My school day began at 7:30am in my regular classroom where the daily attendance was taken by our teacher. She read out loud from the list of names in her register, a long thin book in which she marked pupils present or absent, accordingly. The class runner/monitor would then take the register to the school office. Afterwards, we lined up to attend our School Assembly held every day in the Hall/Gym where we students were placed, standing in long lines. The headmistress and staff, dressed in their black graduate gowns, took their places on the stage. The headmistress usually directed the proceedings, giving out announcements and telling us which hymn we were to sing. Some of these I loved such as “Onward Christian Soldiers”, and especially “I Am the Lord of the Dance”, singing lustily with my peers. Others such as “For Those in Peril on the Sea” and “Abide with Me” I thought of as mournful dirges. We finished the Assembly by reciting The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father Who Art in Heaven, Hallow’d be Thy Name….” After Assembly, we traipsed out of the Hall, still in our long lines back to the classroom for our first lesson.
Our day ended at 1:15pm or so, with two short breaks to allow students to eat a snack or have a drink. During the last two years or so at the school, mandatory afternoon lessons were introduced on a Thursday, 2pm-3:30pm. They were hard on both teachers and pupils alike because it was hot in the classroom and difficult to concentrate.
Twice a week, all we students had to participate in school sports from 3:00pm or so, for an hour or two. In the summer we were required to attend swimming and tennis. In the cooler months we could choose between field hockey or netball. I duly went to my swimming lessons, enjoying them because I could swim, and it was just a case of perfecting strokes and getting exercise in the school’s swimming pool. In the winter months, I took field hockey where I played the position of left inner. I loved field hockey, even making it to the 5th-6th hockey team, but I couldn’t have been a skillful player because when a new 7th-8th hockey team was formed, I was promptly demoted!
Tennis was an awful experience for me. I didn’t feel very good in my home-made tennis dress, and I soon realized that I was probably the only student who had never played. I stood there, racquet in hand, knowing nothing about the game. I should have been shown what to do, how to hold the racquet, how to serve and how to score. Instead, I was simply told by a teacher to take some balls and hit them against a practice wall. So, every week without fail, as the teachers/coaches monitored games being played on the school’s numerous tennis courts, I was relegated to hitting that ball against that wall. I loathed it. Relief finally came when I discovered that I could do two lots of swimming, rather than one swimming and one tennis. So, I gave up tennis to concentrate on swimming, instead. I regret to this day not being able to play tennis.
