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I spent two long years as a fag had repton
Which went i was the servant of the study holder in whose study
I had my little desk yet a study holder
I happened to be a house bosa so much the worst for me
Because bosers were have danger as breed during my second term
I was unfortunately enough to be put into the study of the head of the house
A supersilious on a noxious seventeen year old goled cotton cartl always looat at you right down the link of his nose
And even if you were as tall as him
Which i happened to be he would tells his head back and still manage to look at you down the link of his nose
Colton had three facts in his study
And all of us were terified on him
Especially on sunday mornings
Because sunday was study cleaning time
All the fans in all the studies had to take up their jackets
Rolled up their sleeves fetch buckets and floor clocks
And get done to ananout their study holders
Study and when i say cleaning out
I mean practically sterilizing the place
We scrubed the floor and washed the windows
And polished the great and dusted the ledges and white
The picture frames and carefully tidy the way all the hockey sticks and cricket bats and umbrellas
All that sunday morning we have been sloggging away
Cleaning carlton
Study and then just before lunch carlton himself ves roed into the room
And said you've had long enough
Yes
Carlton
The three of us murmored trembling we stood back brealist from our exercions compelled as always to wait and watch the dreadfoculton
While he performed the ritual of inspection
First of all he'd go to the draw of his desk and take out a pure white cotton glove
Which he slayred with much ceremony onto his right hand
Then taking as much care and time as a surgeon and an operating theare he would move slowly around the study running his white gloved fingers along all the ledges
Along the tops of the picture frames over the surfaces of the desks and even over the bars of the firegrade
Every few seconds he would hold those white fingers up close to his face
Searching for traces of dust and these three facts would stand there watching him hardly darning to breathe
Waiting for the dremmoment
When the great man would stop and shout ah what's this i see a look of triumph would light up his face
As he held up a white finger
Which had on it the tinest mudge of gradust
And he would stare at us with his slightly popping pale blue eyes
And say you haven't cleaned it
Have you
You haven't bothered to clean my study properly to the three of us facgs
You have been slalaing away for the whole of the morning
These words were simply not true
We've cleaned every bit it cotton
We'd answer every little bit in that case
Why has my finger got dust on it
Culmty tilting his headback and gazing at us ston the link to his nose
This is dust is new
We would step forward and peer at the white gloved fourfinger and that the tiny megium of dust that they on it
And we would remain scient ii longed to point that in that it was an actual impossibility to clean a much use room to the point where no spectadus remained
But that would have been suicide do any of you dispute the fact
That this is dust
Caltton would say still holding up his finger
If i am wrong do tell me
It isn't much dust caltton
I didn't ask you
Whether it was much dust or not much dust
Culton would say i simply ask you
Whether you're not it was dust
Might it for example be iron filings or face powder instead no cotton or crushhed diamonds may be no cotton
Then what is it
It's
It's just cotton
Thank you called tumzsay at last
You have admitted that you failed to clean my study
Properly
I shall there for see all three of you in the changing room tonight after the prayers
The rules and ricuwas of fagging at retm was so complicated that i could feel a whole book with them a house bosa for example could make any fan in the house
Do his bidding
He could stand anyway
Wanted to in the building
In the colleitor
In the changing room
In the young and yell fag at the top of his boys and every fag in the place
Would have to drop what he was doing and run flat out to the source of the noise
There was always a mand stampede
When the call of fag leg echo through the house
Because the last boy to arrive
Would invariably be chosen for whatever menal or unpleasant task the boats
I had in mind
During my first term i was in the changing me one day just before lunch scraating the mumufrom from the souls of my study holders football boots
When i heard the famous shout of fag far away at the other end of the house
I dropped everything and ran
But i got their last and the bozo were done
The outing a massive ve athlecalled led will fforce said
Though from here the other facts melted away with a speed of light
And i crert forward to receive my orders go and hit my seat in the bogs will forbefore said i wanted warm
I hadn't the faintest idea with any of this meant that i already knew better than to asked questions about bosa
I hurry it way
And found a fellow fag could tell me the meaning of this curious order
It meant that the bows are wish to use the labouatory
But
But he wanted the seat warmed for him before he sat them
But six house laboratriies none with doors was situated in an unheated outhouse
And on a cold in winter
You could get fruspite out there
If you stay too long
This particularly there was icy cold
And i went out through the snow into the ouhouse
And entered number one laborory
Which i knew was reserved for boas
As only i wiked the frost of the seat with my handkerchief
Then i loit my trousers isn't set down
I was there of four fifteen minutes in the freezing cold before will the force arrived on scene ever ver got the eyes off it
He asked yes we'll force is he warm
He says warm as i can get it will the force
I said we just soon fine out
He said you can get off
Now i got off the leverage seeat and pulled out my trousers will be force ce love with his own trouwisn't set down
Very good
He said very good indeed
He was like a wine taste something an old clanot
I should put you on my list
He added i stood there doing out my fly buttons and not knowing what on earth
He meant some facts have cold bottons
He said
And some my hot ones
I reuse hot bottm m gs s hat my bobog seat
I won't forget you
He didn't prevent on all through that winter
I became wheel the orce's favorite boxseat wara
And i used always to keep a paper backbook in the pocket of my tail count to wile away the long bulg warming sessions
I must have been the entire works of dickings sitting on that boz's dog
During my first winter
I wpped ed
It was always a surprised to me
That i was good at games
It was even greater surprise that i was exceptionally good at two of them
One of these was called fed
The other was squash rackets fies which many of you will know nothing about wewas taken seriously afpect on
And we had a dozen massive gasroof fids courts keatt always in perfect condition
We played the game of eaten fibwhich which always always played by four people two on each side basbasically consists sts of hitting a small hard white let ther covered ball with your gloved hands
The americans have something like it
Which they call humble
But he confids is far more complicated
Because the cou**
All manual of ledges and butresses build into it
Which hope to make it a subttle and craft
The game five is possibly the fastest test ball game on earth
Far faster the squash and the little ball rickh shaes around the court
It's such a speed
That sometimes you can hardly see it
You need a swift eye
Strong wists and a very quick bad of hands to play fires
Well
And it was a game
I took to right from the beginning
You may find it hard to believe
But i became so good at it
That i won both the junior amthe senior school fives in the same year
When i was fifteen
Soon i bought the spended title kepin of fives
And i would travel with my team to other schools
Like shoo's bring and upping them to play matches
I loved it
It was a game without physical contact and a quickness of the eye and the dancing of the feet
Were all that matted a captain of any game
That rapton was an important person
He was the one who selected the members of the team for matches
He and only he could award colors to others
He would awards school colors by walking up to the chosen boy art toa match and shaking in by their hand and saying greg us on your teamer
These were magic words
They entitled the new teama to all manner of privileges including a different coloured heck band on his strw hand and fancy braed around the edges of his blazer and different color gaames
Clothes and all sorts of other advertisements that made the teama gloriously conspicuous among his fellows
A captain of any game
Whether it was football
Cricket
Fibes or squash had many other duties
It was he who pint the notice on the school notice board on matchdays announcing the team
It was he who arranged fixtures by letter with other schools
It was he and only he who had ded in his power to invite this master or that to play against him and his team on certain afternoon on all these responsiilities
Responsibilities were given to me
When i became captain of fives
Then came the snack g
It was more a sake of a granted
That a captain will be made of bosa in recognition of his talents in not a school boser than certainly a house bosa
But the authorities did not like me
I was not to be trusted
I did not like rules
I was unpredictable
I was therefore not booze a material
There was no way they would agree to make me a housebows a little in the schoolbower
Some people are born wheelld power into exercise authority
I was not one of them
I was in full agreement with my housemaster
When he explained this to me
I would have made a rock ten boser
I would have let down the whole principle of bozard
And but refusing to beat the fags
I was probably the only captain of any me me who never became a boser that repphim i was seventy the only unbozzred double captain
Because i was also caping up squash rackets and to pile glory upon glory
I was in the school football team
As well a boy who is good games is usually treaated with great stability by the masters at in english public 's who mmust ks the same way
The ancient greeks rebear their athletes
And made statues of them in marble athletes with the demagonds
The jose en few
They could perform glamaous feebebeond the reegiof ordinary mortals
Even today fying footballers and baseball players and runners ers all other other great sportsmman
I'm much of mind by the general public and advertisers use them to sell breakfast serials
This never happened to me
And if you really want to know i'm awlly glad
It didn't
But because i loved playing games life for me at weptom was not totally without pleasure games playing at school is always fun
If you happen to be good at it
And it is hell
If you are not
I was one of the lucky ones and all those afternoons on the playing fields
And in the fids courts
And in the squash courts
Made otherwise se gry and milelonguly days pass a lot more quickly
There was one other thing that gave me great pleasure at the school
And that was photography
I was the only boy who practiced it seriously
And it was not quite so simple of business
Fifty years ago
As it is today i made myself a little dark room in a corner of the music building
And in there
I loaded my glass plates
And developed my negatives
And enlarge them
Our arts master was a shy retirting man good often notice who kept himself well apart from the rest of the staff pathnorris
And i became close friends and during my last year
He organized an exhibition of my photographh
He gave a hole of the art school over to this project
And helped me to get my enlargements
Framed the exhibition was rather a success and masters who would hardly either spoken to me over the past four years would come up and say things like
Oh
It's quite extraordinary
We didn't know we had an artist in our midst m are they for sae arthernouriis would give me t and cakes in his flat
And wewould talk to me about painters like sazan and money and mamatise
And i have a feeling that it was are there having tea with the general sofsspoken mister norriis in his flat on sunday afternoons that my great love of painters and their work began after leaving school
I continued for a long time with photography
And i became quite good at it today given a thirty five millimeter camera and a building exposure metre anyone can be an expert photographer
But it was not so easy
Fifty years ago
I used glass pltes
Instead of film and each of these had to be loaded into its separate container in the dark room
Before i set out to take pictures
I usually carried with me six loaded plates
Which allowed me only six exposures
So that clicking the shutter
Even once was a serious business
That had to be carefully sought time beforehand you may not believe it
But when i was eighteen
I used to in priices and medals from the royal photographtic society in london
And to other places like the photographic society of holland
I even got a lovely big bronze medal from the egyptian photographtic society in cairo
And i still have the photograph that one it
It is a picture of one of the so called seven one ners of the world
The arch of teasophon in iraq
This is the largest unsupported arch on earth
And i took the photograph
While i was training out there for the rf in nineteen
In nineteen forty
I was flying over the desert solo in an old hawker heart by plane
And i had my camera around my neck
When i spotted the huge arch standing alone in a sea of sand
I dropped one wing and hangg my ststraps
And the'd go over the stick
When i took him and creick the shutter
The game out fine
During my last year i wped and my mother said to me
Would you like to go to ox with your cambridge
When you leave school in those days
It was not didifficult to get into away ther of these great universities
So long as you could pay no
Thank you
I said i want to go straight from school to work
But a company that was sent me to wonderful faraway places like africa around china
You must remember that there was virtually no air travel in the early one thousand hundred and thirties
Africa was two weeks away from england by boat
And it took you about five weeks to get to china
These were distant and magic lands and nobody went to them just for a holiday
You went there to work
Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours
And nothing is fabulous anymore
But it was a very different matter in nineteen
Thirty
Thirty four
So during my last turm and i applied for a job only to those companies that would be sure to send me abroad
They were the shell company eastern staff
Imperial chemicals eastern staff and a finishlumbmber company
Who se name i forgotten
I was accepted by imperial chemicals and by the finish lunumber company
But for some reason
I wanted most wwalk to get into the shell company
When the day came for me to go up to london
For this interview
My house master told me
It was ridiculous for me even to try the eastern souoff of shell are the crime and our crim
He said there will be at least one hundred applicants about five vacancies
Nobody has a hope
And this he's 's hehead the school or head of the house
And you aren't even a house perfect
My house master was right about the applicants
There were one hundred and seven boys waiting to be interviewed
When i arrived at the head office of the jail company in london
And there were seven places to be filled
If please asked me
How i got one of these places
I don't know myself
But get it i did
And when i told my house master
The good news on my return to school
He didn't congratulate me or shake me
Warmly by the hand
He turned the way muttering
Oh
I consai
I glad
I don't know any shares in show
I didn't care any longer
What my house master thought
I was all said i had a career
Because lovely
I was to leave forever in july nineteen
Nineteen thirty four and join the shell company two months later in september
When i would be exactly eighteen
I was to be an eastern staff training at a salary of five pounds a week that summer
But the first time in my life
I did not accompany the family to norway
I someone help open the need for a special kind of last film before i became a business man
So while elwas did at school
During my last term
I signed up to spend august with something called the public schools exploring society the leader at this outfit was a man
Who had gone with captain sscott on his expepedition to the south pole
And he was taking a party of senior school boys to explore the interior newffdland
During the summer holidays
It sounded like fun without the slightly strerereret
I said goodbye to repton for eper and roroled back to cantl my motorbike
This splendid machine was a five hundred cc area
Which i had bought the year before the eighteen pounds and during my last term at ptm
I kicked it secretly in a garage
Along the willington road about two miles away on sundays
I used to walk to the garage and disguise myself in helmmet goggles
Old raincoat and rubbweighers and right all over darbish
It was funding a roarling through recting in itself with nobody knowing who you were swishing past the masters walking in the street
And circling around the dangerous supersidious school boses out for their sundy strols
I trimmed
I think what would have happened to me
He had i've been calght
But i wasn't called
So on the last year of term
I zomed joyfully away and left school behind me forever and ever i was not quite eighteen
I had only two days at home before i was off to newflanand with the public schools exploreors our ship sailed from liverpool at the beginning of august
And took six days to each and johns
There were about thirty boys in my own age on the expepetition as well as four experienced adult leaders
But newfuthem as as soon found
Found out
Was not much of a country for three weeks
We'd trudged all over that deslate land with enormous loads on our backs
We carried tents and grand sheets and sleeping banks and soursppoins and food and axes and anything else when needs in the interior of an unmapped
Uninhabitable and inhospitable country
My own load
I know weight exactly one hundred and fourteen pounes and someone else always had to help me hoist the rucks
I onto my back in the mornings
We lived on penny cam and lentals and the twelve
Thethose who went separately on what was called the long march from the north to the south of the island
And back again suffered a good deal from lack of food
I can remember very clearly how we expement you were eating boiled legon and radia mosse to supplement end our diet
But it was a genuine adventure that i returned home
Hard and ft and ready for anything they have followed two years of intensive training with the shell company in england
We were seven training using that yeargroup and each one of us was being carefully prepared to uphold the magisty of the shell company in one or another remote tropical country
We spent weeks of the huge shell heaven refinary with a special instructor who told us all about fuel oil and diea oil and a gas oil and llubericating oil and casasine ine gasoline
After that we spent months at the head office in london
Learning are the great company function from the inside
I was still getting inbexsely a kend with my mother and three sisters
And every morning
Six days
A week saturday is included i would dress nuclely in a samber gray suit
Have breakfast at seven forty five and then with a brown true will be on my head and a fill umbrella in my hand
I would bwrow the eight fifteen train to london together with a swarm of other equally sambsusuiting businessman
I'find it
It easy to fall into their pattern
We were all very serious and dignifiy gents taking the train to our offices in the city of london
Where each of us so we thought was engagin in finance and other enormous we important matters most of my companions wore hard bola hahats and a few like me while soft troubiis
But not one of us on that train in the year of nineteen thirty four went bar headed it wasn't done
And none of us even on the sunnest days went without his field umbrella
The umbrella was our bad of office
We fght naki without it also it was a sign of respectability
Road menders and plumbas never went to work with umbrellas
A businessmman did i enjoyed it
I really did i began to realize how simple life could be
If one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do the life of a writer is absolute hell compared by the life of businessman
The writer has to force himself to work
He has to make his own hours
And if he doesn't go to his desk at all that is nobody disccohim
If he has a rights of a fiction
He lives in a world
Fear each new day
Demands
New ideas
And he can never be sure
Whether he is going to come up with them or not two hours
A writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained
But those two hours
He's been miles away
He's been someone else in a different place with totally different people and the effort of swiming back into normal surroundings is very great
It is almost a shock
The writer walks arted his workroom in a days
He wants to drink
He needs it
It happens to be a fact
That nearly every rightal of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than his good for him
He does it to get himself faith
Hope and courage
That person is a fool to become a writer
His only compensation is absolute freedom
He has no master except his own
So and that i'm sure is why he does it
The show company did us proud after twelve months at head office weetrainees were all sent a way to various shell branches in england
To study saillemanship ship
I ent ent susome mer it and spent several glorious week selling katouscine to old ladies in remote villages
My katouseine motortanker had a tap at the back
And when i rolled into shapter melloor or msome aa norton or peas downs and john or hinton blue
It or temple
Cloud or chee
Magna or who wish champ flower
The old goes and the young maitenwould hear ar the rod of my motor
And would come out of their cottagies with jurugs and buckets to buy a garden of katousce for their lamps and their heaters
It is fun for a young man to do that sort of thing
Nobody gets a nervous break down a heart atttack from selling couseine to gentle country
Folk from the back of a tanker in summeret on a fine summerers day
Then suddenly in nineteen thirty six
I was summoned back to head office in london
One of the directors wish to see me
We are sending you to egypt
He said it will be three
Three or then six months
Leve hebe ready to go in one week time
Oh
But so i cried out not egyypt
Really
Really i want to go to egypt
The graandman vieeled back in his jirs
Though i had slept him in the face for the plate of poch tags egypt
He said
Slowly is one of our fineest and most important areas
We are doing you a favor in sending you there instead of just our mosquito written place in the swamps
I kept silent may ask why you do not wish to go to egypt
He said
I knew perfectly well why
But i didn't know how to put it
What i wanted was jungles and lions and elephants and tall coconut palms swaing ing on syilberly beaches and egypt had not of bad egypt was a desert country
It was bad sandy and full of tomband and ilics and egyptians
And i didn't fancy at all
What he's wrong with the egypt
The director asked me again
It's some stamommed
It's too dusty
Sir
The man stare at me too
What he cried that's the
I said dusty
He shouted two dusty
I've never heard such rubbish there was a long silence
I was expecting him to tell me to fetch hahat
And go to lead the building forever
But he didn't do that he was an athghly nice man
And his name is mister gotba
He gave a deep sigh and robbed a hand over his eyes
And said then that's the we wanted redfirm will go to egypt
Instead of you
And you will have to take the next posting that comes up dusty or not do you understand yes
Sir
I realize that if the next week can say happens to be sisiiliar
He said you'll have to take it like quite understand sir
I said
And thank you very much
Within a week mister god birth summoned me again to his office you're going to east africa
He said
Oh Ay
I shout it jumping up and down
That's mardelessa
That's wonderful auterrific
The great man smiled it's quite dusty eithere too
He said
Lion ons cried an elephants and giraffes and coconuts
Everywhere your boat leaves for london docks
Sixsix
He said
Said get off off the mumbbasseta
Your salary will be five hundred pands banana and your door is for three years
I was twenty years old
I was off to east africa
When i would walk about in carpee shorts every day
And wena topii on my aid
I was exstatic
I rushed home and told my mother
And i've gone for three years
I said i was the only sun
And we were very close
Most mothers faced with a situation
Like this would have shown a certain amount of distress
Three years is a long time
And africa was far away
There would be no visits in between
But my mother did not allow even the tiny bit of what she must felt to disturb
My joy
Oh
Well done you she cried it's wonderful news
And it's just where you wanted to go isn't it the whole family
He came down to london
Dogs to see me off on the vote
If a tretredous thing in those days for a young man to be going off to africa
To work the journey alone would take two weeks sailing through the bee bisiscaacpsed you broader across the medituranian
Through the swiz canal in the red sea
Calling in an agent and finally arriving at mumbasta
But a prospect that was i was after the land uppon trees
Es coconuts and cororwheefs and lions and elephants and deadly snakes and a white hunter
Who would live ten years in mewanza had told me
They did a black member *****you
You died within the hour
Riding an agony and fooning at the mouth
I couldn't wait
Although i didn't know it at the time
I was saving away for a good deal longer than three years
Because the second world war was to come along in the middle of door
But before that happened
I got my african adventual all right
I got the rosting heat on the crocoddiles and the snakes are the lungs of parties up country selling shell oil to the men who ran the diamond mines and the sizzor plantations
I learned about an extraorary machine called andequarticlator the name i ve loved
Ved shreaded the beabed lethery sizal leads into fiver
I learned to speaks by healing and to shake the sccopians out of my mosquito boots in the morning
I learned what it was like to get malaria and to run a temperature of one hundred and five degrees per three days
And when the rain seasons came and the water pour down in solid sheets and flooded the little dirt roads
I learned how to spend nights in the back of a stiffling station wedon
But all the windows closed against marorders on the jungle above
All i learned how to look after myself in a way that no young person can ever do by staying in civilization
When the big war broke out in one hundred
Hundred ty nine
I was in dardis allam and from there
I went up to nairobin to join the raf six months later
I was a fighter pilot flying hurricanes all around the middle uranian
I flew in the western desert of libya
In greece
In alalestine
In syria
In iraq and in egypt
I shot down some german plans
And i got shot down myself crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out
And getting rescued by brave soldiers
Crawling on their bellies over the sand
I spent six months in hospital
In alexamvia
And when i came out
I flew again
But all that is another story
It has nothing to do with childhood or school or gob
Stoppers or dead mice or bouzers or summer holidays
Among the islands of norway
It is a different tale altogether
And if all goes well
I may have a shot ter telling it one of these days
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