2003-02-23 7:43 pm
Boarding School #6
It was the choir's duty to assemble the stage whenever there was a big concert at school. The old wooden tiering was stuffed into a hut behind one of the boarding houses. We had to drag the heavy structures across the quad, along the drive and in through the double doors at the front of the school.
It was best to get one of the platforms for the front of the stage - they were shallow and very light, compared to the enormous, heavy lattices that slotted together at the back, where the tenors and basses stood. If you ended up with one of these, you also had the added chore of smoothing over where the legs of the stageblock had gouged long streaks into the gravel, because they were too heavy to lift clean off the ground.
It was while carrying one of these stage blocks that Mr R., the Director of Music, asked me about being homesick.
I felt very pleased that he had asked me about it - he had already impressed in the few weeks I had been at the school as a sort of teacher I had not come across before - he made us coffee when we had a lesson, and usually opened the class with a general chat about any sort of nonsense that we felt like discussing.
I told him that I was OK now, and I was happy, and it had just been a bit of a blip. He said that it was normal and nearly everybody had it at some time or other. It was just a stage, he said, and then we both laughed.
We lifted the block up the steps and I took extra care not to scrape the legs against the polished wooden floors of the memorial hall.
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