The Sporting Life

In 1966 the world record for the high jump stood at seven foot six. The record, held by a Russian called Valeriy Brumel, remained unbroken throughout my time at Upbury. Why mention it here? Because the achievement was commemorated above the changing room door, on the inner wall, at exactly seven foot six.

I loved PE. Just walking through the canteen with my duffle bag over my shoulder gave me a buzz. Then we’d enter the hall and nip sprightly up the steps at the side of the stage, to walk the corridor down to the changing rooms and meet up with the 1A2 boys. We could never be sure what lay in store. Sometimes it’d be football, other times…

Rugby: I wasn’t keen on rugby. Oh I tried, and I even played for the school team, but my heart was never in it. In a sport that requires strength, speed and aggression someone decided that I, as a gentle natured one-paced beanpole, would make a good prop. Getting murdered by the fatties in the scrum every two minutes couldn’t be avoided. Elsewhere on the field it was safety first. I’d make an easy tackle here and there but sticking my face anywhere near Raymond Wright’s knees, or Brian Lack’s heels when they were running at full pelt was out of the question. And did I ever seriously consider putting my collarbone in the path of a rampaging Richard Pascal? Not on your Nelly. Give me a despairing dive any day, in any safe direction.

Cross country: If the concept was exciting, the reality was hard work. The first time exhilaration of running out onto Marlborough Road died a swift death on the track alongside the hospital wall. Slogging through churned mud on that rising incline soon had us blowing hard. Small mercy then, to reach firm ground on the beaten tracks across the landscape, where we took a sharp left downhill, followed by a sharp right for the trek across the lines. I wasn’t that good at cross country. Nor was I bad. I’d be one of many kids strung out in the middle, somewhere between the athletes at the front and the fatties at the back. On that very first run I found myself plodding side by side with Stephen Svensen, one of the A2 boys.

‘You’re a gallant little fellow, aren’t you,’ I said, between much huffing and puffing. Where the condescending vernacular of a public school twit came from, I don’t know, but it broke the ice between us on the long slog to the big concrete lump near the memorial.

I don’t know what purpose the big concrete lump served in times past, but that was our marker. Once we’d circled it, we took the shortest route to the gate at the back of the school. Horses roamed freely on that part of The Lines. Docile, most of them, but we kept a close eye on them anyway, being ready to spurt past any shifty looking bastard that wasn’t grazing.

Gym: As best as I recall, our early days in the gym began with measured introductions to various activities. Full blooded games of volleyball, basketball and the mayhem of playing pirates would come later. In the beginning whole lessons could be spent playing games with a medicine ball, which usually meant chucking it as hard as you could at your mate’s gut, or leaping over a vaulting horse and then watching the fatties doing their best to demolish it.

‘Please Sir, I’ve forgotten my kit,’ was no excuse. The unlucky pleader was given a pair of these…

The keenest were always first changed and into the gym.  Some of us would grab a basketball and start kicking it around – what a satisfying thwack those balls made when they hit the far wall. The rest would climb straight up the wall bars and perch like crows in the window recesses. 

Enter Stanley Slaughter who had the bright idea, one day, to lift the locking bolt on one set of bars and swing them away from the wall. Not a problem in itself – the bars were hinged at the other end and designed to swing out and be re-locked in their alternative position at ninety degrees to the wall – but not when half a dozen frantic boys, ten feet off the ground, were scrambling to snatch the bars as they moved away.

‘Slaughter!’

For his folly Stan had the distinction of being the first A1/A2 boy to have his backside flattened with the notorious Stoolball bat.

It was in the gym that we were inducted into houses. I can’t recall if Mister Charlesworth was in Nowell himself, but if he was, then it’s no coincidence that the cream of the sporting crop finished up in the dominant yellow house. Me, I was in Gordon, the red house, named after Gordon of Khartoum, which pleased me greatly. Much bolder and inspiring, I thought, than ye olde Upbury Farm origins of Nowell (yellow), Mill (green) and Queens (blue), which seemed feeble in comparison.  

Gordon statue at Brompton Barracks