A Full Pipe Band, “to Calm Any First Day Nerves”

His own request was smaller. No photo at the gate, no waving, and drop him by the postbox at the end of the road, where nobody could tell who he belonged to. He made me repeat it back, twice, like a pilot.

Campbell’s day, as reported, ran to a timetable I would happily have stolen. The pipes played. The Head of Year 8, Mr McKee, stood at the Middle School entrance and shook each pupil’s hand. Then tutors, an assembly, a tour, lunch, and a scavenger hunt run by the prefects, with questions including “What animal welcomes you to CCB?” and “How many Victoria Cross medals are on display in Central Hall?” Along the way, the report says, the boys learned the school motto: Ne Obliviscaris, Never Forget.

I did not have a pipe band. I had a Bluetooth speaker and Spotify, which holds more bagpipe music than any one nation should need. On the morning I played some in the car, softly, for nerves. He asked me to turn it off at the lights. I turned it down. At the postbox I wound the window down to say a casual goodbye, forgot the speaker was still connected, and sent him up the road to massed pipes at a volume I can only call ceremonial.

At Campbell, the boys seem to come round to it. One prefect leaving in 2022 wrote that his fondest memory of that first day was walking to the front doors “as the school’s pipe band welcomed us.” A leaver the following year said that on his first day in Year 8 he had never expected to end up playing the bagpipes as pipe major of the school band, and in his final year he led it. So the system works. You are piped in at eleven, and seven years later you are the one doing the piping, with band practice on Tuesdays from 3.30 to 5.30, covering marching drill, instrument maintenance and deportment.

Our youngest has not joined a band. He has, however, taken the motto to heart. It is now October and he has not forgotten the postbox. Neither, I gather, has anyone in Year 7.