One time I was in York with my old school friend, Phil (you may remember him from Fort William; he’s the one who may or may not be building compost toilets in Tahiti). We crossed the river by climbing on the metal girders under one of the bridges. We arrived at the other side and let ourselves down into a sort of builder’s yard. Someone shouted from the bridge that there was a fierce dog there and we had to climb up and back across the river. I don’t know why we did it. Perhaps we were drunk.
Phil and I were at school together. Tiffin Boys School was modelled on the old public schools and had an ex-army head master, Brigadier JJ Harper. He was a monocle-wearing authoritarian who addressed his pupils with the words you boy and was answered in fearful sentences ending in sir. I remember some sixth formers starting an independent school magazine and being called to his office and threatened with expulsion. We were under a totalitarian regime.
Pupils wore stripy blue and maroon blazers, ties and caps in the earlier years and black blazers in the sixth form. In very hot summer weather we might be given permission to take them off. Even the pupils in their final year who might be old enough to vote or get married were not allowed out at lunchtime without a note from their parents. But the greatest injustice we experienced was not being allowed to grow our hair long. This was the early nineteen seventies and we were listening to Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Hawkwind. Long hair, and facial hair if you could manage it, was important. It was a statement of anti-establishment idealism. It could change the world.
I remember wearing shorts on bitterly cold afternoons on the rugby field and long trousers on glorious summer days on the cricket field. I remember the extensive school grounds: tarmac and grass and trees surrounding fine buildings. I remember the school bell that signalled the end of a lesson and the end of the school day. The words five past four have a special, liberating sound for me to this day. And so it was on the final five past four, on my last day at school, that I stepped out of the school gates and found myself breaking into a run. I felt that my life was just beginning.