Washing my Ears

This morning I washed my ears, something I don't do too often partly because it reminds me of one of the disciplines of my prep school all those years ago. Other than the most senior pupils we slept in dormitories of ten or more beds. The beds had steel frames and steel springs which squeaked, the latter usually damaged by people jumping on them so the kapok mattresses sagged; they were pretty lumpy anyway and their cotton covers had often been stained when some unhappy small boy had wet them. For bedclothes we had a thin underblanket, then lower and upper sheets, then another blanket, one of those grey army-type blankets with coloured cotton stitching at both ends. We were expected to provide additional bedding, usually in the form of a miserably thin quilt which frequently slid off the bed. I used to double the upper blanket to try to increase the warmth but one of my abiding memories of Glengorse was of being cold in bed. Both the upper and lower bedclothes were made with 'hospital corners'.

When the bell to get up was rung we all trooped through to the wash room which, like the dormitory, was freezing in winter as there was no heating, where we did our teeth, scrubbed our hands, necks, faces and - very important - our ears. We then dressed, made our beds, and stood beside them until one of the matrons came round to inspect. Hands out in front, fingers together; when she nodded, we turned them over. She then looked at our face and, on a nod, we turned to expose our right ear, then our left. She might pull an ear to inspect it closely. If they were dirty comments were made about growing potatoes in them, and we were sent back to the wash room to try again. Finally she would inspect the bed to make sure it was correctly made; if it wasn't it would be stripped and we had to start again.

I hated this regime yet accepted it. I'm not usually a particularly philosophical person but I saw no point in kicking against it. My parents were 5,000 miles away and my only communication with them a weekly air letter which one of the masters read and checked before it was sealed and posted. I had nowhere to run away to, no-one with whom I could share my unhappiness: weakness was despised. The best thing to do was get on with life and count down the days until the summer holiday when I would be back sleeping in a sweat-soaked bed wearing nothing but a kikoi round my waist and surrounded by a mosquito net.

I'm in rugby kit in this picture. Rugby was the spring term sport so there are probably about four months to go until I boarded the aeroplane. My ears stick out, perhaps from the pulling they had from the matrons.