“Taking up the offer – or is it a challenge? – to write an article for the OSB Newsletter, I decided to use the perspective of 52 years since I left the school to look back and think about the lessons I learned which have stood me in good stead ever since. I came up with these - my Top Ten lifelong lessons from St Bees:
1. Don’t set fire to the Lake District.
A group of us went to Wastwater on our bikes one Sunday in summer. Walking through the bracken we came across an unlabelled bottle half full of some liquid which, on sniffing it, turned out to be paraffin. This was the cue for one of the most stupid things I have done. ‘Let’s sprinkle some on the bracken and set it alight,’ said I, thinking that it would be fun to see what happened and then we could stamp out the flames. Someone had a box of matches (can’t imagine why) and in no time the fire leapt up, instantly defying our efforts to stamp it out. My next instinct was to run away, but glancing upward I saw that there was a distinct black spiral of smoke defiling the Cumbrian sky, a dead giveaway. ‘Quick,’ I said to the equally-horrified lads, ‘pee on it!’ We unbuttoned and thankfully produced enough to douse the minor inferno. An experiment with paraffin that I have never wished to replicate.
2. Don’t bear a grudge.
I was selected for the tennis team’s first match of the season in my final year. It rained and the match was cancelled. I was never picked for the team again. It wasn’t my fault it rained – honestly! But I’ve got over this outrageous injustice now. Honestly, I have. Really. No, I mean it. I have…
3. Biology has its uses.
I am not scientifically minded and I only did biology for one term, in my first year, but it included one experiment which made a lasting impact. The teacher, Mr Jones, rigged up a glass u-tube with a cigarette clasped in one end and a small set of bellows at the other. He lit the cigarette and used the bellows to draw the smoke through the tube, replicating the action of a smoker inhaling. In a very short time the smoke, curling through the bottom of the u-tube, began to turn into a gloopy amber liquid which looked absolutely foul. The thought of having anything like that in my lungs was terrifying and I have never been remotely tempted to smoke a cigarette from that day to this. A brilliant lesson for which I am eternally grateful to Mr Jones.
4. Be like Tony Cotes.
Tony was my housemaster on Grindal. He could be tough, and like many others I suffered the ritual of being marched to the changing rooms to be caned for chattering after ‘lights-out’. But Tony could also take the longer view; he was aware of life’s bigger picture. St Bees was a staunch rugby school but a lot of us were crazy about association football and played at every opportunity. I can imagine many housemasters would have done everything to discourage this heresy, but Tony realised that this was nothing but healthy and he encouraged us. In the many ups and downs and difficult moments of decision since then I have tried to see the bigger picture, and be like Tony.
5. Where there’s a Grass Patch there is life.
There was a decent-sized patch of grass outside Grindal, unimaginatively christened the Grass Patch, where we played five-a-side football - endlessly. It was brilliant. I went on to make a career in football.
6. Value the team ethic.
I valued being part of team groups, whether peeing on burning bracken or being part of the victorious Grindal team that won the Sports Day Cup in my final term. Being part of teams, or groups, and leading them, has been important in my professional life since school.
7. Have confidence in yourself.
I was lucky to be given two substantial parts in school plays, but even more so to have my proposal accepted to produce T.S. Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ in the Priory. I am not sure who gave the final go-ahead but I suppose it must have been the Head, Geoffrey Lees. The support I got from the staff and also from the wives of some of the staff who got involved with making costumes was, now I think back, absolutely remarkable. The cast, all my fellow students, rose to the occasion magnificently, especially my mate Ken Davis as Becket. The whole thing provided me with experience and confidence, which was still lurking in the background when I went on to produce programmes for radio and TV.
8. Good friends are for life, not just for schooldays.
There were very few lads with whom I didn’t get on at St Bees, but there were some who became close lifelong friends and we are still in touch today. There’s no substitute for that.
9. Take chances when they’re on offer.
St Bees gave me the chance to get into the one university that I really, really wanted to go to, Bristol. I got the results, went to Bristol, and many good things in my life opened up from there.
10. Don’t get caught.
My waiting house was Eaglesfield. We used to play football (that sport again) on the rugby field across the road before having to be back indoors by 5.50pm for prep, which started at 6 pm. For reasons which now defy all logic, I reckoned we could grab an extra eight or nine minutes playing football if I wound the dayroom clock back by ten minutes, then when we eventually trooped in I would put the clock right before our housemaster, David Lyall, turned up. Recounting this ridiculous tactic now, I have no idea how I thought it would achieve anything, but it quickly went pear-shaped when I forgot to re-set the clock and David demanded to know who had been messing with it. I had to own up and was set for a beating, which was only averted when, fortuitously, he was called away to some other crisis and my misdemeanour was thankfully forgotten. The lesson, though, has always been remembered – don’t get caught!
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