Songs of Praise

On Sunday afternoons our family congregated round my Grandmother's: Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and family friends. The children (all cousins) used to noisily run riot in the garden and the adults used to smoke in the living room, the air was thick with stale clouds of cheap cigarette fumes and the smell of nicotine clung to our clothes.

The adults in my family loved this.

Then we got out the large table, extended it with the sliding wooden extension in the middle and we had tea: a slice of tinned pork luncheon meat, a lettuce leaf, half a tomato, a slice of cucumber, and to finish off with a KitKat or Penguin. KitKats were my favourite because afterwards my mum would make a silver chalice for me out of the silver wrapping paper.

After tea the telly would go on and we sat round quietly to watch “Songs of Praise” a TV programme where a load of old women in churches would sing hymns. They used to sing in high soprano voices with two part “harmony” and consciously mouth their words so you could see their fillings; they tried to look holy and devotional. There was never any interpretation or emotion in their singing; my dad said that they only went there because they wanted to be on the telly and that on other weeks the church would be deserted. My grandmother never went to church but she loved watching “Songs of Praise”.

The next day would be Monday and I would go to school; I had “school meals”, they cost five shillings a week, we said it was a shilling per meal, sixpence for the main bit and sixpence for the pudding. But the headmaster said

“No, no, no, its a subsidised meal from Hertfordshire County Council, the cost is for the whole meal and includes the cooks that make it in the school kitchen.”

But we still kept on saying sixpence for the main bit and sixpence for the pudding. We liked to do that.

At lunchtime before the dinner we queued up in the main hall, in class groups, girls in one queue and boys in the other. We had to sing a hymn and say a prayer with our palms together and hands pointing up in thanks to God for the dinner to come. Some children didn't have to do this. There were two sisters and a brother that stood apart against a different wall and just watched us. A teacher once told us when they weren't present that they were “the Joe Heave Witness” and that they would not be joining in. Two other girls stood with them. These girls had brown skin, long black thick ponytailed hair and wore trousers. We weren't allowed to wear trousers, we had to wear skirts and white socks, so in cold weather we were quite envious as our bare legs used to freeze. No one told us why they didn't have to join in.

We had to sing a prayer to thank God for our food, we didn't have to thank the dinner ladies that made it, our parents who paid for it or Hertfordshire County Council for subsidising it; just God. It was always the same boring song, always the same boring song; and we had to say “Our men” at the end. None of us had a clue as to why we had to do this: who were these men? and why were they our men?

One day I got so bored with this monotonous routine I thought I would be clever and innovative and be like the adult singers in “Songs of Praise”. I would show that I was mature and so very, very gifted that I was much cleverer and shine out from the other children When we started to sing I sang in much higher angelic louder notes than them, a harmonious blending euphony, over weaving the main theme of the prayer with different more sophisticated words and melody, opening my mouth wider to let the angelic sounds come out so that everyone could hear. I was so great!! The teacher would be amazed.

As we filed in for dinner the teacher pulled me to one side and said

“Was it you making that horrible noise?”. I became very still and meek. “Well, that was a very naughty thing to do, Sarah. Go and have your lunch and then you can stay in the hall all lunchtime as a punishment”. I had to stand in the hall, and people walked by wondering what I had done and why. 

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