Sunday School and Farmer Steele

Sunday SCHOOL

I loved going to school so much, when I started in 1951 at the age of five, that when I heard that you could go to school on Sundays as well, I really wanted to go.  My mother mysteriously said that it was not like ordinary school, but if I really wanted to, I could go along on the understanding that I couldn't drop out, I would have to keep going.  This should have been a hint to me, but the idea of a sixth day at school made me so happy I somehow missed that oblique warning.

I, and several others were shepherded into a building near Tewkesbury Abbey.  The penny did not drop.  After all, just about everywhere in our small town was near the Abbey.  We went in, and a lot of nuns sat us down in rows.  The penny dropped.  We were in the front row because most of us were smaller than the older children.  A nun gave out some tatty hymn books, but not to the front row.  Someone played the piano, and most of the children sang or mumbled a hymn.  I did not know the hymn, I did not have a hymn book, and I suppose I felt foolish.  Afterwards we had to sit on the floor in circles and listen to stories about God.  It wasn't as exciting as Thomas the Tank Engine.  Then we stood up in our rows, tried to sing some other unknown hymn without hymn books, and then row by row we were allowed to leave.

I don't think I was bored, but I was upset, because it was nothing like the day school, and I couldn't understand why I had been denied a hymn book.  I had had to promise Mum that I would continue to go.  I went week after week, becoming unhappier and unhappier, until eventually I cried.  Mum wanted to know what was wrong, so I told her I never got a hymn book.  "All right", said Mum, who had a wicked sense of humour, "tell the nuns that because you weren't being given a hymn book, you would go with your teacher to the Baptist Chapel!"

And like a very small, totally unguided missile, that's exactly what I did.  The Baptist Chapel was far more fun, I got my very own hymn book, and best of all, my teacher's father was a lay preacher.  Whenever he became impassioned, (what the Welsh know as "Hwl", he sounded just like a sheep!

IN THE FIELDS, or, HOW I MADE AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

My best friend, Nicky Price and I played in the field behind Nicky's home.  There were actually two fields, with a brook on the far side, and a deep pond on the side where the houses had been built.  One day, we were on one side of the pond, when the farmer, Mr Steele arrived with his tractor and trailer on which his son, Victor Steele, sat with a large ball of barbed wire.  They had come to mend a fence next to the pond.

They both got down and Victor carried the barbed wire across to the pond.  I can't remember now, whether Victor tripped, or whether he just wasn't paying attention, but he dropped the barbed wire into the pond.  As I've said, it was a deep pond.  There was a pause, then Mr Steele said, "Victor you bloody idiot, you've bloody dropped the bloody barbed wire in the bloody pond.  You're bloody useless!"

What happened after that, I don't know, because I ran back to our house, where Mum and Dad were in the kitchen.  "Mum, Dad!" I cried, "You'll never guess what Mr Steele said to Victor!"  I then repeated what I had heard, word for word.  Swearing was disapproved of in those days, so I let rip.  My father's look darkened.  "I didn't say that, Mr Steele said that" I said.

I had discovered inverted commas.