A medium-rare bollocking

I can clearly remember the day I arrived at school. As we drove through the main gates I remember a growing feeling of unease. Previously I had gone to school in London (where we lived) only a short claustrophobic tube ride from my family, and as we slowly drove up the hill towards what was to be my boarding house for the next year (the building was affectionately known as “Cardboard Castle” and was meant to be a temporary fifteen years ago) it finally began to settle in that I really was leaving home. After the obligatory meet-and-greets my parents left and I began my education in the strange tribal world of the all boys’ boarding school. The three boarding houses all had a healthy amount of distain for each other and, supposedly, had individual house characteristics (for example my house was apparently the sporting house, although in recent years we had suffered a series of ignominious defeats at the hands of the main rivals who lived “down the hill”) these clan like divisions were further reinforced by house ties and various forms of competitions mainly sporting and musical. There was one thing however that the “borders” could all agree on, this was that the two day boy houses were the lowest of the low except for maybe the junior school, but it was a close run thing.
   
The first year (aged 13 to 14 and referred to by everyone as Year 9) was relatively unremarkable and the majority settled in quickly, although there were some people in my year who were clearly unsuited for spending protracted periods away from home and generally did not last to the end of the year. With a minimal amount of work the year was spent forming friendships sometimes in rather strange circumstances (for example the fist proper interaction I had with a boy who was to become one of my best friends, aside from irritating each other, was to get in a fight which ended abruptly with him hitting me with a skateboard, it was really quite painful) and learning the all important facts of school life such as how to break into one of the other houses at night or which teachers wouldn’t take any shit.

At the beginning of Year 10 we finally moved back into my house’s original home in the old building (a large manor house built some time in the 1800’s) after extensive refurbishments. This happy occasion was made even better by the fact that our rivals had moved into “the Cardboard Castle” as it was their part of the old building to be refurbished, and we (at the end of the previous year) had merrily prepared it for their arrival by stealing or destroying as much as we thought we could get away with (for some reason pool balls were a particular favourite). Year 10 was when I had my introduction to the school’s thriving black market, cigarettes. On their return to the UK from their respective countries the overseas boarders would buy as many bricks of cigarettes from duty free as they could fit into their bags (how they got them past customs I never knew). They then proceeded to sell them at a hugely inflated price (although strangely enough for less then they would cost in an offie and in later years “mates-rates” could always be negotiated) which of course we were all willing to pay because ,as you know ,smoking makes you look fucking cool. A curious side effect of this was that our smoking was very international Botswanan Camels, Gibraltan Marlboros, Egyptian Silk Cuts and the most amusing Chinese Double Happiness (which tasted disgusting).
Whilst the smoking had begun as a way of fitting in it soon became something to do with your mates when lessons and prep (homework) ended, everyone would grab a football and head off to the furthest pitch to play Wemberly singles or doubles and smoke copiously. Year 10 was also when I had my first experience with drugs we were out for the weekend and we were supposed to be going to a party, we finally arrived at the house and quite frankly wasn’t much of a party. After a few hours of despondent grumbling about how shit this all was and a reasonable amount of alcohol the final partygoer arrived, to be honest he wasn’t someone that I liked a great deal but he had brought with him a small bag of weed and I was interested to see what all the fuss was about (having already discovered the fuss about fags and booze). We smoked a few joints and went off to bed, I couldn’t really see what the big deal was (I have a sneaking suspicion that what we were smoking was not entirely kosher, or at the least not very strong).

When we returned to school I soon found out that it was a big deal at least according to the school, someone had spilled the beans. We were all summoned into the ante room of the headmasters office sat down around the table and told to write out our versions of events in complete silence, after we had handed in our brief memoirs we were called in one by one to the headmasters' office to receive a medium-rare bollocking and sent back to our housemasters to inform our parents of our misdeeds. I stood in my housemasters’ living room and phoned my mum whist he watched, by this time the shock of getting caught was wearing off and I was starting to get rather irate with what I considered the school sticking its nose in where it wasn’t needed so when she answered I told her bluntly what had happened. On hearing the news my mum promptly told me I was an idiot for getting caught and to hand the phone back to my housemaster, after expecting a metaphorical smacked bottom or worse the disappointed parent routine I found this response rather mystifying and went off to bed far more confused than I had been for a long time. And that was the end of that, no more questions no drugs testing (which was, supposedly, the schools policy when drugs use was suspected, if you were caught taking drugs on school grounds it was immediate expulsion) I suspect that mummy dearest was less than agreeable to the schools suggestions although to this day I still don’t know exactly what happened, nor did I find out who had dobbed on us which was a shame, but it stopped bothering me after a few months…very Christian of me.