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!