#24 – 1984 Week 27: Wordsworth and champagne

This is the life. (Or is it?)

Monday 2 July 1984
184 – 182 Week 27

This diary is being written in weekly instalments at untimely hours of the night or morning.

Today I did my first reading in main assembly. Creep, creep. I should write a book called Five Easy Steps To Become Head Prefect. No, I don't think I will. Anyway, it was rather good. The feeling of power, standing there at the lectern, was certainly there. Apparently, it was a little slow. At break I went with a few others to a talk on stockbroking in T. Wells. That was the most boring time of my life. I don't do economics and didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

After school went to rehearsals and the concert took place at 8:00. It went well and was the only enjoyable bit of half a week of torture. Now I can catch up with my work!

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Tuesday 3 July
185 – 181 Week 27

Ha! Step Two! At lunchtime, Julian Clarkson and I got a ladder and cleaned the windows of our prefects’ room. Boy, were they dirty. Most of the teachers that matter went by, giving us funny stares, or making the usual remarks. However, I can see that that room is never going to be tidy. I am obsessed with being a prefect, am I not? Why don't I shut up about them for a while?

Dancing in the evening. And afterwards I ended up at Sophie's house for some reason. Came back with Stu, who was staying the night with Bev.

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Wednesday 4 July
186 – 180 Week 27

This diary really is a bother and takes up incredible amounts of time.

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Thursday 5 July
187 – 179 Week 27

I want to get to Saturday quickly. What did I do today? Nothing. No, nothing is wrong. We did something, however ‘nothingly’ it was. In English, we listened to The Crucible. In music, we listened to Bartok. I won the German prize. Oh dear, but I must accept it. This year I have had £20* off the school and have spent it all on literature. Why?

* around £63 today.

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Friday 6 July
188 – 178 Week 27

It is so hot that it is very hot. The usual winding down at the end of the week. Went to see headmaster about Cambridge. He told me to get my hair cut. Ha! After school I got a lift with Mr Lubbock to my piano lesson. And he has been going that direction every Friday. Today was his last Friday! If only I had known.

Home. About to start homework but Bev and Williamses arrive. Do I want a sauna? Yes, stupid question. So I abandoned my HW And zoomed over. But mother not in, so no sauna. Oh.. I did not want to go to see Sophie. Well, we had a swim at night in a lighted pool. It was 78° F. Entertained their French boy. I must go to France.

Home late. Thanks Bev. Did some homework until 1:00 AM.

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Saturday 7 July
189 – 177 Week 27

I haven't been into T. Wells for ages. Well, I have now. I went: to get my German prize (Goethe, Wordsworth and some poetry), to have some photos developed, to have a haircut, it was not a bad one, I am pleased. Then I went to talk to an ex Dean at King's College London, who helped me relax a bit about universities - The only thing I couldn't stand in London is living in a flat there. It would do me good though. Then I went to buy myself some shoes. I knew exactly what I wanted, but there were none. And then I bought an electrical shaver and some hair gel. It was hot. Very. Home. Tried to work. Various degrees of successlessness. Can't remember what I did in the evening.

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Sunday 8 July
190 – 176 Week 27

Oh, this is the life. At 11:00am ish, Bev and Stu and Sophie and I all went boating on the Medway in Bev's boat. Oh, bliss. Sun, clouds, gentle splashing of the oars. Wordsworth and champagne. We stopped for a picnic in a field near a bridge over the river and lazed in the sun. Bev had her straw hat. And the day was so hot and lovely, just a slight breeze on the river and me in my big white shorts getting brown. I cannot call it pretence because it was so enjoyable. And cricket on the sports ground. How perfect can Sunday afternoons get? Well, we returned to Bev's to watch the end of the men's singles at Wimbledon. McEnroe won. And then I cycled home. A day to be repeated.

At home, I got out all my old primary school news books….

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2024: Oh, this is nice. Exams have finished and school is winding down. It’s summer. The weather report from 8 July 1984 show temperatures reaching 28. Wimbledon is on, just as it is now, 40 years later.  I dip in to Wimbledon just as I do now, rather than watch avidly. But it must have been exciting to see the end of Jimmy Connors v. John McEnroe. Ah good, I can catch up and watch the whole match here.

McEnroe was on court today paying respects to Andy Murray as he ends his Wimbledon career.

With exams over I’m feeling (a little) more relaxed, and it shows in my writing. On Monday we have the concert. Last week I was really hating the orchestra rehearsals. The concert, without much further detail, was “enjoyable’” Saunas and night time swimming! And then a day of boating on the river. I have pictures.

Yup, there’s Bev’s straw hat, and my big white shorts, and the muddy river Medway. And it is very possible that I took a book of poetry with us and read some Wordsworth out loud to the boating party. A perfect afternoon that I wanted to do again. I’m thinking about this experience. You might say it was pretentious as a teenager to go out on a boat, read poetry and sip champagne. It was a thought that occurred to me at the time, but I’m glad I dismissed it with the words “I cannot call it pretence because it was so enjoyable”. This seems like pure, unadulterated, unburdened enjoyment in nature. I happened to like poetry, so why not share it like this? It may seem a rather Victorian kind of day out on the river. But if it was enjoyable to do it then, why not in 1984, or now? 

The diary and the photos make me so wistful. I’m looking at a guy for whom things are going well in the sense that there is, or seem to be, not a real care in the world. And I’m feeling that special warmth of a southern English summer, where there is heat but it is just right, and the green vegetation, fed by just enough rain earlier in the year, is rich and enveloping. You could probably back then even swim in the river without fear of chemical or sewage pollution. There is no mention of the world outside my immediate surroundings, of politics, social stress, injustice and worse. As a teenager we grow in our capacity to take on board the wider world. I was going to say much faster today than then, but of course, hundreds of years ago, teens might be working hard in the fields or training to fight battles. Is it then true that it’s war, famine, disaster, oppression and a million sorrows in the wider world that is really “the life”? Of course we needn’t go so far either. As I mentioned in my introductory post (click here if you’ve not read my intro), poet Lemn Sissay who is the same age as me was, as he writes so poignantly in his book My Name Is Why, possibly on this very day being unfairly punished in an abusive care home system in Lancashire. So is pain the truer, more real representation of the human experience? Is being human a path of sorrow or joy? If sorrow, what do we make then of such moments of bliss? Are they “the life” that we should seek to repeat? Are they purely for a privileged few or somehow fake? Is teenage, with a personality awakening to possibility and fulfilment but hopefully without the full responsibility or knowledge of adulthood a special, unrepeatable moment where the world can be seen positively with the enthusiasm of youth - our best years? Or have Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai shown us that even teenagers must today take on the burdens of the world? It would seem true that as we become adults we will learn that the human condition is indeed at a fundamental level one of sorrow. There is no need to give examples in today’s world. Maybe the truth is that this does not invalidate the possible experiences of bliss, of wholesome friendship, of rest and relaxation, of inspiration through creativity - and that we should be active and seek out the opportunities for young and old to experience them in both structured and spontaneous ways, even, or especially, in the midst of sorrow.

The way that Lemn Sissay found out of his horrible teenage circumstances was through reggae and poetry, taking himself off to readings. He became one of the most recognisable poets in the U.K. today with an inspirational, transformational story. So the focus on poetry or music or art is maybe deeply part of the solution, not a pretentious privilege. It feels like that if we can as a child, teenager or adult access and repeat, maybe practise, moments of bliss, relaxation, inspiration and creativity this will create reserves of something intangible that we draw on to face the sorrows or the societal and global challenges. We can recognise that our teenage experience, even if sheltered, or not fully adult and in the ‘real world’, was still ‘our real world’ and that the deposits of joy or bliss that we may have received in moments are a treasure to draw on when we need. As I am doing now.

And as happens so fortuitously in rewriting this diary I this morning chanced upon a couple of relevant things.

The first is that, I just picked up Wordsworth’s Prelude (which he started writing in 1798) from my bookshelf. Maybe it was the very copy I took on the boat, since this has my A Level annotations in it. Randomly opening a page I came across this.

This is exactly what I have been trying to say! Wordsworth says it well, possibly clumsily, but still magically. He’s talking about childhood and teenage. There are moments of “bliss” and “gleams like the flashing of a shield”… where “nature speaks to us”. They are “rememberable” things, but we may not appreciate them at the time. Only later do they rise to our consciousness to “impregnate and elevate the mind”. The Prelude is a deep, poetic exploration of the development of the young self.

On the other hand this morning I tuned in to Radio 4’s A Point of View (you can click to listen online) to hear Rebecca Stott talking about “Unselfing”. “So much of the time that we spend on social media, or caught up in the day to day of our own tough often hectic lives … is a form of self-defining, self-shaping, self-enhancing… this is me, this is my house, these are my children, this is my taste, this is my selfie, this is my opinion, this is what I think, look at me, understand me, see me, like me”. There is something ironic in the fact that I am taking an essentially private diary which when written was about myself but maybe not ‘selfish’ in the sense of a spectacle, and now I’m turning it into a public document in the context of the inherent selfishness of social media.  Stott thinks that her students, young people, might today say that defining our self is “crucial to understanding our place in the world” or that “unselfing’ is only possible in a world where nightingales still sing and if you live in a place where you are not being bombed or fleeing for your life” (the question of privilege). And Rebecca Stott herself comments (maybe in the light of the Labour Party’s spectacular win in the general election just 3 days ago, and taking inspiration from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s first speech which focused on the value of public service rather than spectacle) that we might have to radically unself, “not just as individuals but as whole nations”.

So I raise a glass to both my self, to your self, as well as to the hope of the unselfing of our nation.

P.S. There are further developments to come on the prefect front. Watch this space.

P.P.S. I’m not sure if the headmaster’s advice to me about getting my hair cut was releated to applying to Cambridge. That would have been a bit premature. From the photo it looks as if I still have quite a mop of hair, but that photo is Sunday, after my haircut on Saturday, So maybe it was all just a bit long and scruffy.

P.P.P.S. Things don’t seem to be going very well with Sophie, do they.

P.P.P.P.S. This diary really is a bother and takes up incredible amounts of time.

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