Moreover I do not think that this curiously detached attitude towards education was confined to schools. It had been intended that I should go to one of the great universities. I was tepid about the idea myself, for I had developed a dislike for the very thought of educational establishments. However, the prospect of three extra seasons in the Alps was a considerable incentive, and by dint of an enormous mental effort I succeeded in cramming sufficient Latin into my head to pass (at my second attempt) the necessary entrance examination. In due course I went to be interviewed by the master of my prospective college. When I was asked what subject I propose to take when I came up to the university, I replied, somewhat diffidently, that I wanted to take Geology - diffidently, because I still regarded such things as having no reality in the hard world of work. The answer to my suggestion confirmed my fears. ‘What on earth do you want to do with Geology? There is no opening there unless you eventually get a first and become a lecturer in the subject.’ A first, a lecturer - I, who could not even learn a couple of books of Horace by heart! I felt that I was being laughed at. In fact I am sure I was not, and that my adviser was quite sincere and only trying to be helpful, but I certainly did not feel like arguing the matter. I listened meekly to suggestions that I should take Classics or Law, and left the room in a state of profound depression. ‘Oh Lord,’ I thought, ‘even here I won't be able to escape from Kennedy's Latin Primer,’ with which I had been struggling for ten years.