TEENAGE YEARS

 After leaving Keble Prep School and being shipped  to Boarding School, I realised that I was a very slow learner if  it was to do with studies or in general with my life. Going to Boarding School can either break you or make you into something special.

At Edgarley, my boarding house was approx 30Minutes away from school our boarding house was called Manor Farm. We were the only Boarding house that also had girls also, but they were in a seperate section of the house the only time we would see them was in the morning for breakfast, when we would catch the bus to school, at school, bus ride back to the boarding house and then during our 90minutes of free time before we had to go to our dorms and prepare for bed.

My dorm was on the first floor which consisted of 12 beds on the left close to the window and 12 beds on the right next to the wall, the way you got initiated into the house was that you would have to run in between the beds and everyone would smack you with there Pillows, on one of these occasions an Indian Boy, cannot remember his name got his testacles caught on a nail that was sticking while he was running the Gauntlet, he left the following morning and never came back. The only way you could get into the girls dorms was to climb through the sky light and walk along the roof and climb into there dorms through the sky light, when we tried this 99% of the time we would get caught by the house master and for our punishment he would make us run for 30 Minutes around the tennis caught barefeet and in just our underpants, the girls used to love this and would whistle at us and make funny comments while we were being tortured. One winter it snowed really badly and we were snowed in, that was one of the best times for all of us, no school, just pure fun, we would climb out through the skylight and jump into the snow.! Most of the guys and girls that were at the Junior school, ended up heading to the senior school, so bonds where made for life.!

EVENINGS - SENIOR SCHOOL 

After returning back from our Xmas Holidays and having a disastrous holiday and also first few weeks in the boarding house due to the stolen stereo, our boarding house had gone from 12 students to 36 students, Junior Rooms had 3 Per Room, Seniors 2 Per Room and Head of house had his own room, From 7pm to 8.30pm was when you were expected to do your homework and prepare for the following days classes, during this time, the local area boys would come around to our boarding house and start to scream at us and generally act like a bunch of dickheads. One evening after we had finished our homework, three seniors decided to go down to the local fish and chip shop which was illegal as no one was allowed to leave the boarding house at night time unless you had permission from the house master! These three guys were body builders and honestly if you had a brain in your head you would not mess with these guys, but the local area boys decided to start taking the piss out of them, after about two minutes of abuse a full scale fight broke out and five out of the six locals were admitted into hospital. The following evening at around 7.30pm we had close to fifty locals on mopeds calling all of us out to fight.! Our head of house who was a total maniac came round and told everyone that we had to go out and fight against these idiots and if you did not fight the punishment would be severe.! By 7.45pm a full scale fight broke out, the only weapon I had available to me was a hockey stick, which ended up being the best weapon to have in this fight, hockey stick versus a guy on a moped, hockey stick will always win! It took about 30 police to break up the fight. The punishment from the school was suspension for one week, but we still had to go to school everyday really weird suspension we had ! There was never a dull or boring evening for us at our boarding house, but one thing that I got out of this after all the fagging, bullying, fights it prepared you to face whatever happens to you when you finally went out into the real world. 

Every Saturday Night we were allowed to order Chinese take away, most of the students would either order, Spring Rolls, Beef Chow Mien, Egg Fried Rice and Beef or Chicken in black bean sauce or you would have a British guy ordering French Fries from a Chinese Takeaway 😱 I have been to many Chinese Restaurants and so far none of them have been able to match the spring rolls and beef chow mien that we used to get from this place. 

Illegal Booze, the local guys used to come around and sell us Champagne 🍾, wines, spirits for one tenth of the price that it used to sell for in the local off license. One Pound  for half a bottle of Moët & Chandon, we found out later that all the stuff we were buying had been stolen from some Rich Guys local wine cellar. One evening we had the Police round to search our rooms for the booze that we had been buying from our local wine dealer! But unfortunately for the Police they could never find anything, our hiding places were amazing. 

My father had always warned me against smoking cigarettes, he had told me that if I was ever caught smoking or smelling of smoke, he would literally kill me 😂 when it came time for half term, the school had to arrange for buses to take us from school to Heathrow Airport due to the ongoing rail strike, and from Heathrow parents had been informed to collect us. The bus ride from Somerset to the airport was very interesting students were making out with other students, students were drinking and the best part they were also smoking😢 and on a bus without to much ventilation my clothes started to smell of second hand smoke, the first thing my father said to me when I got in the car. is do you have a death wish? which obviously I said no to and then for the whole journey home I had to explain to him that I had not been smoking and in the background was playing Send In The Clowns by Grace Kelly. having to listen to my mum & dad give me the lecture about smoking actually made me want to start to smoke so I could see what all the bloody fuss was about !!

More to follow in my next blog xoxo