17 April 2024

‘The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.’ Psalm 74:16

‘Come on Irene, will you please let me sleep?’ (Add melody and rhythm section for full effect…)

It’s 1.45 am and I find myself bringing new meaning to the phrase ‘silent disco’, singing loudly in my head this new version of ‘Come on Eileen’ whilst bopping my whole body very gently so as not to wake Steve. Irene and her steroid pals have conspired to keep me awake, Irene working tirelessly to unsettle my tummy and the steroids succeeding beautifully at keeping my mind in overdrive. Apart from feeling exhausted physically and in desperate need of sleep, I don’t mind too much as the result is that my head is full of words and these are pouring out with less effort than water cascading down a waterfall or melted chocolate silky-shimmering its way down a fountain (yum): not just words or phrases but fully formed literary entities; future blog posts and even a prologue to be included in the blog when it is eventually published. Note to self: add ‘publish blog on Amazon’ to The Lists. You can self-publish anything you like, and people can request it to be printed to order. I hope they do: particularly my children but also grandchildren, nieces, nephews – for it tells the story of who I am, which they may not fully understand until they are older. What started out as a means of sharing factual medical updates has become so much more: an outlet for me to share my feelings and make sense of them, a memoir of my life from childhood until now, an inspirational guide- I hope- of how to live well and find joy and laughter in even the darkest of situations, and above all a testimony of not my faith in God but his faithfulness to me through the Lord Jesus Christ.

My thoughts drift back to when I first started writing, at the age of about 5. I didn’t start school until Year 1 as we moved from Maidenhead to the village of Send in Surrey in the summer of my Reception year, and I arrived in the Year 1 classroom reading and writing fluently thanks to both my keen interest and the efforts of my lovely Mum. I adored writing in particular and remember so vividly the task that the class was set on my very first day at school. We were given one of those infant exercise books with a double page heralding a few thick lines on one side and a blank space on the other for a badly-drawn picture. I had no interest in the picture side of things, instead creating a mini adventure novel set in the new surroundings of my school, with chapters and everything. When the teacher saw the work that I was so happy with, she reprimanded me: I was apparently supposed to write a few factual setences detailing what I had done the day before, not endeavour to imitate Charles Dickens.. I can still remember the feeling of disappointment and unappreciation, not to mention a great sense of unfairness, but it only spurred me on. A bit of a Matilda figure, I kept my head down at school after that, choosing instead to spend my spare time writing stories and chapters of novels that were never finished. On family holidays to the beach, I would lay on a towel working on ‘The Magical Kingdom of Quev’ (heavily influenced by the L.Frank Baum Oz series) whilst my parents looked on, bemused, and my brother played in the sand. James, however, was much more of an obvious brainiac. His Nursery and Reception teachers informed my parents that there was little more that they could teach him, and he moved primary schools twice after that in search of one that could challenge him. This was achieved at a local boys’ prep school, where James was quickly earmarked for a King’s Scholarship to Eton and duly attained this at the age of 13, my parents not paying a penny for his education at supposedly the best school in the world thanks to the scholarship plus the bursary that my parents qualified for at the time. James was an easy genius, needing to put in little effort to achieve (do correct me if I’m wrong, James, but that’s definitely how it seemed to me!). I was clearly quite bright on a lesser scale, being moved up a year for maths and english at the village infant school, but when this didn’t do much for me, my parents took the decision to move me at age 8 to a private school in our nearby town of Woking.

When I say ‘private school’, I say it loosely. Greenfield School consisted of a quirky old house set in small concreted grounds with not a blade of grass in sight. The fees were approximately £100 a term: cheap even for the early Eighties.

The teaching staff was entirely comprised of women of past-retirement age; more than one start-of-term asssembly featured the news that a teacher had died during the school holidays. I remember most of the children standing sobbing in our ‘height order’ lines on these occasions, but I just felt awkward; was I supposed to summon up tears for a teacher that had frankly been rather mean?

Discipline at Greenfield was indeed more than strict and speaking at any time during lessons was forbidden; instead, the teacher would dictate and we would write. I once asked a classmate if I could borrow their rubber and was immediately sent out of the room to face the ultimate punishment; sitting Under The Clock (an imposing grandfather affair) until the headmistress herself appeared to interrogate the unfortunate pupil about their great offence. The school dinners (compulsory) only built on these barbaric precepts: a typical meal (and one of the better ones) was a quarter slice of dry, unbuttered bread, a spoonful of tasteless mince and a few over-boiled carrots. The worst of the meals were horded within my cheeks, hamster-like; after I was excused from the table I would run to my classroom and spit the contents into the wicker waste paper basket, hoping that no one would see. On one occasion, just one, the tiny kitchen with its pair of grumpy cooks presented us with chips. Yes, chips. There was jubilation amongst the Greenfield pupils that day; I remember so vividly the noisy stampede to the kitchen with every child echoing the same words: ‘Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!’. Except me. All I wanted to ask the kitchen staff after lunchtimes of endless hunger was ‘When will we be having chips again?’. The cooks just grunted. I already knew the answer anyway…

But in spite of these things, Greenfield delivered an excellent education and one that challenged me and gave me the work ethic that I still have today. In our twice-yearly reports, our places within the class were brutally revealed. Used to always being top at my infant school, it was clearly a different ball game here and I didn’t place highly in my first year at Greenfield. There were children of doctors there for starters, who sailed through school like my brother with very little effort at all. I just saw this as a challenge, however, and entirely self-motivated worked my way up to finally achieve the coveted ‘No. 1 in the class’ in my final term at the school. I had done this mainly by stealth, revising endlessly for the summer exams, and the two girls who I pipped to the post (Jenny and Kate, both doctors’ daughters of couse) were both shocked and indignant. But the victory was mine. Younger family members take note: your raw ability will only get you a small part of the way- it is hard work and determination that makes the difference.

I had to repeat the process throughout my secondary school days, finding myself once again somewhere in the middle academically now that I was at an a rigorous selective school, Sir William Perkins in Chertsey (today a thriving top private school offering rowing and all sorts, but at the time its relatively recent transition from state grammar meant that it was more of a down to earth, no frills independent. My friends and I would have howled at the idea of rowing. We couldn’t even find our way around a hockey pitch…). But I will pick this up in the morning, as it is 3.24 am and I need to have a stern talk with Irene in the hope of a bit of sleep….

Ha ha well of course I didn’t get to sleep for a while longer; instead with Irene’s ‘help’ I read through and edited what I had written so far: it was a somewhat futile effort and quite hilarious to discover what was actually on the page this morning as I was basically typing blind in the night in the absence of my reading glasses. I finally got some sleep around 4 and woke up a bit before the 7 am alarm- going to be a tired sort of day I think, especially for Steve as he kept checking in on me and urging me to go to sleep: ‘I can’t. I’m busy. And having all sorts of tummy trouble. But I’m happy.’

I continued my writing outside of the classroom, spending the train journeys to school working on stories about myself and my friends, based on real situations but taking these to what I felt were hilarious imaginative lengths, a fantasy world in which anything was possible. Whenever I finished a story, I made all of my friends read it, which they gallantly did, and I think their giggles were genuine…

I am indeed loving the reminiscences of my school days.. let’s go back to Willy Perks, as we called it… My passion for English and writing was set on fire in my second year by a young new teacher called Miss Charlton, who very soon married to become Mrs. Susan Bolton. Our mutual admiration for each other continued through to A-level days, re-emphasised in lovely ways recently as Susan got back in touch with me after hearing of my diagnosis. She appreciated my writing more than any other teacher that had come before, and I was soon achieving straight As for every piece. In return, I appreciated her detailed, perceptive teaching and quiet sense of humour.

In the years that followed I wrote continually; amongst the predictable poems conveying dark teenage existential angst there were plenty of lighter ones: ‘The Waitrose Years’ collection written in my head during after-school work shifts featured odes to tills and car park machines plus limmericks about the other employees.

Where does the music come in? I hear you ask. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, music didn’t arrive in my life until I was close to 13, when I finally got my hands on a piano. I composed as much as I played, even in the early stages, and it wasn’t long before I was putting my favourite things together, words and music. I had been writing plays for years, putting on shows for my family and beloved collection of dolls from a very young age. These were performed on the wide dining room windowsill, the thick brown velvet 70s curtains helping to create the perfect stage. After discovering music I started to add songs to my plays, influenced heavily by the fast-growing presence of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who became a music theatre idol of mine (not because of his looks, obviously. Michael Ball was there for that and still is despite his considerable middle-aged spread😃).

I thrived at SWPS and, as at Greenfield, did increasingly well as I worked hard and immersed myself in all of the opportunities offered. The 6th form years were the happiest of all; I adored studying my favourite subjects (Music, English and French) and achieved top grades in them all thanks to ridiculous amounts of hard work and teaching that rivalled and often bettered anything that I later got at Uni…

An exciting feature of the Lower 6th from my point of view was the Junior Drama competition, in which we had to write and produce a play for a first- or second-year form to perform. It’s lovely to see that the competition is still going strong today. I wrote and directed the entire show for class 2L, a re-imagining of Treasure Island complete with Sharon and Tracey comedy sidekicks and original songs with live music, one of which was full of heart-wrenching pathos describing the hero Jim’s desire to make his late father proud. Big stuff! Unsurprisingly our play won the cup and I was invited to be on the judging panel for next year’s contest.

In my upper 6th year, a new competition to write a hymn for the school was launched and of course I jumped at the chance, working on it with my fab A-level music twin Liz, aka Strawbs (Liz Chew, Strawberry chew, Strawbs… get it?). I wasn’t a Christian believer then, but when I discovered it again the other day the words took me aback and spoke to me so very much:

I could have had no idea that these words would one day be so relevant and needed, that my eyes would be so constantly ‘full of tears’. Incidentally Strawbs and I won the competition and our hymn became a favourite at school, being featured by popular demand in our final leavers’ service. I wonder if it is still being sung today?

After I became a Christian (more of that in a blog to come), I wrote a huge amount of hymns and chorsuses that were used extensively at church. It was a natural marriage of words, music and faith for me. Reading them again after so long, there is one hymn that absolutely stopped me in my tracks, being an even more staggering example of my twenty-something self talking across the years to my cancer-stricken present. I understood little about trials and suffering at the time, but knew what the scripture said and that was enough. Now, however, the meaning is so very pointed and the words are such a comfort to me. I will sign off with them, and hope for some sleep tonight to counter the student-like all-nighter that has resulted in this blog post… I hope you have enjoyed joining me in my reminiscences of the past…