my habs
A Good Start On Life’s Track Damon Hill, Racing Driver (1979) I enjoyed Haberdashers’ academically, took advantage of its good sports facilities, and appreciated the responsible way it treated its pupils. Most importantly the teachers were excellent. I was not aware of it at the time, but now that I have children myself, I realise how important education is. English and History were my favourite subjects. I liked Physics, too, but my Maths let me down. I had a brilliant Economics teacher, who was really a minimalist. He had a wry sense of humour and made the subject fascinating. Haberdashers’ has an almost ideal location, not far from London, but effectively in the country. And because of the splendid surroundings we were not always stuck in the classroom. It was great for a day boy like me. I played several sports and my main achievement was getting into the water polo team because I was a good swimmer. I particularly enjoyed the
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old boys, notes
away games because we were treated to a tea. Water polo is a vicious game, but I only played it in the sixth form, once we had been allowed to stop cricket and rugby. I was completely useless at both of them. I liked the aggression of rugby but never really cottoned on to the rules, so there was little chance of my scoring a try. And I did not really want to do all that running anyway. Cricket was a great day out in the sun. The masters pretty much left us to it, which was appreciated. There was no opportunity to get involved in motor racing at school because there was no provision for it. The only way in which you might say it helped my motor racing career was that I was allowed to ride a moped to school and, when I was older, a motor bike. I later progressed to rather more powerful fourwheeled vehicles.