If you’ve been regularly reading my blog, you’ll know how much Salopians like to throw things at each other, be it food, sports equipment or insults. Come winter, and snow comes into that list. Yes, lads. Snowball fight season is in.
This is actually my first actual real-life encounter with snow, and it isn’t quite what I expected. I hadn’t expected, for instance, a snowball to have almost the same texture as cotton candy, only bitterly cold. It’s been snowing quite heavily here. So much so that the school’s cancelled Field Day, of which usually I have a day off. Now we have to go to lessons. Bloody ridiculous. You can’t go to Arts or Astronomy because there’s 15cm of snow covering the 200m journey, but you’ve got to go to lessons, which is probably more burdening because it’s 1km away from our house.
Actually, under school rules, snowfights are banned. But as they say, some rules are made to be broken.
Everytime we were outside, even inbetween classes, people were throwing snowball at each other. Even five minutes intervals between lessons were used to accommodate massive ten-a-side throw-a-thons. My hands go numb everytime I make a snowball. It’s good that Geo offered me his right glove because he’s left-handed. Amusingly, he took a food tray from KH, planning to use it as a sled later to slide down the hills that are abundant in school.
Of course, later, after I had taken a food tray myself, me and Geo went to the back of Main School Building, where the boat house was, just beside the river. We duly sailed down the slope using the 12x24cm trays, as chaos ensued. Then we used proper sleds, from Paddy, and another sixth form guy whose name I don’t know. That was serious fun. I snapped my middle finger after me and Paddy went side by side and my hands got caught under his sled. Of course, despite the injury, I came back up for more. We tried it on our backs, on our chests and on our butts. Geo and Paddy even tried it snowboard-style. Once I had to stop myself quite quickly because I wasn’t about to stop and I was heading straight into the river. Not in the slightest desire for hypothermia, I used the rubber studs of my turf shoes to avoid an ice cube sculpture of me floating on the River Severn.
At 2pm, Geo had to go to Art, and Paddy had to go back to his house. So I went to the area between Ridgemount and Science building, where a massive snow-fight was in progress. Ridgemount had one of those catapult things to launch massive snowballs. That was quite cool. The power on it, was just incredible. After that, the upper sixth was making a hugely humongous snowball, of which was later to be made into a snowman. But then some lower sixth guys decided to spoil the party and crash it with a big field-smashing thingy. What remains of the snowman, became a much larger snowball, and was rolled into KH. This you gotta see. It’s in my videos page, either already uploaded, or to be uploaded soon.
If it sounds like the school is a really big bundle of fun, that’s cause it is. For Physics today, we launched a rocket 500m into the air, just for the sake of it. For Mechanics, we watched an episode of Friends. For Chemistry, urm, we marked our past papers. For Pure Maths, urm, even worst, we did work on Differentiation. Okay, so it’s not completely fun and no work. But then with this kind of relaxed attitude, you’ve gotta wonder how the school earned its high reputation in academic and sporting excellence.
Life goes on as usual in Shrewsbury School. Banter, throwing stuff, that aloofness in the air. Having fun, acting insane. That sense of Salopian motto, ‘maximum yield with minimum effort.’ A motto I’ve been using a lot over the years. I think I’m suited to this school.
Signing out
Over and out
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