Boarding school life settled into a pattern whereby every action was in response to a bell, with the exception of getting up. Then the matron was the bell. We would all get out of bed and troop down to the showers, then back and get dressed and make our way down to the dining hall. Breakfast was invariably porridge with milk and sugar or toast if you got there early enough, followed up ubiquitously with a cup of coffee. We would thereupon all return to the dormitory and the mosquito nets were re-furled. Matron would check that we had our uniform on properly. We would collect our homework and wait outside the front of the building for a teacher to take us over to the classroom block, which was just 200 meters away. There we would wait outside the front of the block until the headmaster had completed the opening ceremony. We used to say the Lord's Prayer. The naughtier boys would shoot those who were standing quietly and trying to be good, with elastic bands and peashooters. Zap, you would be hit on the ankle.
Once in our classrooms, the teacher would come in and we would all stand up and say good morning Mr Black. Mr Black had just come out of the war and had been the captain of a destroyer. He lost legs when a German cruiser shot his bridge away. He was a very nice person, with wooden legs. He used to play cricket with us. He would bat and had somebody to run for him. Cricket was an absolute obsession at the school. The headmaster, Slatter, had two sons, Hugh and Donovan. Donovan was a strange person. He used to do ballet. This was the height of the English cricket era, with Len Hutton and body-line and Don Bradman. Old man Slatter would come onto the playing fields during tea break and hurl cricket balls at Hugh and Donovan with such force that I feared they would be injured. He wasn't bowling, he was throwing them directly at them.
The Second World War affected us deeply. I was often taken into town to join a remembrance service. I had been aware for many years that something about my upbringing wasn't quite normal. I instinctively realized that some calamity had occurred. Remembrance services always reverberated with my personal circumstances. I was not even sure who I was, as my name would be changed like a wind vane, as my name had been recorded differently at different places. People would refer to me by whatever name they had been told.
The school had large pictures of the queen in strategic positions. It made you feel you were part of the British empire. I was proud to be British, not that I really understood what it meant. Later on, I was even proud to be Rhodesian. Our heritage was constantly reinforced at the end of every movie, with the singing of the national anthem and an image of the union jack fluttering in the wind. In 1953, when the queen had her coronation, we were shown endless repeats of the coronation at school or in movie theatres. A newsreel of the British Empire would also be shown each time you went to the theatre.
Holidays would also be Queen's birthdays and the religious holidays Christmas and Easter, and Rhodes and Founders. School was not open for those days. If it was a long weekend, our parents would pick us up for the weekend. I would be waiting at the end of a long road, wondering if they would bloody well come. At home, you knew what the territory was, you were free to roam and do whatever you wanted to. No more bells, no more being shouted at.
When I got home, first thing, I used to run and get my bike. My parents had a five-acre block and dad had built roads inside this. Some of them were extremely steep and stony. The other thing I had was a horse. The horse thing was funny anyway, because one day my mother said to me did I want to take riding lessons. She had already bought four horses. Tommy, which became my horse, was a tall bay. Mine was a 16 hh ex police horse, named Tommy, which I rode when I was nine. On my first ride out on him, when we rode out on the roads and decided to go home, the horses decided to bolt for home. Charles galloped up to where I was. I was standing on my stirrups trying to pull him in and Charles came up alongside and pulled the rains. Tommy was difficult for an adult to manage. It was a pointless exercise for a little boy to try to hold him. Shelley was another of my mother's horses: a small, skittish white horse. Pony was a black horse, but very old, and mischief, so named because he used to stand on your feet. He used to look you straight in the eye and then quietly step on your feet. My mother took me out on Shelley for my first experience. Dad's block was on quite a high hill with a driveway going up to the house, a steep driveway full of rocks and boulders.
When you took the horses out for a ride, on returning, their custom was always to gallop up this steep hill. On the very first occasion, my mother had put me onto Shelley with a lead rein, whilst she rode Mischief. So I went out down the road, with the feeling that everything wasn't properly under control. Mum headed back home and dropped the lead rein. Mischief started to canter up the hill and Shelley decided this was it and galloped up the hill. I had no chance of controlling him as I'd lost my balance, so I slid around, but my foot as still in the stirrup. The rest of the way of the hill was bumpy. I developed very little faith in my mother's concept of safety.
My father would pick me up from school some afternoons and with my grandfather, we would go for a ride. Sometimes, we would ride back to the boarding school. I would get off and he would lead my horse back: my father had had a much more cautious approach.
Then, for the next few months, I was taken once a week to a riding school, run by Gallard. His idea of teaching you how to ride was to put you on a horse and trot around a circular enclosure, which created a lot of dust. It was like sitting on a jackhammer. It became an exercise in stoicism.
One day I was grooming Tommy and he lashed out and kicked me right over a haystack and left me with a perfect shape of a horse's shoe with nail marks.
During school holidays, I would often take my horse for a ride with no particular destination in mind: I used to ride up and down the roads. Tommy later died through eating a segment of a lily leaf. He developed a terrible stomach ache. My mother looked through the garden and all she could see was a piece missing from one of the leaves of a lily plant.
Once in our classrooms, the teacher would come in and we would all stand up and say good morning Mr Black. Mr Black had just come out of the war and had been the captain of a destroyer. He lost legs when a German cruiser shot his bridge away. He was a very nice person, with wooden legs. He used to play cricket with us. He would bat and had somebody to run for him. Cricket was an absolute obsession at the school. The headmaster, Slatter, had two sons, Hugh and Donovan. Donovan was a strange person. He used to do ballet. This was the height of the English cricket era, with Len Hutton and body-line and Don Bradman. Old man Slatter would come onto the playing fields during tea break and hurl cricket balls at Hugh and Donovan with such force that I feared they would be injured. He wasn't bowling, he was throwing them directly at them.
The Second World War affected us deeply. I was often taken into town to join a remembrance service. I had been aware for many years that something about my upbringing wasn't quite normal. I instinctively realized that some calamity had occurred. Remembrance services always reverberated with my personal circumstances. I was not even sure who I was, as my name would be changed like a wind vane, as my name had been recorded differently at different places. People would refer to me by whatever name they had been told.
The school had large pictures of the queen in strategic positions. It made you feel you were part of the British empire. I was proud to be British, not that I really understood what it meant. Later on, I was even proud to be Rhodesian. Our heritage was constantly reinforced at the end of every movie, with the singing of the national anthem and an image of the union jack fluttering in the wind. In 1953, when the queen had her coronation, we were shown endless repeats of the coronation at school or in movie theatres. A newsreel of the British Empire would also be shown each time you went to the theatre.
Holidays would also be Queen's birthdays and the religious holidays Christmas and Easter, and Rhodes and Founders. School was not open for those days. If it was a long weekend, our parents would pick us up for the weekend. I would be waiting at the end of a long road, wondering if they would bloody well come. At home, you knew what the territory was, you were free to roam and do whatever you wanted to. No more bells, no more being shouted at.
When I got home, first thing, I used to run and get my bike. My parents had a five-acre block and dad had built roads inside this. Some of them were extremely steep and stony. The other thing I had was a horse. The horse thing was funny anyway, because one day my mother said to me did I want to take riding lessons. She had already bought four horses. Tommy, which became my horse, was a tall bay. Mine was a 16 hh ex police horse, named Tommy, which I rode when I was nine. On my first ride out on him, when we rode out on the roads and decided to go home, the horses decided to bolt for home. Charles galloped up to where I was. I was standing on my stirrups trying to pull him in and Charles came up alongside and pulled the rains. Tommy was difficult for an adult to manage. It was a pointless exercise for a little boy to try to hold him. Shelley was another of my mother's horses: a small, skittish white horse. Pony was a black horse, but very old, and mischief, so named because he used to stand on your feet. He used to look you straight in the eye and then quietly step on your feet. My mother took me out on Shelley for my first experience. Dad's block was on quite a high hill with a driveway going up to the house, a steep driveway full of rocks and boulders.
When you took the horses out for a ride, on returning, their custom was always to gallop up this steep hill. On the very first occasion, my mother had put me onto Shelley with a lead rein, whilst she rode Mischief. So I went out down the road, with the feeling that everything wasn't properly under control. Mum headed back home and dropped the lead rein. Mischief started to canter up the hill and Shelley decided this was it and galloped up the hill. I had no chance of controlling him as I'd lost my balance, so I slid around, but my foot as still in the stirrup. The rest of the way of the hill was bumpy. I developed very little faith in my mother's concept of safety.
My father would pick me up from school some afternoons and with my grandfather, we would go for a ride. Sometimes, we would ride back to the boarding school. I would get off and he would lead my horse back: my father had had a much more cautious approach.
Then, for the next few months, I was taken once a week to a riding school, run by Gallard. His idea of teaching you how to ride was to put you on a horse and trot around a circular enclosure, which created a lot of dust. It was like sitting on a jackhammer. It became an exercise in stoicism.
One day I was grooming Tommy and he lashed out and kicked me right over a haystack and left me with a perfect shape of a horse's shoe with nail marks.
During school holidays, I would often take my horse for a ride with no particular destination in mind: I used to ride up and down the roads. Tommy later died through eating a segment of a lily leaf. He developed a terrible stomach ache. My mother looked through the garden and all she could see was a piece missing from one of the leaves of a lily plant.
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