Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [26]
But, boy, did he also get grief from us.
Mr Quibell disliked two things: pizzas and Slough.
Often, as a practical joke, we would order a load of Slough’s finest pizzas to be delivered to his private door; but never just one or two pizzas, I am talking thirty of them.
As the delivery guy turned up we would all be hidden, peeping out of the windows, watching the look of both horror, then anger, as Mr Quibell would send the poor delivery man packing, with firm instructions never to return.
The joke worked twice, but soon the pizza company got savvy.
One of the optional subjects that we could study at Eton was motor-mechanics. Roughly translated as ‘find an old banger, pimp it up, remove the exhaust and rag it around the fields until it dies’.
Perfect.
I found an exhausted-looking, old, brown Ford Cortina estate that I bought for thirty pounds, and, with some friends, we geared it up big time.
As we were only sixteen we weren’t allowed to take it on the road, but I reckoned with my seventeenth birthday looming that it would be perfect as my first, road-legal car. The only problem was that I needed to get it MOT’d, to be considered roadworthy, and to do that I had to get it to a garage. That involved having an ‘adult’ drive with me.
I persuaded Mr Quibell that there was no better way that he could possibly spend a Saturday afternoon than drive me to a repair garage (in his beloved Slough). I had managed to take a lucky diving catch for the house cricket team the day before, so was in Mr Quibell’s good books – and he relented.
As soon as we got to the outskirts of Slough, though, the engine started to smoke – big time. Soon, Mr Quibell had to have the windscreen wipers on full power, acting as a fan just to clear the smoke that was pouring out of the bonnet.
By the time we made it to the garage the engine was red-hot and it came as no surprise that my car failed its MOT – on more counts than any car the garage had seen for a long time, they told me.
It was back to the drawing board, but it was a great example of what a good father figure Mr Quibell was to all those in his charge – especially to those boys who really tried, in whatever field it was. And I have always been, above all, a trier.
I haven’t always succeeded, and I haven’t always had the most talent, but I have always given of myself with great enthusiasm – and that counts for a lot. In fact my dad had always told me that if I could be the most enthusiastic person I knew then I would do well.
I never forgot that. And he was right.
I mean, who doesn’t like to work with enthusiastic folk?
CHAPTER 23
Two final stories from my school days …
The first involves my first ever mountaineering expedition, done in winter to Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales, and the second is winning my first girlfriend. (Well, when I say girlfriend, I mean I kissed her more than once and we were together almost a week.)
But first the Snowdon mission.
As the planned expedition was in wintertime, Watty, one of my best school buddies, and I had two months to get excited and pack for it. When the trip finally came around our backpacks were so heavy that we could hardly lift them.
Lesson one: pack light unless you want to hump the weight around the mountains all day and night.
By the time we reached Snowdonia National Park on the Friday night it was dark, and with one young PT teacher as our escort, we all headed up into the mist. And in true Welsh fashion, it soon started to rain.
When we reached where we were going to camp, by the edge of a small lake half way up, it was past midnight and raining hard. We were all tired (from dragging the ridiculously overweight packs), and we put up the tents as quickly as we could. They were the old-style A-frame pegged tents, not known for their robustness in a Welsh winter gale, and sure enough by 3 a.m. the inevitable happened.
Pop.
One of the A-frame pegs supporting the apex of my tent broke, and half the tent sagged down on to us.
Hmm, I thought.
But both Watty and I were just too