10 Writing home

Writing home At St Peter's, Sunday morning was letter-writing time. At nine o'clock the whole school had to go to their desks and spend one hour writing a letter home to their parents. At ten-fifteen we put on our caps and coats and formed up outside the school in a long crocodile and marched a couple of miles down into Weston-super-Mare for church, and we didn't get back until lunchtime. Church-going never became a habit with me. Letter-writing did. Here is the very first letter I wrote home from St Peter's.

在圣彼得教堂，星期天的早晨是写信的时间。 九点钟，全校学生都要到课桌前，花一个小时给家里的父母写一封信。 十点十五分，我们戴上帽子，穿上大衣，在学校外面排成一条长长的鳄鱼形队形，走了几英里到超级马雷韦斯顿去做礼拜，直到吃午饭才回来。 去教堂从来没有成为我的习惯。 写信了。这是我从圣彼得写给家里的第一封信。

From that very first Sunday at St Peter's until the day my mother died thirty-two years later, I wrote to her once a week, sometimes more often, whenever I was away from home. I wrote to her every week from St Peter's (I had to), and every week from my next school, Repton, and every week from Dar es Salaam in East Africa, where I went on my first job after leaving school, and then every week during the war from Kenya and Iraq and Egypt when I was flying with the RAF.

从圣彼得教堂的第一个星期天开始，直到32年后我母亲去世，我每周给她写一封信，有时离家时写得更频繁。 我每周都在圣彼得学校给她写信(我不得不这样做)，每周都在我的下一所学校里给她写信，每周都在东非的达累斯萨拉姆给她写信，那是我离开学校后的第一份工作，然后每周都在战争期间从肯尼亚、伊拉克和埃及给她写信，当时我在英国皇家空军服役。

My mother, for her part, kept every one of these letters, binding them carefully in neat bundles with green tape, but this was her own secret. She never told me she was doing it. In 1967, when she knew she was dying, I was in hospital in Oxford having a serious operation on my spine and I was unable to write to her. So she had a telephone specially installed beside her bed in order that she might have one last conversation with me. She didn't tell me she was dying nor did anyone else for that matter because I was in a fairly serious condition myself at the time. She simply asked me how I was and hoped I would get better soon and sent me her love. I had no idea that she would die the next day, but she knew all right and she wanted to reach out and speak to me for the last time.

我母亲保存着每一封这样的信，并用绿胶带小心翼翼地捆成整齐的一捆，但这是她自己的秘密。 她从没告诉过我她这么做了。 1967年，当她知道自己将不久于人世时，我正在牛津的医院里做一次严重的脊柱手术，无法给她写信。 所以她特意在床边装了一部电话，以便和我最后通上几句话。 她没有告诉我她快死了，其他人也没有告诉我，因为当时我自己的情况也相当严重。 她只是问我过得怎么样，希望我能尽快好起来，并向我问好。 我不知道她第二天就会死去，但她知道得很清楚，她想伸出手来和我说最后一句话。

When I recovered and went home, I was given this vast collection of my letters, all so neatly bound with green tape, more than six hundred of them altogether, dating from 1925 to 1945, each one in its original envelope with the old stamps still on them. I am awfully lucky to have something like this to refer to in my old age. Letter-writing was a serious business at St Peter's. It was as much a lesson in spelling and punctuation as anything else because the Headmaster would patrol the classrooms all through the sessions, peering over our shoulders to read

当我康复回家后，我收到了一大堆我的信件，这些信件都用绿色胶带捆得整整齐齐，总共有六百多封，时间从1925年到1945年，每一封都装在原来的信封里，上面还贴着旧邮票。 在我年老的时候，有这样的东西可以参考，我真是太幸运了。 在圣彼得教堂，写信是一件严肃的事情。 这是一堂关于拼写和标点的课，因为校长会在整个课程期间在教室里巡逻，从我们的肩膀上偷看我们的阅读

what we were writing and to point out our mistakes. But that, I am quite sure, was not the main reason for his interest. He was there to make sure that we said nothing horrid about his school. There was no way, therefore, that we could ever complain to our parents about anything during term-time. If we thought the food was lousy or if we hated a certain master or if we had been thrashed for something we did not do, we never dared to say so in our letters. In fact, we often went the other way. In order to please that dangerous Headmaster who was leaning over our shoulders and reading what we had written, we would say splendid things about the school and go on about how lovely the masters were.

我们在写什么，并指出我们的错误。 但我敢肯定，这不是他感兴趣的主要原因。 他在那里确保我们不会说他学校的坏话。 因此，在学期期间，我们没有办法向父母抱怨任何事情。 如果我们觉得伙食难吃，或者我们讨厌某个主人，或者我们因为没有做过的事被打了一顿，我们从来不敢在信中说出来。 事实上，我们经常走另一条路。 为了取悦那位倚在我们肩上读我们写的东西的危险的校长，我们总是夸赞学校的优点，不停地说老师们是多么可爱。

Mind you, the Headmaster was a clever fellow. He did not want our parents to think that those letters of ours were censored in this way, and therefore he never allowed us to correct a spelling mistake in the letter itself. If, for example, I had written… last Tuesday knight we had a lecture…, he would say: 'Don't you know how to spell night?' 'Y-yes, sir, k-n-i-g-h-t.' 'That's the other kind of knight, you idiot!' 'Which kind, sir? I… I don't understand.' 'The one in shining armour! The man on horseback! How do you spell Tuesday night?' 'I… I… I'm not quite sure, sir.' 'It's n-i-g-h-t, boy, n-i-g-h-t. Stay in and write it out for me fifty times this afternoon. No, no!

请注意，校长是个聪明人。 他不想让我们的父母认为我们的信件是这样被审查的，因此他从不允许我们纠正信件本身的拼写错误。 举个例子，如果我写了……上周二我们有一节课……，他会说:‘你不知道怎么拼写night吗?“是的，先生，k-n-i-g-h-t。“那是另一种骑士，你这个白痴!”“哪一种，先生?” 我…我不明白。“穿着闪亮盔甲的那个!”马背上的人!Tuesday night怎么拼?“我……我……我不知道,先生。”“这是n-i-g-h-t,男孩,n-i-g-h-t。 呆在家里，今天下午给我写五十遍。 不,不!