Runners

Walking to a div on Tuesday I ended up behind two younger boys, whose conversation I couldn’t help overhearing. Judging from their unbroken voices I guessed they were F blockers, an intuition reflected in their extremely low level of chat which at one point included the smaller of the two bragging about a ‘bird’ he had ‘snared’ over the Christmas holidays. 

On hearing this I felt tempted to karate chop him in the neck, since it was not only a very douchebag thing to say but also a reminder to me of my own incompetence with the ladies at that age.

I resisted though, and by the time our paths diverted had just about calmed down. It was here though that my anger was provoked once more by something Don Juan’s sidekick mentioned: namely, that last half, in a Divinity div, he had claimed a runner.

Now, I can take it when pre-pubescent boys boast about their sexual exploits. I can even take it these adventures involve things I still only dream of. Yet when it's a question of them revealing that in their very first half at Eton, their first twelve weeks of being at the school, they experienced something that I have been waiting nearly three and a half years to taste, then I am liable to flip my lid and do something crazy. 

This is because a runner is, without exaggeration, a gift from the gods. It is a manna wafted down from heaven, which takes the form of your beak unexpectedly and incredibly failing to turn up to your div. What was once time reserved for essay writing and studying can now be dedicated to more noble pursuits, like computer games and tacky dramas. 

Such is the universal joy at this absence that tradition obliges one to run away from the scene of the crime, hence the name ‘runner’, a colloquial version of the official name of ‘a run’.

Of course, a runner cannot simply be claimed at the whim of the div, which is why two rules determine its legitimacy: The first is that the beak must be at least 15 minutes late, and the second is that every boy must report to School Office before going on their ways.

You might think that illness, injury and amnesia would make runners rather common, but in fact they are rare beasts, demonstrated by the fact that I have never got one. 

Nevertheless, the possibility of one coming along is never far from people’s minds. Once a beak is more than two minutes late, it is the only subject on everyone's lips. Routine exclamations of ‘hey, we might get a runner here!’ soon give way to a scrutiny of the rules: 

‘Ten minutes isn’t it?’ someone will ask hopefully.

‘No, fifteen mate.’

‘I thought it was only fifteen after Chambers?’

‘No, it’s fifteen for every div.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah mate, it’s in Fixtures.’

‘I swear someone said they took a runner last year after eight minutes.’

‘I doubt it.’

Next is a speculation on the cause of the beak’s absence. A pessimist will claim to have seen the beak that morning and add, for one's information, that he hasn’t given a runner for over twenty years. Against this, wildly optimistic members of the div will raise hopes with suggestions he's been hit by a car or recently got a divorce.

Ultimately, this is all rather useless, yet it does help to kill time and distract everyone from the burning issue of the time, with the clock on the wall opposite tick, tick tocking away ever so slowly.

With five minutes left to not stare at it is all but impossible. Hallucinations of the hour hand spinning backwards whilst winking at you are not uncommon at this point. There may then be an angry debate on whose watch the group should go on, with some people claiming 11:54, others 11:52 and the rest somewhere in between. 

Just before the moment of departure the class maverick might offer some rousing advice: ‘Remember guys, as soon as it’s twelve we’re off; no hanging about!’ and, ‘If he’s coming down the street as we’re leaving just run past and pretend you haven’t seen him!’

This may or may not have your adrenaline pumping depending on your level of foolishness, but either way the dash across to School Hall is invariably an exhilarating one, fuelled by happy plans of what to do once back in the house. 

Yet of course, this is where my experience ends. 

I can at least claim to have compiled an impressive catalogue of near-misses. The nearest I have come was in an English div last year, when the beak was nowhere to be seen and rumoured to be ill. We waited dutifully for the fifteen minutes to pass before bounding down the stairs like a pack of hyenas, only to stopped in our tracks by the sight of the beak strolling in at the bottom. He smirked at us if to say, ‘Thought you had one there, didn’t you?’ and waved us back upstairs with a supercilious swish of his hand. 

A couple of other times I've been tasked with the job of lookout, which is to be avoided at all costs. This is because if you have to break the bad news, especially with minutes left, the subsequent anger from the others will be mainly directed at you; a classic case of shoot the messenger. 

When I think about it, I admit that I would probably be less peeved about having never had a runner if Runty hadn’t claimed several over his time here. He never fails to let everyone know each time he gets one, and one time even tried to coin for me the nickname of ‘the runner virgin’, which mercifully didn’t catch. 

In fact, there’s no good reason why a runner should be particularly special at all. From listening to Runty, you’d be forgiven for thinking that lying in wait for the lucky  few was an oily rub-down from a busty masseuse. Yet in reality, the general consensus is that they're very anti-climatic. After hanging around for a quarter of an hour and then going over to School Office, only about twenty minutes of the div are left; time for a quick game of Fifa or a bit of Made in Chelsea if you're lucky.

I guess the hype boils down to the unexpectedness of it all; the feeling that you've got away with something you shouldn’t have. For this reason I hope to get at least one before I leave here. If not, some gobby F blocker may have to pay for it!

The Dame

Everyone knows the saying, ‘Behind every great man there’s a great woman,' but in the case of Eton it might easily be changed to ‘Behind every great house master there’s a great Dame.’

The role of the Dame, my own who I have mentioned previously, lies somewhere between a housekeeper and a matron; she provides basic medical care for injured boys whilst organising the rest of the house staff.

Where the name 'Dame' comes from I do not know, but I admit it sounds slightly odd at first, rather like the title you might give to an experienced hand in a brothel. For us though it becomes second nature very quickly.   

Although the house master may be the ultimate figure of authority in the house, the influence of the Dame cannot be underestimated. Since department meetings, tours for prospective parents and a handful of divs each week occupy a lot of the house master's time, it is impossible for him not to delegate a significant amount of power to the Dame,

Being be a skilled administrator is therefore a prerequisite for the job, but what I believe is most appreciated about the Dame, be it consciously or sub-consciously, is her femininity. Being at an all-boys school with a mostly male staff is not a normal existence, and it can be easy to forget that women do actually exist outside of the school, and are not just strange creatures in movies. 

The Dame therefore is a much needed female presence. It may be a stereotype, but women are clearly best at dealing with emotional and personal needs. If a boy is missing his parents for example, or has an awkward rash, the last person he will want go to with this information is his taciturn house master, who will likely order him to ‘man up’. Unlike the Dame, who will offer a shoulder to cry on.

I confess to suffering from homesickness myself during my early inF block. I boarded at prep school, but arriving at Eton was like moving to a big, bad city where life moved at a hundred miles an hour. Feeling pretty down, I therefore crept up to the Dame's flat a couple of times, where I probably put in a good audition for the world’s biggest wimp award, but at least came away slightly happier than when I entered.

Of course, Dames are not perfect. My own one can be a bit annoying at times, and has a habit of summoning you to her flat for the most trivial of reasons.

Overall though, she strikes a good balance between being meddlesome on the one hand and invisible on the other. In some houses, the Dame is said to be so distant that some boys buy their own paracetamol rather than take the 50/50 chance of finding her. In others, the Dame is so interfering that it's like being treated like a toddler.

One drawback to the presence of a female in the house is naturally the risk of being caught naked. Unlike at prep school where matrons supervise shower times without batting an eyelid, nudity in front of the Dame here is definitely not legit. Inevitably though, it happens to everyone a couple of times by accident during their time here. On the one occasion it happened to me I was changing for games when the Dame walked in. My natural reaction was to cup myself, whilst she backed out of the room covering here eyes. ‘You’re not the first and won’t be the last,’ she told me later.

As far as these situations go mine was quite dignified. An older boy, now left, told me about the time he returned to his room after a shower and heard a catchy song come on the radio. Caught up in the excitement of it he began to dance, and the Dame walked in moments later to find him ‘doing the windmill.’ 

My Dame is without a doubt unfailingly professional, but it would be naïve that every Dame ever has been. I say this because after a Field Game last Saturday I was chatting to one of the old boys who told me that when he was at Eton one of his mates had an affair with his Dame.

At first I didn't believe him, so outrageous was the thought that I myself might do something with my Dame. But the more I thought about it, the more plausible it appeared. After all, every year B blockers are turning eighteen and we all know of couples where the age difference is big.

Obviously, it would be breaking about a billion school rules, not to mention laws, but who doesn't like a walk on the wild side now and again?

Which makes me wonder: maybe I'm too mature and sophisticated for all the girls my age? Maybe I need a real woman?

Eco-friendly

I was reading on the BBC website the other day about the big fall in oil prices since last June. Apparently it’s been all over the news for the last six months, which makes me wonder if I’ve been living in a cave during that time. As well as this general point, the article also touched on how the effect of falling prices for consumers, and more specifically their energy bills.

Again, this was news to me as I mistakenly thought all our energy came from coal, nuclear and renewables. But no, oil is a big player, and so a slash in prices means a reduction in energy bills.

Or it should, at least. The report pointed out that many people had barely felt the effect of such a monumental slash in prices, unlike in the reverse situation where any increases are immediately picked up by the consumer.

I was ruminating on all of this yesterday and wondering how much of a saving Eton might make from it. It depends mostly on our price plan I guess, but even a saving of one percent would be enough to divert significant funds elsewhere, like refurbishing my room for example.

The truth is that Eton’s annual energy bill must be absolutely ginormous. Not only does it cover every boy's room, but also all the classrooms (over 100), the boarding houses, School Hall, Bekynton, the Farrer Theatre and the two chapels.

Perhaps Eton has only just realised this and has decided to take action. I say this because on two occasions over the past week I have returned to my room to find it mirroring the temperature of an Alpine slope. Someone, clearly, had been in while I was away and turned off my radiator.

Initially, I suspected my boys' maid, her being the only person besides myself to enter my room on a daily basis. But when I questioned her about it this morning she denied it straight out.

Which leaves two other suspects: the Dame and Runty. The Dame because she’s always banging on about the environment and global warming, and Runty because he’s an idiot and would find it funny.

Something inside me tells me it’s neither of them though, and that instead it could be a younger boy on a self-designated green mission, determined to save the planet little by little.

Perhaps I should be glad that this mystery figure is doing my bit for the environment on my behalf, but the truth is that if I had the choice between making the planet one billionth of a degree colder, or not coming back to a room that's freezing after every single chambers, lunch and games then I'd choose the selfish option.

It's a question I guess of exactly how environmentally friendly we should be. You could argue for example that central heating is unnecessary when we could all dress up like eskimos. Or that computers and phones should be thrown away to reduce carbon emissions. But to me that sounds like hell on earth, a prospect not even worth considering.

In my defence though, I am keen on recycling: green glass, brown glass, cardboard, plastic, cans and electrical items.

I draw the line at some things though. I have never recycled clothes for instance, unlike a certain individual in my block.

I observed this first back in E block when we sat next to each other in Chemistry. I looked over at his shirt one day and was surprised to see it going brown around the cuffs.  

‘Have you worn that shirt for a week or something?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ he said, 'of course not!'

It was so dirty though that I couldn't believe him. But how to prove it? Unless I set up a camera in his room and tracked his every move there was no way of knowing if he'd changed it or not.

Then I had an idea. At the next opportunity I would secretly flick some ink onto his shirt and check to see if it was still there the following week. I did this while we were doing an experiment in a div, and left a mark so conspicuous that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for another.

I waited keenly for the outcome of my plan, and felt vindicated when I saw the mark there next div!

‘You've been wearing that shirt for four days now haven’t you?’ I said.

‘No I haven’t!’ he replied anxiously.

 ‘Yes you have - look at your elbow. That ink is what I flicked on you last div!’ 

Lifting up his arm he saw the clearly visible mark and going red muttered, ‘Yeah, well, maybe I have worn this one a bit too long.’

I was ready at this point to shout out to the rest of the class about my brilliant detective work. But then the beak walked in and stop. As I sat there for the next forty minutes I thought about it all and realised that to reveal what I'd found out would be very cruel. It may have been a bit gross of him not to change his shirt for a week, but he didn't do it out of malice, just laziness.

As we were packing up I spoke to him, ‘Hey mate, don't worry about the shirt thing, I won't say anything.'

'Thanks,' he said, 'I appreciate it.'

'Next time just wear a fresh one, yeah?'

Now, I may not be an eco-warrior who turns off his radiator on leaving the room, who unplugs his appliances after using them and who plants trees in his garden. But I think there's something to be said for there being many ways of being a responsible citizen, and that sometimes, just sometimes, I am one!