Penguins

I don’t know why! Perhaps it’s related to the Sunday evening ‘back to school’ atmosphere that seems to cling to the fabric of every erm Sunday evening. Anyway, on with the randomness that’s running rampant in my head.

The first school I attended was St Michael’s Convent, Abergavenny.

I feel safe in giving this much information because St Michael’s Convent is:
a) no longer a school and
b) no longer a convent

It’s quite bizarre to sit here and think that I outlived an entire school (building).

I had a horrid time there.

Oh, the horridness wasn’t down to bullying or even occasional episodes of mild ‘being picked on’, or anything like that.

And I had good friends there.

Michael…
I can remember that he and I once experimented with a schoolboy chemistry set at his house. The resultant accidental dyeing of water in the family goldfish pond had severe repercussions for both of us for many weeks. The goldfish survived, I’m happy to report. But the water-bound flora and fauna looked a bit ill until they were replaced. At our expense.

Karen…
She chased me around the school trying to kiss me. I can’t remember how old we were at the time though logic (and the fact I was running away!) suggests somewhere around seven years of age. I kept a weather eye on Karen for the rest of my time at St Michaels and our time together at another school, just in case the kissing thing broke out again and I needed a head start.

Llewellyn…
Unlike Michael and I, Llewellyn and I didn’t become a bad pair until after our spell of incarceration at St Michael’s Convent. But bad pair we did become, much wrongness there was and levels of naughtiness that I am too embarrassed to recount here. Shame on us both.

Other names and faces from the past too – all seeming to swim out of some creakily opening mental compartment that has somehow been brought to life by…

What?

An atmosphere of ‘back to school’ even though it’s been a long time since I was at any school (in a full-time, pupil-attending sort of way)?

It really is quite bizarre.

Which begs the question…

Am I the only one who suffers gets these seemingly random flashbacks?

For flashback is the only word that accurately describes what’s going on in my head right now.

I remember morning chapel (think Convent), and the heady smell of incense that sometimes burned so strongly that the odour clung to our school uniform for several hours. And the Holy water that we had to dip our fingers in and genuflect the sign of the cross, dabbing little spots of wetness against our head, chest and both shoulders.

I remember games (or what might have been called PT – way before the initials PT were post-pubertically applied to describe girls of a certain type. Even though I pretended to know what PT meant and what girls of a certain type were) lessons.

They usually seemed to be held in The Hall (which was also where assembly took place) despite St Michael’s having a tennis court and other sports facilities.

Anyway the hall and its many rows of climbing bars on the long-sided wall, the wooden horse and various other pieces of gymnasium equipment that were neatly stashed along the back wall…

But most of all I’m recalling why I hated the place.

The food.

The dodgily-textured, awfully-flavoured gruel that we were brainwashed in to accepting as food.

It (in my mind’s eye) usually consisted of main course offerings that seemed to almost entirely compose mashed swede, turnip, parsnip, cabbage that had been boiled to death and lumpy mashed potatoes.

Except every Friday when we were given lumpy mashed potato, soggy vegetables and fish (but not fish in a batter, that would be too much fun!).

I still can’t eat swede, turnip or parsnip.

Blancmange, can’t touch that either. Lumpy custard – right up there with lumpy gravy as a not fond memory too.

And the penguins nuns were so unbelievably strict on food consumption.

They’d cajole us (awww, c’mon little one, you can eat another mouthful or so?), lecture us (think of the thousands of starving children in Africa!) and if those approaches didn’t work, God’s Servants weren’t above a little physical punishment to make us clear our plates.

I may have been on the receiving end of ‘the dap’ – a type of gym shoe applied with great gusto to ones backside – and (on one or two occasions when my more rebellious streak shone through) ‘the cane’ more than once.

So why the hell am I sitting here thinking about my time in that place?

Am I bonkers, or do you do it too?

Sometimes when I’d been particularly good for a spell of time I’d get chosen to be the ink monitor (yeah I know, this is really ancient history! We had ‘nib’ pens and inkwells in our desks. Don’t laugh!).

I think that’s probably the place from where my fascination with Parker Quink Ink and it’s interesting properties sprang.

I poured a half-pint bottle of black Quink out of the first floor window one day.

Sister Mary-Michael happened to be underneath at the time in her white habit and wimple.

St Michael’s Convent, Abergavenny.

The first school I attended.

Also the first school from which I was expelled.

I blame Parker Quink myself.

B.