Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [19]
I would cut this up into segments and ration it for as many days as I could manage.
All that was brilliant fun. It was like living in a different century, and I am certain the school intended it to be like that.
It was ‘old-school’ in the best of ways.
We skated on the frozen lake in winter, which was tested for strength by the poor Latin teacher on a horizontal ladder, and I was allowed to go cross-country, whatever the weather, which I always loved. And ‘Health and Safety’ was kept healthily at bay.
Above all, we were taught to look out for each other and to think big, and those are pretty vital life skills, which I am still so grateful for today.
By the end of my five years at prep school, though, I was also getting pretty naughty, and, on one occasion I – with a few buddies – pushed my luck a little far. I was caught red-handed with beer cans in my rugby boots, cigarettes under my pillow and attempting a ‘break-in and entry’ to the deputy-headmaster’s house to steal his cigars.
The headmaster told us in no uncertain terms that: ‘Enough is enough. One more slip up and you’ll all be “out”.’
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I was caught French kissing the daughter of another headmaster, whose school we were staying at on our way back from a field trip. The irony is that I wasn’t entirely to blame, either.
Fifteen of us were sleeping on the floor of a gym in this school we were staying at for a night, and during the evening I had spotted the young teenage daughter of the headmaster looking us all up and down. That night, she crept into our dormitory in the dark. (Brave girl for venturing into a room full of thirteen-year-old boys.) And she then volunteered to snog one of us.
My hand shot up like a rocket, and she came straight over and slapped her mouth over mine. Aged thirteen, I didn’t realize that it was possible to breathe and kiss at the same time, so thirty seconds later I had to break free, gasping frantically for breath. She looked at me like I was some weirdo, and then ran out.
But she ran straight out and bumped into her father on his headmaster patrol, and, of course, made up the story that we had lured her into our dormitory, and that I had then tried to kiss her!
It was the final straw.
I was politely ‘asked to leave’ the school, along with a few of the other troublemakers who had been alongside me in most of these misadventures.
As it was so close to the end of the summer term, though, no sooner had we all been ‘expelled’, than we were then all summoned back. Somehow, all of our parents had gotten together and agreed that the best punishment would be to send us back to school after the term had ended, and make us spend a week of our summer holiday copying out Latin textbooks.
It worked.
That was the nail in the coffin for me. I left prep school with a determination that no child of mine would ever be forced to go away against their will, and that I would do all I could to help them grow up without fear.
Surely public school couldn’t be any worse? I thought.
At least there wouldn’t be any more randy headmaster’s daughters out to snitch on me.
CHAPTER 17
Eton College has the dubious honour of being the most famous school on the planet; and that makes it both a privileged, and a pretty daunting, place to go.
But like most things in life, it is all about what you make of it.
In my case, yes it was scary, but in many ways, it was also the making of me.
Unlike many public schools, Eton has much more in common with a university than a college. It gives you great freedoms, as long as you prove yourself trustworthy of those freedoms. I liked that. I felt empowered and free to explore and pursue those things I was good at.
But it wasn’t like that at the beginning.
Eton has to be one of the most intimidating places to turn up to as a nervous thirteen-year-old.
I was excited but terrified.
(I have since become pretty familiar with such emotions through many expeditions and missions, but at the