Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

A. McKane

I had been ill in bed for about two weeks when I heard my parents were coming, this was on a Sunday. I was only just six years old. My parents and brothers came up to see me also my sister. When they left me I started to cry, so my sister stayed with me but later on, she went. My mother and father went to the school service to hear my brothers sing in the choir. By the side of my bed there was a bell which I could ring when I wanted something. At this time I was feeling very homesick, so I rang the bell as loudly as I could. I rang it for some time until I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and in rushed Jane. The whole school had heard it and I was rather ashamed.

R. Maidlow

At night time when I got into bed it was horrible because the bed was uncomfortable and the springs were to tight for me. The breakfast was a nice breakfast. The eggs were not to hard for me. My first game of cricket was a nice game of cricket and I hit some runs on my first game of cricket.

T. Sangster

When mummy had gone home in the car I met Doland and we explored and looked around. We went and looked in a shed beside the third game pavilion and then went and peered into the empty swimming pool. A bell rang and we wondered what it was for so we went up to the dormitory. Then somebody asked whether we had had tea. So we said ‘no’ and somebody brought us milk and buns. When we had eaten we all talked and read until Matron came in and said ‘No more talking’. And we went to sleep. Next day we went down to breakfast – I thought I was in IIB I stayed there for a lesson and then had to move into IIIB. In the middle of the lesson I arrived and sat down in the front row – I learned very little on the first morning. Then I went down to fourth game pitch and I was playing rounders -our side won by seven rounders. I was chosen about third but I did not do very well. My first day in third cricket I was put as square leg but I could not stop a ball. I did not have an innings.

Ian Hicks

I was worried about the lessons and wondered if I would be hacked playing football and what the food would be like and whether I would get indigestion like I always did at home. Then how was mum in the car and had she got back all right. I went to bed and everybody asked me my name. Then the next morning the master came into lessons and said ‘Hicks, have you learnt to do History yet?” ‘Yes, a bit” came the reply. By lunch I had settled down.

R. Coley

My first night at school the thing I dreaded most was seeing mummy and daddy go down the drive. However I found another new boy named Povey. We walked around a bit till the tea bell rang and we went to tea. Everybody thought I was most peculiar because I had 3 cups of milk and slices of bread and 3 buns.

M. Dolan

At bed time we go to wash and go to bed. We are allowed to talk until 7 o’clock and we talk all the time. When we are closed down we talk lots of times and get caught and have to stand out for twenty minutes. Our legs get tired.

I found myself dreading this strange world of ice-cream days and third game pavilions and being put as square leg. The idea that I might be asked if I had learnt to do History yet also filled me with horror. I knew plenty of history, thanks to my mother, herself a historian, and the endless quizzes I pestered her to give me as I followed her about the house, but I was certain that I hadn’t in any way ‘learnt to do History’.

Another essay in the magazine puzzled me, puzzles me to this day. I felt it was getting at something, something awful to which it didn’t dare put a name. Ironic, given its title.

"FEAR," by S. Alexander

Fear is the basis of cowardice and cowardice is the opposite to courage, but fear is not the opposite to courage. In many cases, fear is even the basis of courage and so it is an extraordinary thing.

It gets complicated after that – the author presses Socrates and Douglas Bader into the argument and I get a trifle lost even now.

I was more heartened by the following:

WINNIE

Winnie was a loveable little pony. She had a gentle temperament and liked having a fuss made of her. She was very old when she died. Everyone who rode her will probably remember her for a long time. She was very persevering and would tolerate a tremendous amount of hitting around. I have never known her to lose her temper, so I think if there is a heaven, Winnie is there. Winnie passed into the next world on the afternoon of the 30thJanuary. May she find rest in the endless pastures of Paradise.

J. Bisset.

I think I remember this Bisset. I believe he came from Rhodesia and had a younger brother who arrived at Stouts Hill at about the same time as me. The younger Bisset quite suddenly and inexplicably announced one term that he had changed his name to Tilney, something we all rather envied and I, personally, decided to emulate at once. I informed the master on duty that from now on I was to be referred to as Whatenough, Peregrine Ainsley Whatenough, but was told not to be an arse, which struck me as unfair. Looking back, one assumes the Bisset/Tilney name change was something to do with step-fatherage, a broken home and other things that were kept from us.

Returning to the magazine, there follow endless pages cataloguing the achievements of old boys, with the usual depressing information as to their destinies.

We were delighted to hear from Ian who is doing very well at Price Waterhouse and still plays squash regularly.

John has done extremely well with an Agricultural firm dealing with machinery in Uganda.

Adam Carter wrote to us from Gibraltar where he is stationed with the Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry.

No reunion or social gathering would be complete without Charles Hamilton. He looked splendid at the Berkeley Hunt Ball in his kilt.

We hear Martin Wood is very happy at Stowe and is now a keen Beagler.

Peter Presland goes up to London every day, where he is with a firm of solicitors, Bracewell and Leaver, where he specialises in commercial work during the day and at night is a libel “Expert” for a daily newspaper.

I like the capitalised, double inverted-commas ‘Expert”, lending it a properly disreputable air.

Of one old boy, later to become well known through marriage, we learn:

Mark Phillips (1957-1962) Marlborough

We were all delighted when Mark once again won at Badminton.

… the annual three-day eventing horse-trials, one assumes, not some ordinary game of shuttlecock and battledore…

Stouts Hill was a country school, this is the point that seems to emerge most from the magazines. London and all things urban were miles away. Whenever I picture myself at prep school, I picture myself out of doors: walking, sliding, tumbling, den-building, boating, fishing and in winter, sliding across the thickly iced lake, tobogganing and rolling snowballs down slopes until they grew to be the size of small vans. I remember being taught the names of wildflowers and birds, climbing trees, penetrating the woods and scaling the Bury.

None of these activities came without pain. The pain began with bad luck over which I had no control but ended in a physical self-consciousness that has dominated my life ever since.

The bad luck was principally asthma, a congenital condition inherited, I suppose, from my father who had spent a year in hospital as a child.

I had joined the school’s tree climbing club and found to my surprise that a dread of heights did not prevent me from climbing trees quickly and without fear. Then, when I was nine, I developed a terrible allergy to whatever it is that lime trees put out in the summer, that same stuff that deposits its layer of sticky goo on the roofs of cars that are foolish enough to park in lime avenues. The result was two days in bed with my lungs wheezing like mouse-nibbled organ bellows. A number of boys at Stouts Hill had asthma, the Gloucestershire air was said to be good for them. One boy came for that very reason but made no improvement. He left for Switzerland after only five weeks, a five weeks spent with an inhaler constantly at his lips. The following term at morning prayers the headmaster reported his death to us and everyone turned to look at me.