Boarding School – The Saga Begins.

Part 1. Introduction

Two of the kids in the photo are not with us now. Victims of NZs hard partying lifestyle.

Despite being swallowed up into that lifestyle in my teen years I’m still alive, because you cannot kill that which does not live…

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So there I was, a young man.

A weasely little sprog of ten years, with a head full of Elves, witches, and goblins.

I was off to boarding school- as a punishment for being a useless little silver-tongued bastard, who apparently had no discipline and could not see a task through to completion. ( Overheard my mother telling a friend on the phone )

My mother was sending me off to learn manners, discipline, and the gritty value of hard work… or now that I’m a man grown and think on it… could have been just the fact that she had the money… it seemed like a vaguely good idea and took care of the problem of taking care of me.

If she had known it would only teach me stealth, deception, the intricacies of blackmail, and deep and encysted feeling of hatred she may have spent the 30 grand on a new car instead.

When people ask me what it was like at boarding school at 10 years old, I say
”If you can imagine Harry Potter… well basically exactly like that but with no magic or monsters. And instead of magic and monsters, just arbitrary punishments and random beatings, to punctuate ungodly amounts of schoolwork.”

It took a little while for what small fuzzy child-like exterior I DID have, to be seared away, exposing a blackened core.

I will now detail the principal incidents of that searing.

I was in the dormitory on the very top floor of the school’s main ancient building. It was called Crows Nest and it housed 14 of us 10-year-olds and one Prefect.

A Prefect was a 12-year-old who was in charge of us and could order us about and recommend detention if we misbehaved.

You had a tiny cubicle that housed your clothes, bunk bed, and a very small amount of possessions. You were allowed one poster or calendar. You were teamed up with another kid who they made sure had a completely incompatible personality to yours.

For my first month, I was very lucky and was allowed to shiver, cold, and crying alone in the darkness with homesickness and hideous dread without anyone on the bunk above to hear my piteous whimpering.

After a while something inside me died and I couldn’t cry anymore as I had gone totally numb and I would fall asleep to the sounds of other little abandoned ten year olds crying silently, alone in the darkness. This was soothing and made me feel good. Like I was a brave warrior like in the fantasy books I fanatically read to escape reality.

Our lives were a regimented system, only slightly harsher than a prison camp. The lights were blasted on at 6: 30 am accompanied by the shout “UP AND SHOWERS BOYS”. Then you had to frozenly creep down four flights of stairs to the showers which were in a large concrete basement.

It was always damp, cold, and smelt like piss and naked shamefaced embarrassment.

A Tutor, ⁽ Tutors -The Tutors were young men in their 20s who were given free room and board in exchange for a few shifts of giving us brats detentions, tormenting the fuck out of us, and generally making sure we didn’t kill each other or destroying school property.)

or a Matron, (The Matrons came and went, they were “nurses” who were in charge of our health and ranged from kindly powder-smelling old fat women to young motorbike riding long legged and redheaded vixen nurses who smelt sweaty and the older kids talked about in a gross way. For some strange reason, I had to get naked in front of these gals, and have my balls felt by them ( for health reasons ).

- supervised the showers and you stood chilled and shivering in line until ushered into the grey-tiled concrete bunker with 15 shower heads attached to the ceiling. There you and 14 other boys would stand in a weak spray of water which was only slightly warmer than the frozen dungeon this ordeal took place in.

I found out in year two that the reason the showers were cold was that the prefects were allowed to get up early and have their showers first.
They made sure they used up all the hot water, which was just awesome.

You got one minute and then you were off to “dry” yourself with your damp and pissy-smelling towel.

After about six months of this, I started getting harsh redness and itchiness on the sides of my feet and legs – in my teen years my medical knowledge increased and I correctly diagnosed this ailment in my memory as chilblains. By then I was not suffering from such ailments as I had stopped living like a poor orphan from the streets of Victorian London and the knowledge was of no use to me.

After showers, we would flee back to our rooms to dress in the scratchy wool short shorts and a gray cotton shirt that was our perpetual clothing. Long-legged pants were not allowed. Thus clothed we would shiver and shake down to the dining room. Even on the hottest of summer days the hallways and cloisters had a chill to them that was never refreshing. I guess it was because it was New Zealand where outside of one month a year the temperature ranges from tolerably brisk to freezing and miserable.

Once in the dining hall ( which we called The Barn) we would get our breakfast. Usually a dollop of grey porridge that looked like it belonged in the mess hall of a spaceship, feeding resistance fighters who are seeking to throw off the shackles of the machine overmind and reclaim their planet. It tasted pretty rough, but if you mixed enough sugar with it you could gag it down with a cup of tea.

Then it was off to school. Just a short walk along another freezing cloister.

What can I say – this was most probably the best school in New Zealand.

All the best teaching equipment, we learned poetry and grammar, we studied a lot of world history, made small chests of drawers in the wood shop, and did pottery. Each night after dinner we did an hour of homework back in the classrooms. In all, we got about nine hours of schooling a day and were made to play sports after school which combined with the harsh gym classes turned us each into intelligent little machines that could run, jump and kick a ball.

While the rest of New Zealand ten year olds were crammed into classrooms of 50 and reduced to screaming imbecileitude through the making of potato cut-out prints and eating paste, we were learning by rote poetry such as the anthem of the American Revolution – Paul Revere’s Ride; instilling within me a red hot hatred for the British, and a deep and probably unhealthy identification with the early American patriots.

You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled, How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the Redcoats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again. Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load….

That’s from the poem Paul Revere’s Ride… in case your education skipped missed out on your early american poetry.

What deep hatred for the Redcoats that was growing within me was magnified and frenzied by another poem we had to learn by rote a few weeks later- this was called The Highwayman.(1906 - Alfred Noyes)… I always felt that I was a bit of a Highwayman and I identified unhealthily with the Highwayman in the poem.

When the bastard Redcoats capture his woman ( the Landlord’s daughter ) and she kills herself I start looking for my silver pistols and when they shoot me down on the highway, down like a dog on the highway and I lie in my blood on the highway with a bunch of lace at my throat, I start firing and don’t stop until I have turned the head of every Redcoat into a canoe. In my ten year old daydreams…

So yes… 10 years old … in class imagining Im shooting British infantrymen in the head… If I had just had Minecraft when I was 10 instead, I might have turned out ok…

Reading the poem would reduce me to tears and little clenched fists of fury and I would be too emotional to continue and so would just stand at the front of the class with my head down unable to utter another stanza.

I would be allowed to go outside to “calmly gather yourself”. I was not asked to read that particular poem in front of the class again.

But I still know it all by heart. And here’s a bit.

A red-coat troop came marching- Marching-marching-
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window; And hell at one dark window.
Back, I spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind me and my rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were my spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was my velvet coat,
When they shot me down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, And I lay in my blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at my throat.

Lacking any silver-butted pistols, smoothbore flintlock musket of a large caliber, or Red coats to shoot I had to be content with making a tiny blow gun and needles from the poisonous spines of a cactus that grew next to the gym, and secretly shooting homemade darts into the other kids. But that is another story.

Anyway, it is not the purpose of this tale to talk about the emotional content of the history lessons I received or my bitter hatred of all things under King Georges's failing British Empire, nor the mundane meanderings of eating, showering, or sleeping.
The purpose is to amuse the reader with the crazy things that happened at boarding school when I was young.

And now I will begin.

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