in the area (she's still in touch with my parents), so I sometimes wonder if I might bump into her one day. Perhaps I will, but I imagine that if she saw me first she would walk quickly in the other direction. Frankly, I wouldn't blame her.

On reflection, I'm sure that it was the right thing to do, but I delivered the killing blow to a relationship of some three-odd years with brutal abruptness. I felt awful enough about it at the time, and 9 years later I still feel awful about it. God knows how she felt about it or how she feels about me now. I hope she never gives me a second thought. The memory of it still pricks my conscience.

before I knew how much it cost to play it safe....

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

It was on Bonfire Night, exactly seventeen years ago today, that a good friend of mine asked me if I would look after her stash of vodka and some other assorted spirits. We were both not quite yet seventeen years old and such things were not only illegal in the eyes of the law of the land, but, of far more immediate concern to us both, it was also strictly forbidden in the school rules. As I stowed it away in my study, I knew that the consequences of being found with this contraband would be severe - most likely involving a letter to my parents and if not suspension, then certainly a period of confinement to the House (for obscure reasons, this was known as 'gating').

So why did I do it? I'd only actually known Catherine since the start of that term in September, so why risk punishment on her behalf? Those of you who did not attend a largely single-sex school will probably laugh at this, but this was a period of significant change in my life. Up until that point, I had gone through all of my schooling since the age of seven with classes made up almost entirely of boys. As I entered the sixth form, however, our routines and friendships were disrupted by the arrival of girls. The girls stayed in their own houses, of course, but they joined us for classes and were assigned to a boy's boarding house for their meals. This meant that when I arrived for the first lunch of the academic year, the fourteen boys in my year in my house were joined by four girls. Of course, as you might expect of some extremely emotionally retarded sixteen year old public schoolboys, the arrival of these interlopers immediately divided us into three main camps. In the first group there were those of us who treated these girls with disdain; as somehow lesser people who were only worthy of any attention if they were deemed to be attractive, otherwise they were to be at best ignored and at worst actively abused. A second group panicked completely and were like rabbits caught in the headlights; unwilling to accept that something had changed, but unable to stop looking and equally unable to open their mouths in the presence of such a thing as a girl. The third group probably liked to think that they were sensitive souls and actively repudiated the loathsome behaviour of the first group and the desperately pathetic reaction of the second group. These wiser boys would attempt to engage these girls in polite conversation and to otherwise acknowledge their existence, never letting a complete lack of any conversational experience with women get in their way. All three groups were divided in their reaction to the arrival of the girls, but all were united in the immaturity of their reactions. I was in the latter camp, incidentally, as if you wouldn't have guessed.

God knows what the girls made of all of this. Although they would only have arrived at the school a day or so before, they would probably have had ample time to experience the wonders of walking just in front of a group of thirteen year old boys who would loudly pass judgement upon you, making kissing noises if they liked you, and coughing or retching noises if they did not. Over time, they would develop survival strategies. A few lucky girls would find universal acclaim as being 'fit' and would be placed upon pedestals so high that they could only ever hope to be reached by members of the first XV rugby team - their survival would depend upon having a boyfriend who commanded respect. Others would be deemed 'alright' and generally left alone as long as they kept their heads down. The unfortunate majority would be openly and unsubtly abused for their perceived failings - their survival strategy would be to develop a thick skin. All would be judged on a daily basis by boys who outnumbered them ten to one. It was horrible.

I'd got on well with Catherine pretty much immediately. At that awful, stilted first meal, we had discovered that our parents lived about four miles apart and that we had bus routes into town in common. That had been enough to get us talking, which had been a great relief to me as my conversational gambits with girls were (and probably still are) somewhat limited. Over the course of the next few weeks, we became friends. Catherine proved to be intelligent, dignified and fiercely independent. There was no way that she was going to conform with anyone's expectations of how she should and should not behave, and she had the courage - at some cost - to try to retain her individuality in the face of a smotheringly chauvinist environment and some oppressive rules. She kept this up for the best part of two years as we studied for our A-Levels, and however vulnerable and insecure she must have been feeling, she managed to convey at all times an air of icy calm and disdain. I thought she was great and used to love meeting up with her during the school holidays, when I discovered that she had the same awkward air of non-conformism with her parents.

I think Catherine asked me to stash her booze that day because she had been seen smoking or out of bounds or something like that. Instead of taking part in sport or any of the other activities that Thomas Arnold deemed improving for the young men at his school, she would often go wandering around town with a couple of her friends, sitting in coffee shops and smoking. On this particular occasion, she had been out buying booze to drink that Saturday evening and was worried that she was going to have her room searched and be caught red-handed. Even then I was something of a loudmouth, but I had the happy talent of keeping my head below the parapet and generally avoiding trouble. I'd like to say that this was because of a brilliantly cunning survival strategy, but really it was because I was pretty square and didn't really do anything much that might land me in serious trouble... the odd drink, the odd cigarette... but nothing particularly out of line. When Catherine asked me to look after her booze, I didn't hesitate and tucked it away without a second thought. She kindly said that I could help myself to as much as I fancied, but needless to say I didn't touch it.

The town's firework display and bonfire was taking place that evening in the park quite near to our House, and for some reason we were given permission to attend. I can remember walking over and standing around in the dark watching a half-decent display of fireworks and wondering if Catherine had got into any serious trouble or if I would bump into her. At the time, it seemed to me that she was reckless and hellbent upon self-destruction, and perhaps she was. She defied the the rules so blatantly that it seemed impossible that she would be with us for long. I remember realising, perhaps for the first time, that perhaps it was cruel to put a person like Catherine into an environment like that school where she would be crushed (the school would probably prefer the term 'moulded', but crushing is what it was). Perhaps it's cruel and damaging for anybody to be into that kind of an environment, but where I had the ability to conform and to survive, I don't think that Catherine had the ability to conform or the will to survive.

She did survive though, and went on to Cambridge university and a career in publishing. The last time I saw her was six or seven years ago at a coffee shop outside Baker Street tube station. She seemed content (she was about to get married) but still happily carrying that fierce intelligence and slightly prickly air of non-conformism. We've lost touch since, but all the fireworks over the weekend have reminded me of her and that weekend half a lifetime ago, as they usually do.

Never mind Guy Fawkes: it's my friend Catherine that I choose to remember at this time of the year.

william, it was really nothing....

After purchasing tickets to various forthcoming shows*, but before heading into the auditorium on Friday evening, Sarah and I had a quick glass of wine in the bar connected to the Playhouse. It was whilst we were sat there, totting up who owed what to who and who needed what ticket for when, that I saw him. He hadn't really changed all that much since I last saw him some twelve years ago and I recognised him almost immediately. His hair was shorter now, but it still had that distinctive dusty orange colour and he was still whippet thin and slightly gangly. He breezed past where we were sitting, looking around him as though for someone he was supposed to me meeting. I hadn't seen him in more than a decade, but there was absolutely no mistaking William.

I was at University with William and I suppose you could probably call us friends, although we were never really terribly close and had been somewhat thrown together by mutual friends. In our third year we actually shared a flat together in Venice for a few months and again when we came back to campus, although on each occasion we shared these flats with our friends. He was a funny fish really. He was awkward and spiky at the best of times, and he was a loner who liked company but seemed to rather resent it. He was seriously into his music too; one of those kids who absolutely threw himself into the loudest and most angular corners of American hardcore and made a point of knowing the minutiae of every single band he loved. He scorned the mainstream, of course, but reserved most of his vitriol for someone like me who wasn't exactly mainstream, but certainly wasn't as bleeding edge in my musical tastes as him. He rather fancied himself as straight edge too, or at least rather liked the idea of it, if not the actual practice of it. Like a lot of introverts he was also prone to sudden furious outbursts in company that seemed woefully out of place, as though he had felt the need to contribute to conversation but was incapable of judging the correct tone.

Like I say, he was a funny fish... and after we graduated, I don't think we even pretended that we were going to be keeping in touch and we didn't exchange emails, addresses, phone numbers or anything.

And then I saw him in Nottingham on Friday night.

I've lived here now for ten years. In all that time, I've been to quite a lot of gigs. I'm pretty sure that if he had been living around here during that time then he would be certain to go to a lot of gigs, and I'm pretty sure that I would have seen him at a concert in the Rescue Rooms or somewhere. Unless perhaps he saw me first.

I'm fairly sure he recognised me on Friday, anyway. After walking past us looking for his friends, I saw him walk a little more slowly past the outside of the window where we were sitting and caught him having a second look at me when he thought I wasn't watching.

So did he come and say hello? Did I chase after him and greet him like an old friend?

No, of course not. Two introverts don't equal an extrovert.

* The tickets were for Sean Lock, Mark Steel, Lee Mack, Punt & Dennis & Tim Minchin... although I'm only going to the first three of those. I think I'd better add them to the gig list before I forget.

and I remember how we'd play, simply waste the day away....

After more than thirty years in the same house, my parents have finally upped sticks and moved. They've only moved a mile or so down the road and into the village proper, but when I drove down there for the first time today, it still felt very strange. My parents moved to the old house in 1977 when I was barely three years old and I can't really remember any other home. Of course, I hadn't lived there properly since I finally moved out more than ten years ago after University. I was sort of expecting "moving out" to be a big thing, but in the end it was really a case of not moving back at the end of the academic year when I had finished my Masters. My room stayed pretty much just as I had left it, only I was now officially living at a different address.

Given that I started attending a boarding school in 1981 when I was seven years old, and boarded until the age of 18, at which point I left for University... I suppose you could say that I hardly spent any time there at all. You could say that, but of course it was here that I came back to when school broke up; it was here where over the course of several years I flattened a piece of ground until it became serviceable as a cricket pitch; it was here that I used to sneak out into the field for a crafty smoke when I thought no one was looking.

That house holds a lot of memories for me. Long after I moved out, this was the place that I still called "home".

So I suppose I surprised myself slightly when we drove past the old house on the way down to visit my mum and dad at their new address. The shell of the building was intact, but as I slowed down to have a good look, I could see that the entire garden, the garden that my parents must have spent thousands of hours trying to tame, had been decimated. The new owners appear to have gutted the house itself and are busy building two enormous extensions at either end of the building. I surprised myself because I felt almost completely detached from the whole thing. My parents used to live there; I grew up there. But my parents don't live there anymore. The house is changing, but the memories remain and the memories revolve around the people, not the place itself. It's only bricks and mortar. Only bricks and mortar.

I turned my head back to the road and drove on down into the village to see the new house, which, although it's very nice, I will never call home.

I was just guessing at numbers and figures...

I reckon that most people have an instinctive feel for numbers or an instinctive feel for words; that you either see the world in terms of 1s and 0s or in terms of a-e-i-o-u. That's not to say that the one view excludes the other, just that I reckon that most people have a preference.

I'm a words man.

Always have been.

As long as I can remember, I've had a facility for and an enjoyment of words, and it's a standing joke in our family that I never travel anywhere without a book. It's also something of a running joke in my family that I'm hopeless at maths.

To be fair, this jibe has some foundation in the fact that for many years I really, really struggled with mathematics at school. As is the tradition for the brighter students at an English Prep School, at the age of thirteen, I was sent off to sit a number of exams to see if I would be considered for a scholarship to attend Public School. I was duly awarded a scholarship, and proudly took my place the next term with my fellow high achievers in the tops sets of almost every subject...... every subject except maths, that was. In maths, I was put into set five. Out of six. All of my colleagues from the top form were in the top set. On the plus side, this meant that to have been awarded a scholarship at all, I must had done extraordinarily well in my stronger subjects, but it was a bit unusual. I was never exactly embarrassed by this, as I was also convinced that I was a no-hoper in the subject, but it wasn't really very much fun.

As it happened, I came top of the set by absolutely miles. As maths became less sums and became more about simultaneous equations, trigonometry, matrices and the like, I found it got easier. I didn't work well with numbers, but now I had a calculator to deal with that and could focus on things that now required the manipulation of formulae and not simply the ability to work with numbers. I found it much, much easier, as if it now used a different part of the brain. In the summer exams that year, I finished the exam with more than half of the allotted time still to go. As he had nothing better to do, my teacher started marking the papers of those who had finished in the hour or so still to go. After a while, he turned round to the blackboard and started putting up the scores so far:

Thompson: 46%
SwissToni: 98%

I got one question wrong. I think the score rather demoralised those yet to finish.

I was duly moved up to set three, and finished top of that set too... eventually getting an "A" at GCSE and idly contemplating doing the A-Level (until I came to my senses).

I'm still a lot more comfortable with words though, and I love the sound of the English language (sadly only English... I'm not very good at other languages).

So I find it incredibly frustrating that I'm not very good at Scrabble. Or cryptic crosswords. Or the Countdown Conundrum. They're about words, aren't they? I should find these a breeze, shouldn't I? Other people expect me to be good at them too. So why can't I do them?

I reckon it's because anagrams and crosswords and scrabble are all tied up with numbers. I think there is something very numerical about looking at a mix of letters and calculating the words that you can create from them. Hell, Scrabble even assigns every letter a number....

I do have tremendous admiration for people who are good at these things, but the plain fact is that I would like to be good at these things and I'm not.

I'm such an egotist.

And for the record... that's not the reason I have no intention of ever joining Facebook.

don't know much about a science book...

I was a bit of a geek at school.

Actually, I think my over-developed sense of responsibility probably peaked when I was twelve years old and Head of School. I was a shockingly upright citizen, and thankfully it's all been downhill from there.

When I was clearing out the stuff my mum and dad have been storing for me, I came across a stack of my old school reports. The earliest dates from Christmas 1985. I was 11 years old and had just completed my first term in the sixth form. I was considered a good candidate to sit a scholarship exam in the summer of 1987 and so had been pushed up through the years and was now effectively a year ahead of myself - I was now studying with people who were almost a year older than me and would be leaving that summer, whereas I would be staying on another year.

Not that I'm intellectually vain or anything...

Anyway. Here it is:

---

Name: SwissToni
Age at beginning of term: 11.6
Average age of form: 12.3

Mathematics Set B
Term's Work Position: 3rd/3
Exam Position: 3rd/3 (paper 1 - 42%, paper 2 - 34%)

I have been delighted with ST's progress this term - not only in terms of improved examination scores but also in terms of his self-confidence. Although many gaps still remain to be filled, there is definite light at the end of the tunnel.

[ST's note: God, but I was shit at Maths]

English
Term's Work Position: 7=
Exam Position: paper I - 1st/5 (71%), paper II 5/5 (30/50)

ST has not found sixth form work particularly easy and is still finding his feet but he's a naturally hard worker and I feel sure he will come through strongly next term. He wrote an excellent paper I in the examination.

French (Set B)
Term's Work Position: 5/5
Exam Position: 5th/5 (27/50), 5th/5 (51%)

After a somewhat unhurried start to the term, ST began to pick up speed and eventually rounded off his performance in top gear. Now, he is beginning to master his weakness in the subject and he has become more confident in his own abilities to succeed. Let this continue please!

[ST's note - how did I get a French girlfriend again?]

History
Term's Work Position: 5=
Exam Position: 2/5 (56%)

ST has taken trouble and worked hard for much of the term. He wrote a good essay in the exam.

Geography
Term's Work Position: 5=/9
Exam Position: 2/5 (66%)

ST still lacks confidence in himself but he is improving all the time and his exam result shows that he is well on course for next year.

Science
Term's Work Position: 4th/9
Exam Position: 4th=/5 (53%)

ST has made a good effort in the subject this term, doing well to end high up in the form. His slightly disappointing exam performance revealed several areas in which he remains weak.

Divinity
Term's Work Position: n/a
Exam Position: 1=/5 (80% - What can I say? me and God, we're close)

ST has worked thoughtfully and effectively. He wrote a very good exam.

Latin
Term's Work Position: 5/5
Exam Position: 2=/4 (57%)

Although he still thinks that Latin is too difficult, ST has made great advances and has time for even further progress.

Greek
Term's Work Position: Set B 5/5
Exam Position: Set B 4/4

Although at the bottom of the sixth form Greek sets, ST has had a much better term and he has produced some good pieces of work. He must not be deterred by his undistinguished exam performance!

Art

ST has found the exhibition projects hard work this term but has successfully completed the course. Art is a subject ST finds rather difficult due primarily to a lack of confidence. However, he should be proud of the work he has completed this term and the new techniques he has mastered. Very well done.

Trumpet
Grade achieved: approaching grade III

ST is a keen student. He has a good ear and his tone is round and firm. He needs to pay some attention to phrasing. He should be ready for Grade III early next year if he sustains his efforts.

Formteacher's Report

ST has worked steadily and conscientiously and is an asset to the form. As he matures he should find himself capable of achieving his ambition.

Housemaster's Report

Behaviour: C
Humour: C
Personal Hygiene: C
Self-Organisation: D

(A=excellent, B=good, C=satisfactory, D=Poor, E=very poor)

Overall contribution to community life: ST has had a happy term
Health report: There have been less complaints than usual from ST this term!
General Comments: ST has had a good term on the whole. He is however somewhat disorganised.

Headmaster's Report

A very encouraging set of reports. ST has come on well and has shown much promise for the future. He has been a member of the school's general knowledge team and has been helpful as a librarian, chorister and lesson reader. He is a keen scout and enjoys judo and table-tennis. A good start to his VI form career.

---

I suppose this provides an interesting window onto the life of an 11 year old boarding school pupil, but I find reading it a somewhat chastening experience. In my head, I was always a brilliant student. I got that scholarship. I did well in all my public exams. I got a decent degree. I did a masters degree. I'm bloody good at pub quizzes. My intellectual arrogance has clearly swollen in the last 20 years. I know I wasn't very good at subjects like Maths and French and I know I was competing here against people who were older than me.... but it's still quite humbling to read all these people saying that I was doing okay but had a long way to go.

Perhaps I should read them more often.

(It got worse before it got better - by Easter 1986, my Greek teacher was reporting that "ST has made little progress this term and his exam performance was again very poor. I fear that we have reached a psychological stalemate which I can only resolve by taking him off Greek next term. I do so reluctantly!" I remember it and it was a mercy killing. I just couldn't get the hang of a language that had a different alphabet.)

spineless swines, cemented minds...

Whilst I was cleaning out those boxes at my mum and dad's house, I came across a pile of old photographs from my school days. Every term we had a photographer come round to the House to take pictures of the various sporting teams and so on, and every summer he took a picture of the whole House. From time to time, and in spite of the fact that I wasn't especially sporty, some of those pictures would feature me. Sadly it looks like some of them have survived. None of these are in the least bit flattering, and so obviously I'm going to post them up here for public consumption.....

A word about my school: in case you hadn't spotted already, I attended one of the more famous Public Schools in England. I'm not in the least bit proud of this and I don't really like telling people. Why? Because people have the most terrible preconceptions about Public Schools and about Public Schoolboys. Like many preconception, some of these have absolutely no foundation. I had some great times at school, and most of my best friends today are people that I met at that school - some of them are almost normal. Having said that, there were many other people at that school who I would be delighted never to see again. Their tragedy is not so much that they were horrible, stereotypical English Public Schoolboys then, but that twenty years later, many of them have hardly changed at all.

Anyway. Here are the photos - the quality's a bit poor, especially when you blow them up, but they're good enough to get the general idea and I'm guessing no one wants to make any posters out of them....



The 1991 "First House" Rugby Team. This was the senior side picked to represent the House in the inter-House rugby tournament (the school was divided into something like 14 boys houses, each containing something like 50 or 60 kids from 13 to 18). What with the game having been invented at the school, rugby union was the signature sport. The captain of the school First XV was almost always the Head of School, and the other players in the team always seemed to end up being the Heads of Houses. Ability at rugby was always deemed more important than academic excellence. My House was always dreadful at rugby and we never won this tournament. 1991 was no different.

The silly hat on the guy in the middle means that he had been "capped" (i.e. awarded his colours) by the School first XV. Players in the full national side have very similar caps. Actually, the England rugby team have to ask the headmaster every year for permission to borrow the school colours -- black socks, white shorts and white shirts. If you look really closely you'll see that some of the other players - including me - are wearing black socks and not grey socks. Thats means that the players had been "awarded their socks" (colours) by the School 2nd, 3rd or 4th XVs.

I played for the Thirds that year.



This is the House photo from 1991, taken in the back garden after lunch one day. Statue John is standing far left in the first standing row. I was 17 years old at this point and in the "Lower Twenty" and was already a "sixth" (prefect). Girls only joined the the school in the sixth form, and although there were 4 girls houses at the school, they were all assigned to a boys house for their meals. Here they were outnumbered something like 10 to 1 by boys who had spent their whole lives in single sex schools and had no idea what a girl was, nevermind how you were supposed to talk to them or relate to them. They really were like another species to us, and they had to put up with all kinds of childish abuse, ranging from marks out of ten from the table of thirteen year olds all the way through to bullying from the 'more mature' sixth formers. I'm amazed that any of them survived it, frankly. Some girls thrived.

No daughter of mine will ever attend a school like this. No child of mine will ever attend a single-sex school.



This is the winning team from the 1988 House Under-14 8-a-side hockey tournament. I was the goalie and we won the final on a penalty shoot-out. As I recall, it was the first time that I had ever played in goal. At the risk of this becoming like a game of "Where's Wally", Statue John is in this one too.



Summer 1992. This is a picture of our two "Levée" (heads of House - here in their blazers and stripey ties) and the "Sixth" (prefects). I think this is probably taken either during or just after our A-Levels. We were the people who were supposed to help the headmaster to run the house and carried out the tasks like supervising prep, making sure that everyone went to bed on time and got up on time. In return, we got some privileges and pretty much boundless authority over everyone else in the house. I seem to recall that we spent most of the time either smoking out our study windows or trying to nip off to the pub.

Don't we look like wankers? (at least the others weren't wearing their boaters in this picture..... I refused to have one, but many others liked to swan around town in them).

Here's a game for you: tell me who you think looks the most loathsome and I'll tell you if you're right. Pick me if you want, but do try not to pick Statue John....



I have very mixed feelings about the other photos here, but this one is from a bit earlier and from a different school --- this is the first XV at my prep school and the photo was taken in 1986.

A more innocent time.

scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind...

My mum and dad are moving house in a couple of months.... nothing drastic, they're just shifting a mile or so down the road into the middle of the village.... but they have been getting ready for the big day by slowly clearing out the clutter that they have accumulated over the course of the last 29 years or so of living in the same place. Needless to say, quite a bit of that clutter actually belongs to their three sons, and the last few times I have been down here, I have had the pleasure of sorting through boxes of stuff that they have brought down from the attic.

Last time I was here, I had the distinct pleasure of reading through some of my old school reports (watch this space - I'll probably post some of the highlights up here at some point, although suffice it to say that one of the highlights is when I score a "C" for personal hygiene). This time around though I seemed to be trawling though old books and piles and piles of old letters.

Amongst the old birthday cards and things (would you believe that I stumbled across some cards from my first birthday?) I discovered a cache of letters dating from when I was around about 17 or 18 and a number from when I was a student. Judging by the volume of them, it looks like I was quite the correspondent in the pre-email era.

Funnily enough, it was one of the first ones that I read that had the biggest emotional impact on me. It was a letter enclosed in a hand made envelope constructed from the page of a local newspaper, and it dated back to the summer of 1991. It was the first letter sent to me by my friend Sarah after she had suddenly left school in the middle of term and with no explanations. I'm not sure how best to describe my relationship with Sarah. I was a 17 year old emotional cripple who had absolutely no idea how to relate to girls. Sarah was a 17 year old girl who had been thrown into the hostile environment of an (almost) all male English public school and who had struggled to cope. By chance we were in the same history class and we ate our meals together in the same boarding house. I think we got on reasonably well. I liked her, and in spite of the fact that I was unable to find a way of talking to her normally, I think she liked me too. We were friends - or at least we were becoming friends. We only really knew each other for a little less than a year and I wish we had had longer.

I distinctly remember earlier that summer when we were both on a school trip to Stratford to watch some Shakespeare. We had a really good chat in spite of the fact that I became some sort of bumbling Hugh Grant-like figure when my arm accidentally brushed against her side. I think it was a week or two before she left, and I think she tried to tell me... but she never quite did.

Shortly afterwards she was gone, and I don't think I ever saw her again (although I see that we corresponded for a few months afterwards). At the time there was quite a buzz of speculation around the school about why she left. Of course I was curious too, but it seemed largely irrelevant. I was just sad that she was gone. A few weeks later, I received that first letter and although it told me very little really, it was nice just to hear from her and know that she was okay. I treasured that letter, and although I had forgotten all about it, it was no surprise to me that it was the first thing that I saw when I opened that shoebox full old postcards, birthday cards and letters.

I read that letter again this morning and although it was written something like 16 years ago, it hit me quite hard. I found myself wondering all over again how she was and hoping that everything had worked out okay for her.

Amongst the many books I found in those boxes, I stumbled across a thin hardback called "Petra - a dog for everyone". This tells this story of the long and eventful life of the first Blue Peter dog. That bloody dog died in 1977 when I was three years old, and even though I can barely remember watching her on TV, this book has made me cry for as long as I can remember.

So what did I do? I read the book and it made me cry all over again.

I'm rather afraid that underneath this bluff exterior, I am really something of a sentimental old sod.

I've kept the book, obviously. And that letter.