But she too got good enough A levels to go further, and she got herself a place at St. My concern was that my own unintended success was perhaps making her feel that she was expected to do well too, and I somehow didn’t feel that was going to be “right” for her. In her younger teens she had been quite a tearaway, but then, to our parents’ delight but to my possible concern, she suddenly seemed to settle down and apply herself to her work. This seemed a bit strange, because I’ve never been any sort of mathematical guru, but I guess they are slightly different disciplines.īut sadly, things weren’t going so well for my sister by this time. Instead my main feeling was one of being a bit unsure about my place in the “pecking order”, and it wasn’t until my second year that I realised that logic-based problems, such as the interpretation of experimental data or genetic inheritances, that tended to turn up in the exams, were rather easier for me than for most others. It turned out that yes indeed there were a few idiots who liked to dress up in silly clothes in order to get drunk, but there were also a fair number of “grammar school boys” like me, so in fact I fitted right in. In those days I may have looked like an introverted swot, but that wasn’t the real me at all! Nevertheless, I ended up being awarded an “exhibition” to read Natural Sciences, although I wasn’t sure if Cambridge was going to be the right place for someone like me. Once he was back home and subjected to the usual parental inquisition, they were absolutely horrified! “You mean you ARGUED with them?”, they screamed, as they further stretched the rack. Accordingly, when one of the interviews seemed to be a touch on the aggressive side, he gave as good as he got. This involved practicals and interviews there, and thanks to the usual effects of half an inch of snow on our infrastructure, he barely got there in time, and in a very much “don’t care” mood, as none of this was really his idea anyway. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected any more than rather average grades, but with the ones he did get, he was now expected to sit the entrance exams for Cambridge, which he duly did. Fortunately there was a getout if you joined the local scouts group instead, which he therefore duly did, and actually rather enjoyed.īut they were survivable, as he knew that at least a partial release could come once his A levels were out of the way, but unfortunately it turned out that he had made an enormous miscalculation. Also, the young Martin was very shortsighted (I still am, but with contact lenses I just forget), and since they wouldn’t let him wear his glasses for sports, he couldn’t really see what was going on, so he soon acquired the reputation of being the school duffer in that department! And on Friday afternoons everyone was expected to put on really uncomfortable clothes and march around in circles while learning how to kill people to whom they’d never even been introduced. In addition to the usual sorts of problems from older and bigger boys, the headmaster in particular was a religious nutter, and the Physical Education teachers seemed to derive an unusual degree of pleasure from beating everyone on the backside under the slightest pretext. The young Martin, then living with his parents and younger sister Shirley in Guildford, was of course delighted to have got into the local grammar school, but he soon came to hate the place. It all goes back to a time when I felt so differently about the world than I do now, that we have to start this story in the third person.
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