The Jackpot Club 

Founded somewhere between a trig beacon and a teapot, circa 1981

Members only. "Tubby" need not apply.

The Founding Act

Long before the Club had a name, a table, or a third member, there was a boy of eleven, three weeks into his first year of school, standing in the pre-dawn cold at the summit of Inhlosane.

The walk had begun at one minute past midnight. He had crossed the Midlands in the dark, over the seven hills, the older brutes of A-block watching from a deliberate distance for the spectacle of his probable failure. He had reached the summit by daybreak. There, on the iron beacon planted by the South African Trigonometrical Survey for the orderly mapping of the territory, he performed the small, sovereign, irreversible act required of every Michaelhouse boy at least once in his tenure. He had not yet, at that point in his life, sprouted a pube and trembled under their gaze from fatigue and the fear of being accused of having a wank if he couldn't hold still. He was back in Chapel by 17:00.

Word travels fast in a boys' school. The matter was never directly discussed. Forty-three years on it has not been directly discussed still. But from that morning forward no one ever quite messed with Harry Dijkman, not even some of the more bullying teachers and from his quiet protection a small, suspicious, anti-authoritarian fellowship was permitted to take root.

That is the Club's true founding. Everything since is paperwork.

Concerning the Society

The Jackpot Club proper was constituted in D block of the early 1980s, at the corner table in the Michaelhouse Junior dining-hall — the first table, in the memory of that institution, claimed and held by its occupants on their own authority rather than allocated to them by their elders. In E block the dining hall had still been organized along older lines: assigned seating, manservants in attendance, the architecture of an earlier century not yet entirely surrendered. In D block, four boys chose where to sit, what to drink, and with whom.

What they chose to drink was Jack Pot tea — a regrettably economical blend produced from the lower-leaf trimmings of the harvest, served to those too lowly to be served anything better. From this dishonourable beverage the Club took its name, its values, and a measure of its worldview. It is presumed the Club's motto "Ex foliis infimis, dignitas" ("from the lowest leaves, dignity") stems from this beverage and the Club's values too.

From D block the founding members in due course graduated to A block, having neither sought nor accepted the indignities of school office. There were, in those years, rumours of certain after-hours commercial activities — bootlegging, an irregular speakeasy, an entourage of the right kind of company from St-Anne's and St-John's. The membership neither confirms nor denies. The membership has, in fact, forgotten on principle.

The Charter, Unwritten

• Convene at irregular intervals, on multiple continents

• Maintain a discreet social register of the kind and clever young women of St-Anne's and St-John's, whose company has been the Club's principal civilising influence for four uninterrupted decades

• Field a Seventh's rugby side with pride and without expectation, and discourage at all costs the misapprehension that this constitutes athletic ambition

• Brew another pot when conversation falters

• Decline, by all means at the Club's disposal, the unsolicited and unceasing applications of Robert "Tubby" [SURNAME WITHHELD] — whose initial submission was lodged informally in 1982 outside the Junior dining hall and supplemented by approximately forty-three subsequent verbal renewals

Founding Personnel

(In rough order of arrival at the corner table.)

• Harry Dijkman — Founder. Custodian of the watchful eye. The Beacon.

• Anton Lee — Founder. Humble Farmer. Co-conspirator from E block onward. Present at every meeting that mattered, and most of the ones that did not.

• Peter "Morf" Morfopoulos — D-block accession. Ironically Polish, despite an entirely unmerited Hellenic surname. The Club's principal continental link.

• Ollie Burnett — D-block accession. Hospitality portfolio, perpetual. Custodian of the Southbroom, and Midlands outpost.

• Subsequent membership conferred by invitation only, by memory increasingly approximate, by rights long since established. And not, under any circumstances, to Tubby.

A Note on Mythology

Some of the foregoing is true. Some is mythology that has accumulated around the Club in the manner of barnacles around a long-submerged vessel, and no current member can tell you, with any reliability, which portion is which. The Club regards this as a feature.

The minutes of all meetings have been lost, possibly never taken. The Club's records consist exclusively of unreliable testimony, fading photographs, the occasional letter from Tubby, and a small territorial mark on a trig beacon in the high country — no longer visible to the eye but present, the Club firmly believes, in dignity from the lowest rungs and leaves.

The Walk to Inhlosane

The School's oldest tradition was the Walk. Leave at 00:01. Hike 36km through the Midlands night to the mountain. Summit the 1976m peak before dawn. Make a small territorial offering on the trig beacon. Return to school before Chapel at 17:00 — or face questions that no one has ever satisfactorily answered and attempt it again.

The Club's founding members all completed it. Harry did it at eleven years of age, in his third week of school. The mountain has been the Club's true patron ever since.