First few weeks, bullying after lights out

And how did I fit in to all this, having just arrived?

My prevailing emotion was fear. I saw the huge boys in the house and feared their capacity for cruelty. I saw the boys in my year and feared that they would only want to mock me. I sometimes wonder whether these things therefore became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because they came true.

I was alien and seemed to have no way of fitting in. In my previous school there was no real culture to fit in to. I simply had no experience of needing to fit in to a group culture in this way.

I felt very alone.

Then came the bullying. It started to be felt most in the dormitories. It happened after lights out at 1015. At this point the dormitory doors were shut and the dorm became under the rule of the "dorm pigs".

The bullies were the dorm captains (dorm pigs). In our dorm of 20 boys there were 3 or 4 of these boys from the third year. They were most of them very big compared to me and my first year peers.

I remember one of the favourite forms of bullying was that selected first years (or one selected first year boy) was made to try to get from one end of the dorm to the other without being spotted by the "spotlight" of the dorm pigs' torches. I remember looking down from my bed (I was on a top bunk) in terror as one of my peers tried to achieve this feat. If he was caught he was given a beating. I think most were caught.

I must note at this point that I was never singled out for especial punishment / bullying of this kind. It was my position to be observer. I was tiny when I reached goring - only 4 foot 10 and the bullies clearly feared that i would not withstand the punishment - due to my smallness and weakness.

I looked on, and in so doing I was miserable. I hated it. It filled me with fear and horror. Perhaps if it had happened to me it might have been better. But I only prayed it would stop.

I have been told since that to observe the infliction of cruel (physical) treatment on another is more psychologically hurtful than receivng it directly (obviously within certain limits).

Every night I went to bed trembling with fear, hating that time.