…Today, worse luck, was when we were going to the Town Hall to perform in
some silly musical play called the Space-Dragon of Galatar [with other schools
from the area].
It was dead boring all through the day.
First of all we had a run through of the songs.
Then we sorted out our movements for the stage.
Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
and over again.
By the time we finished that it was lunchtime.
Then we split into groups to get our costumes ready.
Our costume, as the dragon, was a simple bit of cloth with holes for us to
poke our heads through.
Once we had done that we did a dress rehearsal over and over and over etc.
At 4.30pm we did the five-minute performance.
SIX HOURS OF WORK FOR FIVE MINUTES!…

We’d been rehearsing this nonsense for the best part of two weeks. I couldn’t believe so much effort was involved for so little reward. I suppose it was meant to represent a gesture of cross-town co-operation, a “hands across the water” to our various educational rivals. Albeit in the form of an supernatural fairy tale set in space. With songs.

But even as a piece of symbolism it failed, because nobody mingled with anybody from a rival school, and the fact we’d all been assigned different costumes and roles just deepened any feelings of suspicion.

The Space-Dragon of Galatar made a couple of paragraphs in that week’s edition of the Loughborough Echo. It was the first such initiative was ever attempted. It was also the last.