Sports Day At The Prep.
ByRICHARD USBORNE
IHAD never before seen a bishop disrobed to shirt and braces. This was my fifth and last sports day at my son's prep-school. The bishop is a new father, and will pre- sumably be running in the Family Race for three or four more years. I did not know they mitred such striplings. He was long-legged, lean and athletic, and his purple bib was a brave spot of colour as we lined up for the start. He was up with the leaders when his wife grabbed his handkerchief, and, in her bare nylons, sprinted on to give it to their boy. It was fifty yards down the course for each parent, and then -the sons galloped back the full hundred. Some of the fathers were still cluttering up the course, complaining of Stitch and old age, when their sons streaked back. One father, who was . not running, had been a famous Scottish inside three-quarter in the 1920s. I asked him in the tea-tent afterwards why his family hadn't entered. He said he had pulled a muscle a fortnight ago at Highland dancing. .
I don't know what the boys think about it, but to the parent sports day is definitely parents' day. I felt old and blasé in my fifth paternal year, and came in sports coat and grey bags.
I was the only grown-up thus casual. Fathers and masters, to a man otherwise, were in their tidiest suits, many with carnations. Mothers were comparably endimanchies. The only feminine pair of slacks was on a three-year-old kid sister, who was front-marker in the Sisters' Handicap Dash. But on the command " Go ! " this infant stood her ground, wool- gathering, and her mother darted out of the spectators' ranks and whisked her away off the course just as a thundering herd of Roedean-types bore down with the will to win. This race was won by a master's 'daughter, not strictly a sister of a boy at the school. As the master had assisted in the handicapping, his pride in his daughter's form was somewhat embarrassed by good-natured cries of " Ooh, sir ! Chizz, sir ! " from boys and old boys alike.
Each year the batch of new fathers has contained one or two who were schoolboys here with me. (The cricket pavilion, a World War I memorial, has a plaque in Latin : Qui puer hic ludis, nostri non immemor esto Qui pueri quondam lusimus hocce loco.) This year I was introduced to two whose faces and bald heads meant nothing to me. But when I heard their names, I placed them both immediately. One had been unfairly good at French, thanks to a French governess. The other had had, perhaps still has, six toes on his left foot. We may forget our wives' birthdays, we middle-aged men, but we don't forget that Bell mi. had six toes on one foot.
And there's Chatterly, overcoated and looking cold on this warm afternoon. He's a Minister in one of our South American Embassies, and he flew back yesterday. He says he's perished and would give anything for a hot rum or whisky instead of these piles of strawberries and ices. The tea-in-the- tent is, as ever, a gargantuan " guzz." We know it so well as a family that, blase again, we wait till the nervous neophytes (yes, there's the bishop) have stormed the trestled serving- tables once or twice: Supplies of everything (except rum and whisky for perishing diplomats) are endless. One elderly serving-maid is chanting to a clutch of Giles-kids at the bun- counter: " Don't take the whole plate out just the cakes you want." When I was a boy, there was a maid. called Janet who dispensed sugar-biscuits (one boy, one biscuit) in the break. Her chant was: "'Ow many you got ? " We didn't like Janet much.
And all the while races, long-distance, obstacle, relays, sprints, were being run off. A large man, alleged to be a brigadier and the new bursar, seemed to spend all the after- noon firing a revolver or waving it about. Masters with megaphones announced that the Cormorant League had won the three-legged junior, and that Baker mi. had equalled the school record for the hundred-under-8.6. The boy who was leading in the obstacle race was ordered out just before the end 1:cause a gimlet-eyed clerk of the course had, confirmed the suspicion that he had bished threading his needle at the beginning. It was nearly a case of blubbing, but he accepted the harsh decision.
The head prefect's mother, by established custom, gave away the prizes, many small silver cups, cigarettes for the parents, saving-stamps for the boys' seconds and thirds. An M.P.'s son, who had won the throwing the cricket-ball under eleven, had freckles that plunged into his collar-line and came out again under his shorts. We gave three cheers for the head prefect's mother, and three more for the headmaster, with special reference t9 the tea. We walked round and inspected the boys' gardens, and their art-show in the gym. The matron's grandson, a frisky juvenile of rising three, who had had a fine sociable afternoon, was announced lost, and found asleep on the back seat of someone's car in the parking-ground. My daughter came away with a paper bag containing a Swiss roll, given to her by the commissariat in a tent, harassed by the surfeit of left-overs. We shook the headmaster's hand, thanked him for a spiffing afternoon, and drove home with our son. He gets a twenty-four-hour exeat.
In a tiny Oxfordshire village into which, knowing our road blindfold, we had gone astray, we came on a van labelled Mobile Caterers. It was selling fish and chips in bags to the peasants. We bought two bags (1s. 8d.), and arrived home in time for a late supper, licking our fingers. The " guzz " idea is, as the advertisements say, habit-forming.
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