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received a nasty surprise one day when Mr Filshie, his Maths master, expressed displeasure at his pupil’s performance. Alf had achieved the remarkable total of 5% in a trigonometry exam and was about to be punished. He recalled this painful incident in his contribution to the Hillhead High School Centenary Year Magazine in 1985.
    ‘Wight,’ said Mr Filshie ominously, ‘I have always thought that you were just an amiable idiot and have treated you accordingly, but now that I see you have come out top of the class in your English paper, Ican only conclude that you have not been trying for me. Hold out your hands!’
    Although doing nothing to improve Alf’s Maths, this painful means of maintaining control worked and there was a record of excellent discipline within the school. It was this, perhaps, that stimulated the young Alf Wight to keep, for the first time, a diary.
    One of the most intriguing aspects of James Herriot’s writing was his ability to reproduce incidents that occurred many years before. His attention to detail is so authentic that one would be forgiven for thinking that they happened only yesterday. Many people, when discussing his work, assumed that he meticulously kept diaries to which he referred when he began writing in earnest. Alf often stated, in his many interviews with the media, that he did not keep a diary and that he could remember the old days clearly, right down to the smallest detail. Despite these assertions, he was widely disbelieved, but, in fact, Alfred Wight was not quite the organised and methodical man that many believed him to be. Apart from two brief periods in his life, he did not keep a diary but he was a great observer, especially of anything that interested him, and had an excellent photographic memory. The fascinating vagaries of human nature and the humorous incidents that unfolded before his eyes remained firmly in his mind; this, combined with his gift as a writer, provided a recipe for success.
    The first time he kept a diary was from 1933 until 1935 – during his last year at Hillhead School and his first two years at Glasgow Veterinary College. His mother preserved these old diaries, and they have provided an insight into the enthusiastic approach to life that Alf exhibited as a young man.
    He used his diary to poke fun at his teachers at Hillhead. ‘Miss Chesters (Sophy), endeavours to pump French into us. Chesters is frank and almost boyish and I like her very well. Twice a week, we get Mr (Tarzan) Brookes for Elocution. This bird, tho’ probably well meaning, is nothing but a funiosity.’ And he wrote about his Latin master: ‘Buckie was in a terrible mood today. Roaring and bellowing at us like a rogue elephant. Today, I was amazed to see the length to which his eyes could boggle without falling out.’
    As is hinted by these humorous swipes at his teachers, he enjoyed his time at Hillhead. He loved English and Latin, reading widely around both subjects in his spare time at home. He read ancient writers such as Cicero and Ovid, saying later that so well-versed was he in Latin thathe reckoned he could carry on a conversation with an ancient Roman. Alf’s English, too, benefited from the hours of reading that he put in, and the great enthusiasm he showed for his subjects meant that his school studies were a pleasure.
    I always knew that my father was a well-read man. Our home in Thirsk was always bulging with books and almost all of them had been read. His love of reading stemmed from his schooldays – days during which, whenever he had a spare hour or two, he had a book in his hand. He did not just enjoy reading adventure stories; he devoured the classics avidly. By the age of fifteen, he had read the entire works of Charles Dickens, and his diaries substantiate this. Throughout, there are references to Dickens, Scott, Pepys and, on a more lyrical note, Shakespeare and Milton. ‘Got Dickens’
Tale of Two Cities
out of the library as we have to read it for