Choir Outing to Warwick Castle

In the light drizzle of Bastille Day, July 14th 2001, a baker's dozen of our choirboys and a posse of Responsible Adults, Former Choristers and Well-Known Members of the Clergy assembled betimes at Oxford Station to test the ability of Thames Trains to get us all to Warwick. It started promisingly: after seeing whose tongue could catch the most drips coming unhygienically through the roof of Platform 2, the boys were delighted to find half a carriage to themselves. Their delight, shared by the more nervous of the other passengers, was short-lived; a last-minute announcement revealed that only the first three coaches could actually face the journey to Warwick. Alas, we were not in the first three coaches. A character-forming dash ensued, after which six of our boys were able, in the absence of enough seats, to sample the joys of travelling on the luggage rack. They were admirably stoical about this (their formative pew-training coming into its own), and entertained themselves variously with comics, poking each other, 
seeing how many different ways they could separate Antony from his baseball cap, and stuffing fizzy sweets into the bottles of mineral water provided by caring mothers.

Arriving in Warwick, some of the boys investigated the dry moat, and Arthur showed me how to make a gun with cotton grass. He shot his brother Rupert a few times, and then, having got that temporarily out of his system, went to watch the Birds of Prey display. Here I have to report that the boy voted Sacrificial Victim the previous week by the choir men was not fed to the vulture. Sorry, chaps. Blame the Children Act.

The drizzle by now having given way to weather where coats might eventually become superfluous, we picnicked on River Island, and the boys were able to supplement their wholesome packed lunches with emergency injections of EC-permitted toxins via crisps, fizzy drinks and ice-creams. This also gave a breathing-space in which Matthew O'Donovan and Jonathan Matthews were able to demonstrate that, given time and broken voices, choirboys can grow up into recognisably human beings with whom both clergy and parents are happy to associate in public. Fortified by this paradisical vision of the future, we then watched a longbowman who showed us how to win the Battle of Crecy, always a handy skill when your school French runs out on holiday. He was followed by a swordsman introducing us to the quite outstandingly nasty things you can do with swords and daggers, especially from behind, and especially to persons of the male persuasion. Round-eyed, the boys took all this in, and told their parents afterwards in the greatest detail, although they were delicate enough not to discuss it with me, choir mistresses being known to be sensitive creatures who are very easily upset by the high-pitched shrieks of unwilling trebles, not to mention the merest suggestion of bad behaviour. After that we checked out the waxworks featuring scenes from life in the castle during the Wars of the Roses. This enabled us to test the weight of chain mail, have our photographs taken with models of mace-wielding porters and Warwick the Kingmaker, and peer into the mediaeval loos - but we didn't try them, because we were trying to be As Good As Possible In The Circumstances. Well, that's my theory.

Then we queued for rather a long time to visit the dungeon and, somewhat sobered, didn't shove anyone into the oubliette. (Anyway, it's glazed in. They've obviously had parties of choirboys before at Warwick.) Emerging, unlike so many earlier occupants of that least appealing feature of the Middle Ages, we went to the armoury and tried on helmets, pulled longbows, rammed swords with expressions of astonishing viciousness on our hitherto innocent, rosy-cheeked faces,checked out Cromwell's death mask, and turned the rack for ten minutes or so. (Some adults were not impressed with the range of instruments of torture on display; but, to be fair, they had by then been in the boys' company for more than five hours.) A group also went to the haunted tower where they failed to see the ghost despite working themselves up into a state of maximum susceptibility on that subject. Others tried out the pillories, sat in the stocks, and met the ratcatcher. All the boys decided, spontaneously and without the slightest shred of evidence, that a brightly-dressed lady on stilts was a witch, and told her so at every opportunity. My hypothesis, that she was in fact a choir mistress in fancy dress, did not impress them in the least.

No doubt thanks to all our efforts the hitherto-dense crowds were now thinning out, so we had a brief but well-earned rest. This allowed for the consumption of additive-rich ice creams to keep up our hyperactivity levels. Fortified, we then investigated the state 
rooms. In the Great Hall we removed George from the 500 year old garrison stew pot and the boys, making absolutely no connection with that incident, wondered why they didn't have choir stalls in the chapel. We also spotted several pictures of Henry VIII's tight-lipped wives looking firmly the other way. Poor ladies; English history would have been very different if they'd had thirteen lively boys to call their own. 

But the day's interest was not yet exhausted - although some of the adults were showing signs of wear, and Laurence had to compose himself with some boy-free quality time among the Van Dycks. With our plastic swords (Made in China) and Edward's longbow (an asset in any queue) we bounced back to the station and got on our train. Everything was going according to plan, and as we pulled out of Leamington Spa, David was just filling us in on some of the less appealing eating habits of the anaconda, when an announcement told us we would have to disembark at Banbury, because a herd of cows had derailed a train on the other line. A bus, it was claimed, would take us on to Oxford. Displeased but British, we got out, only to find that the bus part of this scenario was a figment of the announcer's overheated imagination. After about 45 minutes, during which Henry and Nick tested the various handball sites afforded by the station car park and Ciaran wisely persuaded his father to come and fetch him, a further announcement tacitly acknowledged what had already become clear to us; that Banbury station was in fact a bus-free zone, and always had been. We were told to get back to the platform and board another train because, rejoice, rejoice, the line was now open.Sort of. We stowed the smaller boys on the luggage racks again, which left enough seats for Proper People, and Matthew Saxton, an honorary Proper Person despite being a choirboy. The train bowled along for a bit, slowed down, and then - stopped. At this point Edward and Robert thought hanging out of the window was a good idea because they were particularly keen to see blood. Andrew, who wasn't, dragged them back several times, saving souls, not to mention the bodies that contain them, being the legitimate concern of vicars. We started to inch forwards. 'I expect we're going so slowly,' said Sam, 'because the blood's made the line slippery.' The blood turned out to belong to 14 bullocks who had broken out of their field and met their maker earlier 
that afternoon. Their large, black bodies were now imperfectly covered with plastic and stones at the side of the track. The boys gave this macabre scene their closest attention, and Leo reported real blood spattered on the front of the derailed train. Someone claimed to have seen a head, but this turned out to be attached to a body, which always spoils that sort of story.

We finally crawled into Oxford station nearly one and a half hours late. Scenes of considerable family affection ensued. Most creditably, practically everyone made it to Matins the next day, and by Evensong we were back to strength, to give a very decent rendering of Purcell's Bell Anthem, not to mention Stanford in B flat. And, less than 24 hours into recovery time, people were already asking where we were going for the choir outing next year.

The University Parks, perhaps?

Cynthia Hall

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