Someone recently recalled an incident at Hydneye all those years ago. It was to do with a certain chap sleepwalking...
Yup, ‘twas I, and for the record, I thought it would be a good idea to write it all down for others to wonder at, before I forgot the detail during an extended Saga moment!
Back in 1960 or thereabouts, I was due to start my final year, before being carted off to pastures new. If anyone remembers, we had quite a strict regime at HHS back then, and one or two of the staff could be pretty intimidating. While I reckon I was no slouch at most things, I do remember feeling very uneasy about some pressures on the work curriculum. Latin was always a bit of a struggle for me, as was maths, but we all probably kept up with it for most of the time.
As with most kids at that age, adolescence was causing the unexpected upheaval with lifestyle changing by the day, and I also became a bit more worried at the prospects of a few whacks, or the dreaded ‘Satis Fecit’ forms we had to endure, especially when work became a burden and I couldn’t cope.
This concern manifested itself in a series of sleep-walking episodes, and of course, I wasn’t the only one on that score! On one occasion I frightened the life out of Ben Bentley, by walking right over to his bedside in Cranmer, and trying to climb up the wall! He told me all this the following morning! On another occasion, I was in sick bay with galloping tonsillitis which took my temperature way over the hundred, and that made all sorts of wanderings possible, including staggering out of the door next to ‘Elgar’ and seeing the long passage up to ‘The Blackwater’ loo (remember that?), going up and down and sideways in a mad, totally surreal fashion! Sister Ellis was feeding me a pink substance called Penedural! It cost 15 bob a bottle, which was no mean sum back then I suppose!
Anyway, I was in ‘Caxton’, I think in the bed by the right hand window in the pic below, or possibly the one by the washstand. I had been having a vivid dream about all of us mucking about, jumping out of the ground floor windows in the Middle Common Room, rushing round to the Garden Room, into the MCR and then back out of the window! Stupid dream really, but there you are, I easily remember that bit!
Then, I can still vaguely recall standing on the window sill, and actually climbing over the wooden safety bar in the pic. And then it was the long rushing sound of falling through the air (possibly about 15 - 18 ft), and it seemed to take ages. It was a real falling dream.
In fact, I woke up halfway down, hit the concrete path outside heels first, and immediately banged down with a big thump on my backside, with my hands hitting the ground at the same time. I suppose, being all relaxed and still half-asleep, I was lucky to be in that position. My first thought was utter fear of being caught outside at night (that dream again), and although I could stand up, it was a bit nippy outside, and I began to shiver a bit, while wandering around in a bit of a daze, feeling unsure what to do next. So I went into the music room, and stood in there for a few minutes, until it eventually dawned on me that this was pretty damn stupid, and perhaps it would be better if I tried to get back into the school!
There was a little light around, as it was around 4.00am, but no lights were on inside, and it never occurred to me to go round by the front door, the rules said that we couldn’t use that door anyway didn’t they, so I waited a bit until I heard someone coughing, back up in ‘Caxton’. It was Ben Bentley, and I kept calling out to him until he woke up properly, and he came to the window at the back of ‘Caxton’. The milk crates used to be stacked there, outside the Garden Room, and he thought I’d fallen on them, which would have been a bit messy, and possibly affected the milk, but from then on, there was certainly a bit more of a commotion...
After only a few minutes, Sister Ellis came rushing down, crashed open the Garden Room door, and immediately did what she was so good at - helping young lads in distress, bless her. She asked me if I wanted a glucose drink (nice one that), and then I finished up in sick bay for the rest of the night! She was kindness itself, and of course told GB and Mrs B, who probably began to worry more than somewhat, I don’t know exactly how!
(Just imagine it, “Sorry to wake you Headmaster, but Armitage has fallen out of a dormitory window...”)!
GB rang my folks the next day and told them what had happened, much to their disbelief, but I had a visit to the hospital for X ray, and everything seemed OK, except for a huge bruise on my bum and a bit of positive/negative kudos for something to write home about!
So that was it really, some of you guys will perhaps remember GB telling everyone the next day, but of course, I was tied down upstairs, so didn’t hear what he said. In fact, the doctor put me on some sedatives for a while to take each evening, and another ignominy - a crepe bandage attached to my ankle, and tied to the bed leg! (That leg bandage thing went down like a lead balloon at Christ College, I can tell you!)
We must all have been very impressionable chaps back then - it sometimes worries me that I can still remember it all so clearly, but it hasn’t happened since...!
My wife and I went for a drink with GB a few years ago. We had a lot of reminiscing and a few glasses of scotch, and of course, one of these recollections was him telling me how Sister Ellis had woken them up to tell them what had happened...!
