Enrichment

Abstract

Boys at a boarding school like Peterhouse go to lessons and play team games; but they need, and usually want, to engage in other activities. These other activities – of their own choosing – may well prove to be an enrichment which will change their lives forever; or they may simply make school more bearable. For a few boys at Peterhouse, the compulsory appearances on the rugby or cricket field were almost unendurable, and they would have understood Hugh Massingberd’s feelings of humiliation and frustration. For some boys, games were tiresome interludes. But such boys – and many others who enjoyed their team sports – often found pleasure in the range of activities which was on offer.

‘Here’s a skyer for little Lovey-Boy!’ Up would go the shout from my halfbrother Antony (my first hero) and up, up, up would go the hard, red ball, high above the tall thick hedges… The ball always seemed to be suspended in mid-air as if in freeze-frame, and certainly long enough for everyone present – grandparents, parents, assorted aunts, cousins, half-siblings and so forth – to focus their attention on the blushing, nervous, curly-headed youth underneath it. ‘Butterfingers!’ came the hearty chorus in unison, as the ball, having suddenly plummeted with unexpected ferocity, popped out of my fumbling grasp. Following such habitual humiliations, I would retire, in a furious and tearful sulk…

Hugh Massingberd, Daydream Believer: Confessions of a Hero-Worshipper (London 2001) p 7