Is there anywhere as perfect as a good prep school

Every speech day at Boy’s prep school for the last five summers I’ve watched the Year Eight leavers and their parents troop off to the dining room for their final farewell lunch with the headmaster and staff. This year it was our turn and I didn’t enjoy it one bit.

In fact, I was so cut up I had to nip off for an uncharacteristic daytime fag round the back of the dustbins with the only master (‘Why do you call them “masters”? They’re called “teachers”, Dad!’) I knew smoked. ‘This is it,’ I thought miserably to myself. ‘The last time I’ll ever come to Papplewick. Probably the last time ever I’ll see most of these faces I’ve come to take for granted, all these strangers who became my friends. And now they’re about to fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day….’

Boy, of course, wasn’t troubled by any of this stuff. Like most school-leavers, all he can think of is where he’s going next and how totally brilliant it’s going to be in the world of nearly-men. But the other parents felt much as I do: I could tell by the way none of us was meeting the other’s eye, avoiding social interaction pretty much altogether in fact. Children don’t feel this stuff because — quite properly — they’re callous and they live in the moment. By the time you’ve hit your forties and fifties, though, landmark events like this take on an awful significance. It’s not as bad losing a parent or having a friend die of cancer, but it’s definitely another of the signs: your boy is no longer a chirpy little thing in shorts and there’s another five years of your life gone — bang — without your scarcely even noticing.

Really, it seems like only yesterday that we were being shown the school for the first time by the headmaster and I asked if I could hold the rainbow boa in the science class and it bit me so that blood ran down my chin.