My New School
This poem, written in free verse, describes my first year at my senior school. I have recently found supporting evidence for my (clear) memories in the diaries mentioned below. Needless to say, I produced my '...worst ever end-of-year school report...'. It seems not to have occurred to those ostensibly responsible for my welfare to drill down and find out why a previously exemplary student failed so dramatically. My second year was equally traumatic for different reasons, but that is a story for another day! She said I “must get away from” him. Now, fifty years later I’m reading his diaries, page by page. Perhaps I’ll find out soon why I needed to escape. My new home, a boarding school, was ‘character-building’, they said; perhaps you know the type? Regimented and authoritarian. Our spartan, cold dormitories reeked of sweat-stale boys, or suffered the wild west wind, blasting through uncurtained windows. Our cold and cheerless walls echoed with the relentless clatter of shoes o