The Spirit Of Rugby: The Underbelly Of Rugby Town and School

By Colin Hosier

A true-blue Aussie emigrates to England for his life-time adventure and lands in the Town of Rugby, England. Possessing an interest in English history, he seeks out adventures to experience within the new cultural dimensions. Initially, this seems limited to experiences encompassing cultural differences.

He takes a teaching position at a school in Rugby and discovers huge differences between his laid-back Aussie culture and the daily English culture. Enduring Aussie put-downs, he gives as good as he gets. However, he takes things too far on occasions resulting in him being viewed as an unpredictable “Aussie nutter”.

Adventures quickly creep up on him, but he views the unfolding events as a wind-up from his newly met acquaintances. He is sucked into ever weirdly developing circumstances, where he is forced to suspend his disbelief and go with the flow.

Alexandra becomes the new love of his life and he becomes deeply besotted by her captivating looks, character and alluring personality. As long as they are together, he decides he can tolerate her surreal sudden appearances, disappearances and special quirks. He came to England for adventure and he is now enveloped by it.

He and Alexandra tour the famous Rugby School and his surreal world explodes into the fanciful underbelly of the connection between the town and the school. His adventures start questioning his very existence.

How will he respond, because he was warned by Martin, the Leader of the Paranormal Club about such events which led Martin himself having a long mental recovery for his sanity. There is far more to the town of Rugby than meets the eye. It appears that it is something that has been there for centuries, evading the public eyes of past and present residents of the town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Dec 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781982298494

Colin Hosier

Hosier Cramb and his wife emigrated to England in 2008. Living in the town of Rugby, Midlands UK for seven years, they discovered that the town had many hidden secrets, historical gems and forgotten history. They also discovered that as Aussies, they spent the first few years attempting to fit into the English micro-culture so different from the Australian culture to which they had been accustomed. Hosier decided to intensively research the school and the town. He found secret undercurrents and interesting belief systems in the past and present. Hosier became increasingly infatuated with the historical richness of the quiet, almost sleepy town. Not only was it the birthplace of its namesake sport, he found a treasure trove of old buildings, customs, important people, culture and traditions that made the town such a special historical place with unknown or forgotten history. Being a drama teacher for several decades and a play-write for years, he decided to write a fictionalised historical novel about the exciting historical underbelly of the town and the school, whilst encapsulating the ever present “feeling” that there was so much unknown history to discover. He reveals the richly historical town of Rugby to the world and in the process, inter-weaves some of the hidden gems of the town and the school into the fictional narrative. Hosier maintains that he constantly felt “the spirit of Rugby,” the longer he lived in the town and the more he delved into historical records and listened to local rumours, legends and tales from the older residents. Hosier has his own website hosiercramb.com.au, where you can learn more about him and the wonderfully fascinating history of Rugby Town and Rugby School.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

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High Street can look so depressing on a grey rainy day. It also acts as a wind tunnel for every conceivable breath of air that moves. I cannot remember ever walking up High Street without feeling a breeze. I pulled my coat closed and adjusted my scarf as the wind cut through my vest.

For Lease signs dotted the shop windows either side of me and invited me to contact a person at an Estate Company somewhere in Rugby town. There were more signs at the top end of town now as the credit crunch worsened. I had read in the paper that the borough council was offering cash incentives for residents to open any sort of bona fide business in the empty shops. I smiled to myself as I thought of all the people who did not realise that if they opened a business, few shoppers would have the money to buy wares or services at their shop, as this was the reason that the shops were for lease in the first place.

The light had faded a few hours ago and I could see the raindrops jagging downwards in the yellowish light of the street lamps as I approached the top of the street. Only a few fools like me were walking home in this weather. I nodded as I passed an elderly man and received no acknowledgement.

How many times did that happen, I thought to myself.

How much does it take to nod back, grunt, or even smile?

Was I expecting too much from people to say Gidday, ‘Cheers" or even flicker a change in their facial expression?

I stopped under the streetlamp on the corner of High and Lawrence Sheriff streets, mainly to answer my phone that was ringing merrily away somewhere buried in one of the pockets in my clothes. It stopped ringing as I found it; Typical. I glanced over at the high windows in the old buildings of Rugby School and fleetingly thought about all the people who had looked out of these windows over the past couple of hundred years. These thoughts always filled my mind whenever I passed the school. I was generally musing as I realised that coincidentally, a figure was looking at me out of the window. The form was not moving but seemed transfixed in its gaze on me.

Go back to preparing your lessons, you stupid elitist snob, was my audible mumble as I turned to walk down towards the walkway under the gyratory. The gyratory idea might work well in the mind of a road engineer, but had serious flaws when it came to the predictability of behaviour of the human drivers who frequented the road every day. I was glad of the walkway underpass to negate my need to play chicken with the traffic each day. After all, this is why I walked instead of taking my car. It wasn’t that far.

I secured my job as a teacher two months ago after arriving from Australia just prior to Christmas for a new experience in England. I had lost count of the number of people who had asked me why on earth would I leave Australia to live in England and then choose Rugby of all places to live and work. I had developed a standard answer that I reeled off to any enquiring citizen. After all, why does anyone do anything? Because they choose to or want to or have to.

Keep speaking … cos I luv your accent, was the common request.

I don’t have an accent. You do, was my tongue-in-cheek reply.

Tonight however, I was walking home after meeting with my fellow paranormal investigators. I had taken up the hobby years ago and since moving to England, I could pursue my hobby more vigorously. I had noted, that in the various books of hauntings and ghosts in Warwickshire, there were no mentions of any reports of occurrences in Rugby. This fact surprised me but it had been verified by the members of the paranormal club I had joined. I wondered why the club actually existed but they had assured me when I joined, that there was plenty of activity around the shire to keep the club busy. I also think that the activity they were referring to was drinking activity as it seemed more like a social club to me. So far, in two months, there had been no reported paranormal activity to investigate, but I still faithfully attended the meetings as it gave me a chance to meet and associate with some of the local people. Alright, I will admit that the shapely Alexandra Langford was a part attraction. Just looking at her walk gave me goose bumps. Sigh. Everything was so firm and curvy. I was surprised that the other blokes in the club never seemed to pay attention to her. She appeared to only talk to me at the meetings, but it was probably because I was the only person who spoke to her. I hadn’t fitted in well yet with the other blokes, but I was hanging in there.

I inserted the key in my side door, turned the handle and stepped inside. The odour of the rubbish I had neglected to place in the bin prior to going out greeted me. I knew I should take it out now but my lazy attitude convinced me to wait until the morning. I did decide however, to have a hot shower to erase the cold in my bones from the chilling wind. After a relaxing five minutes under the shower, I dressed for bed, had a warm drink of tea and headed through the reception room past the front door to ascend the stairs to my bedroom. As I walked up the stairs, I glanced at my watch and saw that it was around 10.30pm. I reached the top of the stairs as I heard the sound of something being pushed through my front door letter flap.

Who the heck is delivering papers in the rain at this time of night, was my immediate thought?

After a quick debate with myself, I decided to check the delivery in the morning, as I couldn’t be bothered to walk back down the stairs again.

The alarm went off around 6am and as usual, I marvelled at how quickly the night had passed. I was still not used to getting up when it was dark. My mind was not able to grasp the idea that I must wake up. Darkness in the morning equalled sleep time to me. Stumbling down the stairs, I almost slipped on the carpeted edges and went flailing to the bottom. It was a morning ritual. One of these mornings, I really would fall. I loved walking into the bathroom on these cold dark mornings because it had a heated floor and the room had a lovely warmth to it. I pulled the cord and harsh light filled the dark void in an instant, causing my eye muscles to recoil and spasm uncontrollably at the brightness. Fumbling around, I found my shaver and proceeded to start the morning ritual that would ultimately end in me walking out the door to head off to work, then remembering I had left something inside that I needed to take with me. Thus, my new day unfolded as normal.

It wasn’t until I arrived home in the late afternoon and was checking the mail on the floor inside the door, that I remembered the letterbox event of the previous evening. I had received a local newspaper, three letters and two advertising brochures. I figured that it had to be the paper that I heard coming through the door flap. I opened the first two letters of which one was my insurance company and the second was my gas bill. The third letter had my name only hand-written on the envelope. I opened it to find a folded piece of paper on which were these hand-written words,

"Elitist yes, snob maybe, stupid never!"

I was puzzled, as it did not make sense to me at first glance. There was no signature and it looked as if it was written with an old type of fountain pen. The paper was old and brownish and felt somewhat brittle.

How unusual, I audibly mused.

I pondered over the note for a couple of minutes then gave up. It had been a tiring day and I was hungry.

The following day brought the usual grey skies and intermittent wintry showers. The temperature had managed to climb to 5 degrees. The dark had set in as I prepared to leave for work for my walk home. Looking out the window, I saw that right on cue, the rain had started just as I needed to leave. I wrapped my scarf around my neck, threaded into my coat and raised the hood as I stepped through the door, bracing myself against the freezer blast that hit my face. I walked up High Street, just wanting to get home. The weather was terrible. In my mind, I could almost feel the heat from my hot gas fire as I trotted down the ramp to the pedestrian walkway under the gyratory. As I entered, I saw a man enter the other end. He too was rugged up against the weather, with a cloak-like, long, black coat and a broad brimmed black leather hat. A scarf covered his face against the chilling wintry rain. I nodded at him as he walked past. He continued past without a glance in my direction. I stopped and turned mouthing quietly about his rudeness. To my surprise, he had gone. There was no way he could have reached the end of the tunnel and turned up the ramp out of sight. He seemed to have disappeared into thin air. I thought of going back and checking the ramp where I had entered, but the reality of the chilling cold convinced me to go home and to quickly do so.

I thought about the man who passed me and by the time I had my key in the side door, I had dubiously convinced myself that he was striding sufficiently fast enough to have rounded the corner out of sight. The stench of near week-old rubbish flowed over my nostrils. I picked up the plastic bag containing the putrid smelling scraps and placed it in another to prevent the fluids leaking everywhere, then went outside and threw the bag in the rubbish bin. I came inside to hear something being pushed through the letterbox flap in the front door.

Who is out in this weather? I mumbled as I walked into the reception room to light the gas fire. The warm flame licked around the fake coals and I walked through to hang my wet coat in the boiler closet. I glanced over to the floor near the door and noticed that there was a single letter on the floor. It was odd to receive a mail delivery this late in the day in winter. I picked up the letter and noticed my name handwritten on the envelope in the same way as the previous letter I had received. Opening the envelope revealed that a note on similar brown stained paper as before. It read,

"Snob yes, stupid never!"

I had often thought that when people are in the midst of developing circumstances, they don’t realise the importance of events as they unfold. I now realised why… because people have no idea why the events are occurring and how they relate to anything. I walked back into the reception room and sat at the table, placing the second letter beside the first. I did not notice that the fire was providing the warmth I had craved on my walk home. I sat and thought, occasionally tapping my fingers on the table. After what must have been a half hour, I arose and poured myself a shot of rum to warm the shivering I suddenly felt from my state of inactiveness. I had recalled the event of a few nights ago when I had seen the person in the high window of Rugby School. I could not logically connect that fleeting moment with the letters, yet something kept nagging at me. It was as if someone was reading my mind. I realised that thinking this way led to totally illogical conclusions and seemed plain stupid, but…

My mobile rang and thankfully interrupted my thoughts. It was Alexandra. Where the hell are you? You are late yet again. Why don’t you set a reminder on your phone? You do this every week.

She laughed. I loved her laugh. It always made me smile