Chapter Thirteen - To Be Or Taboo

I joined Facebook relatively late in life, a few years ago. When I joined I was given a choice that I had not had for many years. I could share biographical details with my new friends if I wished to. I could tell them which schools I went to, where my family came from, who they once were, and my employment record. Naively I did, and the friend who persuaded me to join bade me take the down immediately when she saw the details of the schools I once attended. she wrote to and said to me 'Erase that stuff now, unless you wish to be seen as utterly stupid by your friends.'. I did as she asked and came to no particular conclusion about the directness if her reaction beyond being thankful for her concern. I did not see myself as particularly naive about social media, but I was obviously being rather careless about popular taboos about mental health.

We never had that difficult discussion where she tried to explain to me that the weakness in my mental health was real but in the past. She never said that I was 'normal' now, whatever 'normal' was. In turn I never tried to explain to her that whatever adult normality is, some adults will have awkward-to-explain pasts which they may feel as attached to as immigrants to America might be to the names they had before America renamed them whilst accepting them as citizens. She was clearly not phobic of mental health problems in children, but concerned that I did not adopt out of date labels for my life. I knew about the phobia of mental health problems in children from the way my parents had covered up my breakdown. First came the medication, then came the common place euphemisms, then came the avoidance via them saying that I used to have mental health  problems but they were in the past so there was no need for any discussion of them in the present. Never mind that as an injury, the breakdown I had endured had marked me for life and the strength of the medication had done further irreparable and unrecognised damage.

I would have thought that the levels of hostility towards mental ill health should be different in 2013 to what they were in 1972, when I was first sent to the boarding school, but the difference is less marked,, and less improved for the better than I had hoped it would be. 

When Mother and I visited it in the May holiday the school had been empty and quiet. We had no clue or hint as how the place worked with real live boys in it. But I was soon to find out.

One afternoon very early in September 1972 a half full grey ex-military minibus collected me and my new suitcase from my parents house. It took me the forty miles to the new school. Mother made sure I had taken another travel sickness pill and that I she had safely tucked away the postal order for my 12 new pence a week pocket money for the term (I had got a raise!) as she waved 'Goodbye' to me from the front door.

I say forty miles, it would have been that if we went direct. But the journey was never direct. Over the length of time I was there I would take the journey between the parental house and the school twelve times a year, for five years. Every journey was a five hour trek around different villages, and a city estate, collecting or dropping off nine other boys and their luggage. The longer the journey, the more the room there was in the van for the lack of other boys and their luggage, but the more those left on the bus wished their journey was nearer the drop off point than it felt. I was nearly always among the last to be dropped off, and one of the earliest to be collected at the beginning of next term or half term. Dad never learned to drive and never had a car, so I was never an assured traveller. I was often travel sick in the early years of doing this journey and I rarely sought the privilege of sitting in the front passenger seat which might have helped reduce the travel sickness, I simply endured it.

In the minibus I was one of ten pupils and one of two new boys. Near the end of the journey the minibus was bunged with luggage and passengers. When we arrived at the school the ten of us who I had just joined became a smaller part of nearly fifty pupils, most of whom were already there. Five of us were newbies. The minibus parked at the rear of the school early in the evening. There was a registration process for the new boys in particular. On arrival the first thing everybody had to do was haul their luggage from the minibus through the back door, next to the backstairs, into the hall of the main house then we could sit down for a short time in the common room. The television was turned off and I had first experience proper of the school. Roll call was going to be repeated more often than I could imagine. Our names were read out loud from a typed list on yellow paper. We responded when our name was called. I'd had experienced similar in primary school, but this felt different. Previously my parents were ten mins walk away. Here, apart from the new boy I'd just met, I knew nobody. I was on my own. I was glad of the rest with the roll call. My suitcase was full to bursting and heavy to lug about. 

After that first roll call five teachers and three female care staff were all on hand to register everybody, settle them in, and get them through the leaving off their luggage in the right place and have their first supper of the term. Everyone was told which staff member was 'banker' that term and to hand over their postal order to them. When each new boy went upstairs they went first to the sewing and ironing room, to find out what their locker number was and leave in the locker some of their clothing. Mine was no 4, the locker number of my my first hesitant friend, Ian, was no 5. There were numbered lockers in the sowing room for storing their clothes after they were washed and ironed, numbered lockers where shoes were kept, and a third set of lockers where sports gear was stored. The locker number we were given on arrival was ours for the duration of our stay at the school. The place teamed with boys and activity.

Every new boy started in the same five bed dormitory, on the right wing of the house if you faced it from the front, on the top floor. Every bed in that dormitory had a plastic cover over the mattress. With the newness of a everything the staff did not know which 11 year old boy would wet the bed and which would not. A majority of us did, and it happened quite a few times in that uncertain first half term.

Under each single bed there was a medium sized locker for our more personal things and for putting the clothes away in the evening that they had worn that day. We had one draw apiece in the two chests of draws in the room for our clothes. The bed that was thought the best was the one by the radiator. The most exciting story that first half term was that the boy who got that coveted bed somehow also managed to find used teabags. He tried to dry them out on the radiator, and keep them hidden. Nobody knew about him doing this until the staff sniffed and searched, and then discovered the tea bags. Then the story came out. No other boy could imagine what he was going to do with them. I think he hoped to trade them, though for what was anyone's guess.

Before the second roll call and supper the contents of our suitcases had to be emptied into draws and lockers, the suitcase taken away for storage. We had to be showered and changed into dressing gown and pyjamas. There was a bell that rang for supper, twice for anyone that missed it the first time. The Common Room was where the roll call was called. I sometimes wondered what happened to the old lists of our names-were they merely thrown away? Were they stored away to be looked at later? Were any of the names on them remembered and treasured by the staff? My name was nearly always one of the last to be read out.

As I learnt later, roll call always happened in the common room. It was a process that was repeated up to ten times every day, mostly before and after meals but also before and after school lessons. Meals were served four times a day, lessons were held morning and afternoon, including sport on two afternoons. That first supper was hot chocolate served from large metal jugs into plastic cups with a piece of chewy cake to go with it. Supper was the one meal of the day that we had away from the dining room. We knew the meal was starting when the television sound was turned down. Grace was then said and we queued up for the meal. After we got it we could sit in the hall or the common room and with whoever we liked.

The school television was a colour set and it had been given to the school for educational purposes. It sat on a four foot long firm metal pole which went into a cross shaped four wheel base. The screen and controls were adult height. It also had cabinet doors hinged vertically both sides of the edge of the screen, with metal flaps attached to the top of the folding doors. They folded down when the doors were shut but acted as a top/reflector when the cabinet doors were open wide. The television programme that reliably drew in the most number of boys to watch it was 'Top of The Pops'. The staff's idea of what entertained us in the television schedules had to fit around the routines of the school, rather than the routines being adapted by what was broadcast. The routines of the school meant I could not get attached to certain programmes that I had attached to, and reacted against, in the parental house. 

In these routines the staff woke us at 7.20 leaving them time enough to harass the slow boys to 'Get a move on.' and pull the sheets back on their beds as a last measure. We washed our faces, dressed, folded up our pyjamas and made our beds. Any sheets for washing were left out in a large laundry basket and new sheets were issued from a pile on the spot by the sowing room staff.

Breakfast was at 8.00 in the dining room. It consisted of tea, cereals, toast and jam. The dining room was a large oblong shaped airy room with big six sided windows front and back. The room was bisected by a removable divider. It had eight octagonal tables in it each of which would seat 8 people, four tables in each half of the room. There were three entrances-one from the main body of the building, the other two went into the kitchen from the different halves of the room. I liked most of the menus. The one that did not stay down was what was served every Wednesday; fish for breakfast. Kippers one week smoked haddock the next. Every time I had kippers for the first two terms I threw up in the toilets of the school block during mid morning break and felt ill for even longer because the grease and salt in the fish was too much for my constitution. I was let off the lessons quite often after throwing up for feeling so queasy. Whether the fish stayed down last time or not I still had to eat the kippers the next time. After eight months the kippers and salted haddock started to stay down, though it did not feel like much of a triumph to me. I liked neither the fish nor the teaching that much. It was a relief to me when fish breakfasts proved too expensive for the school food budget.

At 8.45 we are meant to be in the gym hall in our uniform and shoes, all of us sat face front on hard grey plastic chairs. First roll call of the day then a short assembly. Each staff member led assembly their own way. Some avoided religious reflections altogether and kept it secular. Some lead prayers themselves, finishing with all the boys struggling through The Lords Prayer together. Others shared 'spiritual' readings, like the writings of then-popular early twentieth century Christian mystic Kalhil Gibran who was liked because his writings did not sound preachy, like the writings of most christian writers did. The headmaster was a Quaker and he enjoyed putting spiritual content into his assemblies. The final purpose of the assembly was to give out school notices, who is excused from what for being visited that day, and what official school appointments to be observed. 

What we were taught, or not taught, in the classroom over the five years deserve their own chapters. I will close here by noting one way in which the boys learned, or didn't learn, for themselves. In one corner of the common room there was a large octagonal window with seats around the inside of it. When the window seats were lifted they revealed cupboards full of dinky toys of various shapes and sizes. The floor in that octagon was floored with linoleum which had on it the pattern of a series of roads and buildings. One of the simpler pleasures for the newest boys was to be allowed to get the dinky toys out and play at being drivers on the streets in the patterned linoleum, and to play as if they had never been allowed to in their lives. It might have been very silly but there was a real sense of release there. And it one I shared safely with  other other small boys. But equally I found a sense of estrangement when the joy of such things left me. It felt as if I had never ever enjoyed such play in the first place, as if the release I had enjoyed in such had been used up, never to return.

Find Chapter 14 here 

Find the introduction and chapter guide here.