The Lincolnshire Star 01 July 1927 - Let The Sun Shine In

Local schoolboy wins scholarship to top preparatory school

 

Our congratulations go to Peter Hayter (8) from Skegness for winning the annual Norman Angell Scholarship prize for entry into Little St Hugh’s Preparatory School, one of the county’s most highly regarded schools.

Peter won the scholarship for high scores in the school’s forward-looking entry exams, that include not just Maths, English and Science, but also a Money Management paper and a Story Challenge. The exams have been developed in association with esteemed alumnus former Labour MP, Norman Angell, who is perhaps best well-known for his internationalist anti-war views and is also a past contributor to this very organ.

So impressive was Peter Hayter’s contribution to the Story Challenge, written at such a tender age with great maturity and fine feeling, that we felt compelled to seek permission from the Hayter family for Peter’s story to be republished to a wider audience. We’re delighted to report that permission was given and below is the aforementioned story.

The challenge for all the boys who undertook the Story Challenge was to choose one of three suggested titles and produce an essay of at least two sides of exam paper in length, taking only one hour. to write it.  The suggested titles were: The Way Forward; Let The Sun Shine In; Man’s Best Friend.

We think our readers will agree that Peter Hayter is a young writer of great promise and we all look forward to seeing how he progresses at Little  St Hugh’s – and beyond!

Let The Sun Shine In

The stars were very bright on the night that the tramp walked into the town.  It was very late and everyone in the town was asleep.

The tramp tried to walk as quietly as possible so that he did not wake anyone up. He was worried that his old shoes were very noisy, but he could not do anything about that.

All his clothes were very old and dirty. He had a long coat on with lots of holes in it and baggy trousers with a piece of orange string as a belt. He didn’t have any gloves but he did have a large felt hat. His beard was long and dirty. His face was dirty. He looked like he had not eaten a proper meal for a long time, which was true.

What he knew was that a clear sky meant it would be very cold all night and that there might even be a frost. He had no bed for the night and no means of keeping warm. He stopped walking for a moment and shivered. It was going to be a long, cold night.

What he wanted was to find some food, any food, and then try and find some place where he might be able to sleep safely until morning. But the town was an unfriendly place. The tramp knew that people did not want him there which is why he came in the night. During the day he would go out into the countryside or by the sea and ask people for work or for food. Most of the time they would tell him to go away.

The town was the best place to find food, but it was dangerous too. The tramp knew to look in people’s bins for leftovers and also to look out the back of shops.

He went down a dark and narrow alleyway. His footsteps echoed off the corrugated metal fence. He stopped for a moment and tried to see if he could see any bins or bags in the dark. The silence all around him scared him.

Then he got even more scared because he could hear scratching noises. He could hear scuffling. He could hear the wind blow, and a window rattle, and something drop onto the stone path from a window shelf. Suddenly there was the clatter of a bin lid falling off and it rang around the town like a giant cymbal.

Now that his eyes were getting used to the dark the tramp could see two animals on top of the bins digging into something. He wasn’t sure what the animals were. They were probably cats but they seemed scarier than that and when one turned to look at him he could see two scary round eyes that shone like tiny pocket torches.

The tramp turned and hurried away. He would get no food tonight, but maybe he would find somewhere warm to sleep.

Then the wind got up, the sky clouded over and cold rain started to fall. The weather changed so quickly on the coast, he thought. And I don’t have a raincoat.

The water seeped into his rotten coat and his felt hat became soggy. The water dripped off his fingers and flooded into his leaky shoes. He felt like a drowned rat. Rats! He thought. The animals in the bins were probably rats. Rats might eat him if he fell asleep.

The tramp became very afraid and very cold and decided to walk around some more so that he didn’t freeze to death and the rats would not get him.

He was so cold and frightened and so hungry that he thought the night would never end and he would die. But just at the moment when he thought everything was lost, the first rays of the sunrise appeared. The sky went from black to purple to blue. The sun went from a tiny line of pink to a big strip of orange and then went full in the sky as a burning yellow flame. The frost melted off the trees. A mist rose off the pavements. Birds started singing.

The tramp turned his face toward the sun and felt the warmth on his skin. He felt his clothes drying off and he stopped shivering.

Let the sun shine in, he thought.

By Peter Hayter (8)