Age 7: 1969 – 70
One day at school,
fish and chips (everyone’s favourite!)
is being served for lunch. The smell and the anticipation are delightful.
Michael Swallow, who is from my class and seems a bit of a harmless rogue, decides
to push into the queue in front of me when I am nearly at the counter. I am
outraged, but – in a supreme moment of forgiveness, of which both Jesus and Mr
Campbell would approve – I decide to let him go ahead, to not worry about it. I
calmly deduce that this will result in nothing more than me getting my fish and
chips just a few seconds later. Michael Swallow reaches the front and has to
specify his choice: fish and chips, or
cheese and egg flan? It’s a mere formality. I notice that he receives the
last portion of fish and chips from the trays on the counter.
I
reach the counter and the hideous truth is revealed to me when my meal
preference is not requested by the dinner lady. There are no more trays of fish and chips. Michael Swallow got the last fish
and chips! Those should have
been my fish and chips. He and I realise this at the same instant. He is
just walking past me with his tray of ill-gotten gains when his eyes and mine
lock together, and I can see a hint of guilty acknowledgement in his face. But
then he averts his gaze and hurries away. I am angry, furious; I feel bitter
and cheated.
I
look sullenly at what is put on my plate. A square of cheese
and egg flan that looks like dry sick. A round splodge of implausibly
white mashed potato, which I know from experience is
utterly tasteless. A blob of some green mush that used to be vegetables, all
appetising texture and goodness having been scrupulously boiled out of them.
This is what kindness and forgiveness get you.
Age 11:
1973 – 74
In school, Mr Todd is reading to us extracts
from The Diary of Anne Frank, a
Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in an attic in
Mr Todd never finishes
reading this book to us, but I pick it up from his desk while I am waiting in
line to have my exercise book marked, and I go straight to the end to see what
happened. The notes say that Anne Frank died in a concentration camp at the age
of fifteen. I feel utter horror as I absorb the details of this, and I imagine
Anne Frank’s family being my family. I feel a lump in my throat and tears begin
to well up in my eyes. I try to regain my composure before anyone notices.
Age 12: 1974 – 75
It is September.
The time has finally come to enter
This
morning it is pouring heavily with rain and I sit at home reading the latest Reader’s Digest; there is an article
about bullying in schools. I am the last one to leave the house, as
Finally,
I head out towards the school with trepidation, carrying my attaché case, which
my father has given me. A Prefect, standing outside in the downpour, directs
the newcomers into the dining hall, where we sit bedraggled, wet, apprehensive
and silent. Then we are herded into the main hall, to a very formal and solemn
Assembly. A Prefect performs a reading from the Bible: the Parable of the Sower.
And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and
devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil,
and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the
sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away.
Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other
seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some
sixty, some thirty.
The seeds – that’s us, the new boys.