Boy (3)
Inside the box were twelve different chocolates. We always knew one of them well, but eleven of them were new. There was also paper in the box. Our job was to try all the chocolates and write the good and bad things about each one on the paper.
Cadbury's plan to ask us about their new chocolates was a good one. Boys at Repton were some of the best chocolate customers in the world. Who knew more about chocolate than us? !
How do companies plan their new chocolates? I loved to think about this.
Many years later, I needed a story for a new book. I remembered those little boxes of chocolate at Repton, and I started to write my book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Sport is very important at English boarding schools, and we played a lot of it. Happily, I was good at sport, and I enjoyed it. Playing sport helped to make the long days shorter.
Life at school was easier for good sportsmen, but it was difficult for bad sportsmen. My favourite sport was a very fast game with a ball. It was called Fives. Because I was one of the best at Fives at Repton, I travelled to other boarding schools and played it with their boys. I also played football and a ball game called squash.
At school, I loved taking photos. Today, cameras are very easy to use, but in the 1920s they were difficult work. I had a big, heavy camera with glass plates. I made a darkroom near the school's music rooms, and I made many photos there.
"After school, do you want to study at Oxford or Cambridge?" my mother asked me one day. These are great and very famous places, and boys from good public schools normally wanted to study at them. But I did not want to study more. I chose to start work at a company called Shell because I wanted to see the world.
I travelled to many countries with Shell, but that is a different story and a different book. I may tell it one day.
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