Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [25]
Decision time.
‘Run,’ I whispered, and we broke cover together and legged it towards the far side of the garden.
Unfortunately, the tutor in question also happened to be the school cross-country instructor, so was no slouch.
He gave chase at once, sprinting after us across the fifty metre dash. A ten-foot wall was the final obstacle and both of us, powered by adrenalin, leapt up it in one bound. The tutor was a runner, but not a climber, and we narrowly avoided his grip and sprinted off into the night.
Up a final drainpipe, back into my open bedroom window, and it was mission accomplished.
I couldn’t stop smiling all through the next day.
CHAPTER 22
I had gained another nickname at school (apart from ‘Bear’, which I had had since I was a baby, courtesy of my sister Lara), and that was ‘Monkey’.
Stan started that one, and I guess my love of both building and tree-climbs was behind the name. Whether it was Bear or Monkey, I never minded, as I really didn’t like my real name of Edward – it felt so stuffy and boring. Monkey or Bear was OK by me – and they have both stuck into adult life.
During my time at Eton, I led regular night-time adventures, and word spread. I even thought about charging to take people on trips.
I remember one where we tried to cross the whole town of Eton in the old sewers. I had found an old grille under a bridge that led into these four-foot-high old brick pipes, running under the streets.
It took a little nerve to probe into these in the pitch black, with no idea where the hell they were leading you; and they stank.
I took a pack of playing cards and a torch, and I would jam cards into the brickwork every ten paces to mark my way. Eventually I found a manhole cover that lifted up, and it brought us out in the little lane right outside the headmaster’s private house.
I loved that. ‘All crap flows from here,’ I remember us joking at that time.
But I also sought to pursue some more legal climbing adventures, and along with Mick Crosthwaite, my future Everest climbing buddy, we helped resurrect the school’s mountaineering club.
Eton’s great strength is that it does encourage interests – however wacky. From stamp-collecting to a cheese and wine club, mountaineering to juggling, if the will is there then the school will help you.
Eton was only ever intolerant of two things: laziness and a lack of enthusiasm. As long as you got ‘into something’, then most other misdemeanours were forgivable. I liked that: it didn’t only celebrate the cool and sporty, but encouraged the individual, which in the game of life, matters much more.
Hence Eton helped me to go for the Potential Royal Marines Officer Selection Course, aged only sixteen. This was a pretty gruelling three-day course of endless runs, marches, mud yomps, assault courses, high-wire confidence tests (I’m good at those!), and leadership tasks.
At the end I narrowly passed as one of only three out of twenty-five, with the report saying: ‘Approved for Officer Selection: Grylls is fit, enthusiastic, but needs to watch out that he isn’t too happy-go-lucky.’ (Fortunately for my future life, I discarded the last part of that advice.)
But passing this course gave me great confidence that if I wanted to, after school, I could at least follow my father into the commandos.
I was also really fortunate at Eton to have had a fantastic housemaster, and so much of people’s experience of Eton rests on whether they had a housemaster who rocked or bombed.
I got lucky.
The relationship with your housemaster is the equivalent to that with a headmaster at a smaller school. He is the one who supervises all you do, from games to your choice of GCSEs, and without doubt he is the teacher who gets to know you the best – the good and the bad.
In short, they are the person who runs the show.
Mr Quibell was old-school and a real character – but two traits made him great. He was fair and he cared; and as a teenager those two qualities