Tristan's Postcard from Home

18th June 2020

In only a few weeks of intense chaos, the world was thrown into the confinements of a cell, whose windows were of glass rather than bars, whose doors could be locked from within, and whose beds were more comfortable than those at our school. Winchester itself had shut in what seemed to be the quickest 48-hour period of my life, though the prospect of life without examinations has been a good feeling that has lingered ever since. For me at any rate, this has been a fascinating experience that has allowed me to appreciate things in a new light.

For one thing, as a top year, I have missed out on a wonderful, final season of school-boy cricket, the jocular, face-to-face company of friends, and the emotional farewell of Domum. Like anyone else, I had a summer full of plans, and the experience of online teaching, to use that wonderfully British turn of phrase, has been interesting. And yet, to say that things have gone awfully would be quite wrong.

At home, there is still plenty to do and much to learn. Croquet and tennis are the pleasant pastimes by which I while away the hours of summer. And the independent nature of online learning has given me an indication as to how university will be when I arrive eventually. Reading too has been a boon with stern classics such as Brideshead Revisited and the funny stories of P.G. Wodehouse under my gaze. What is more, with the easing of the lockdown, I have even managed to get in a few rounds of golf, one of these being particularly bizarre as I ended up having to take shelter in a bunker from a hailstorm in May!

All in all, I have been fortunate enough to keep busy and to maintain contact with friends; but I yearn to return to the hubbub of normal life and, one day, to the cobbled paths of Flint Court and the hallowed crease of Meads.