We bowl at nets till 3.30. Not many days pass without an accident. It's a wonder to me that boys aren't killed at this exercise: all the nets are very close together and hardly protected at all. Once the House matches start, of course, nets are "dropped" and we simply lie on rugs and applaud or groan according to the fortunes of the game. Most of the masters sit on an elevated mound, Olympians on their dung-hill, near which sacred spot no boy may approach. At 3.45 we get a scrappy tea in our own rooms: the old witch of a bedmaker is supposed to put out the tea-things and the kettle, and produce the roll and butter provided by the school. She frequently forgets, just as she forgets to dust the room or wash up the dirty things. Usually I have to write orders for chocolate, walnut cakes, and fruit and jams or bananas and cream, and dispatch fags to the tuck-shop. There are never less than half a dozen urchins clamouring for tea: at 4.15 the bell rings for afternoon school. Shall I ever forget in the years to come this hellish bell? It rings not less than fifty times a day, usually for five minutes at a time: nothing is so calculated to get on a new-comer's nerves as its incessant tolling, day and night, calling us to some fresh duty. At 6 o'clock the school goes into hall for tea. If one is on duty that means more "calling of rolls" and counting of absentees; if not we have a blessed half-hour in which to prepare for Common Room dinner at 6.30. At 7 we hurry off to take prep. The senior men get half a crown a night for taking prep. in Big School, we poor juniors have to hustle along to supervise one of the other innumerable preps. for no reward. I hate this invigilation. It means that one tries to correct work, but has to interrupt oneself all the time in order to help boys over ridiculous points about cisterns and pipes, quadratic graphs or a line in Homer. Of course one can refuse all aid: most men do lest they should be found ignorant of some department of school study. At 8.45 we again rush to chapel and at 9 another prep. starts, in studies this time, and juniors start to turn on baths as a sign of bed. At 10 o'clock work for the day is over except for masters and the Sixth Form. Shouts and screams come from all the dormitories, and twenty minutes later we go round to see that every one is in bed. By eleven most of the buildings are in darkness. Bridge-parties and conversations over whisky are kept up till twelve or one, but it isn't every night that we have time to indulge in these practices. Such is our normal day, but it's the unusual that finds its chronicling most frequently in this diary. _August 1, 1911_