Sunday, March 19, 2006

When in Eton endeavour to talk to the chaps who are excited by the fact that they have a Gutenburg Bible in the library.
Eton is very large and rather impressive. The graffiti on the oak panelling is exceedingly neat. 'Tis one of the ways they endeavour to disconcert poor people who go to dinner there, along with saying "of course that only dates back to 1637-ish".
Excruciating and silent car journey with many girls. Silent in my case only. Eventually we arrived and spent more time lurking in corridors with the others and Mr B. Finally we were allowed into the Housemaster's amazingly nice study, and looked at his bookshelves in an exceptionally nosy manner, and were given sparkling wine. The Etonians came in and I discussed Theology with one, found the Classicists (which to be honest could be done by sight: green cardigan and a red tie?). Once I was actually speaking, ie. not in the car, the stammer began. Went into dinner and was downright intimidated by the cutlery, recited Larkin to the boy next to me and discussed Chaucer, English and Horace. He had read Leishman! Generally a very decent sort. The food was inedible, I endeavoured to look as though I was eating and drank the exceptionally bad white and then the exceptionally bad red, and discovered that trying very hard not to stammer makes it worse. Then they switched Etonians at desert and I was stuck between two mathematicians, one of whom told me he could never respect me since I failed Maths GCSE. After that pretty much fled to coffee, talked to the Classicists and English chap again, and met the Physicist-Philosopher, who compared degree unemployability with me, and disliked Richard Dawkins (he was an atheist too, just a liberal one). Then went home, on the very long train journey I shall mention later.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Failed being a rather relative term.

Anyhow, I'm still not entirely clear as to why you went in the first place.

8:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Honestly, with the amount Etonians are reported to drink, you'd think they could manage some decent booze.

Say what you want about Kings boys, but we know our drink.

8:34 AM  
Blogger pseudo bohemian loser said...

a) scholarship boys, b) cheap/bad wine tends to have an higher alcohol content.

10:31 AM  

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