Highland life
A likely story
Taki
nlike Ralph Glasser's classic auto- biography of growing up in the Gorbals, this is a not so classy confession about my Scottish school-days at Gordonstoun, a time that shall live in infamy, for it is those days I have been rebelling against ever since.
Yes, it's true, it was Gordonstoun that made me, not Olympus High, nor Eton, although that came about as a result. And it was my daddy who had the brilliant idea of sending me to Scotland `to get edu- cated'. In fact I remember it as if it were yesterday. 'This boy is obviously worth- less,' he told my mother one bright Athe- nian morning, `so why not send him to that school near the North Pole where Prince Philip went. You never know, he too might make a good marriage.' And so I was packed off to Scotland, to a borstal for the upper classes rather, some- thing that crossed my mind years later when I attended graduate school at Pen- tonville. The first things that struck me were the surroundings and the weather. They were flat and wet, and it was ex- tremely cold. The second was the food, which made me wonder, like Dr Johnson, why we were being fed food the rest of Europe only fed to horses. The third was a red-haired boy in the bunk next to me who kept drinking some foul-smelling stuff out of a bottle and who spent most of his time sleeping. His name was Anthony Haden- Guest.
The school was housed in a very old and solid Scottish Baronial building, one that belonged to the Gordon-Cumming family, I believe, until one of its members began punting on chemmy with the then Prince of Wales. We all wore short trousers and matching sweaters, blue in the morning and grey in the afternoon, with medal ribbons denoting what rank one had reached (unnecessary in Haden-Guest's case). The boy who bunked on my other side, however, resembled a Soviet marshal on Mayday. He had more ribbons than a Southern belle, as he was a great rugger player and rather useful (as they say in England) on the cricket pitch. His name was Humphrey Wakefield, now Sir Hum- phrey, a fact I wish I had known back then. I say this because rather than follow the example of Humphrey I took after Haden- Guest, which Anthony himself admitted was like having Frank Giles as a role model.
Our daily routine would have been approved by Leonidas of Sparta as well as by Genghis Khan. When we were allowed to go to Elgin (the nearest town and one named after the man who very wisely preserved our marbles) there were no brothels to be found. Only pubs. For a hot-blooded Greek this was simply torture. The rest of the boys did not seem to mind in the least. Mind you, there was no hanky-panky either. Since the weather, the short pants and the chapped knees discour- aged the homosexual intimacies universal in other public schools, there was little to worry about on that front. But it did make most of us feel left out of the rest of the British public school system, and I guess it still does.
One got beaten for honourable offences at Gordonstoun, offences such as hang- gliding over a mountain, or swimming under the ice etc. . . . Haden-Guest was the only boy in the school who was never beaten. Years later Spiro Niarchos match- ed his record by obtaining a doctor's certificate disqualifying him from all physical exercise. The doctor who issued it is at present living on his yacht off Monte Carlo. As is the kindly Scot who opened the first and last brothel in Elgin. Which reminds me. Ever since Gordonstoun I've made many Scottish friends, too numerous to mention here in fact, and the only thing I regret is that it all ended in tears when I was expelled. It was on a Sunday, the
SCOTTISH SPECIAL
brothel was shut, as all good brothels are on Sundays, and I happened to make a pass at a local girl who unfortunately turned out to be a Shetland pony. That is how I came to go to Eton.
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