Going to boarding school

My mother was one of the forerunners of home schooling.  Reluctant to send us to boarding school at the age of six, she taught each one of us in turn the three R's until we were nine, and then bravely sent us out to face the wolves of life.

My big sister was obviously the first to depart, and I remember that fateful day as if it were last week.  She cried so much that I gave her one of the hankies my grandfather had given me for Christmas.  They had the days of the week printed across the front of them and I think it was Monday I felt compelled to push into her hand.  I remember her hanging onto the door handle of the car, as if by some feat of strength, she could keep it from driving away.  We sadly left the school and drove off into the night, until all the street lights slowly disappeared into the distance and we were surrounded by the inky blackness of a moonless night.  I cried on and off all the way home.  For me it was like the end of an age of innocence.

My big sister who had been in contact with about as many people as my middle sister and I, found it difficult to adjust to this strange place with its penguin-like teachers.  She told me later that she had no idea who or what they were, but thought they might be angels.  My mother in her lack of wisdom, had omitted to teach my big sister how to write in cursive, which caused her to be hit every day for three weeks until she managed to master this art.  Needless to say, this had a devastating effect on her.

My middle sister, after having also been taught by my mother, departed at the age of almost nine.  This too had a terrible effect on her, causing her to continuously count the buttons on her dress.  One, two, three, four, five.  One two, three, four, five.  One two, three, four, five.  Then it was my turn to be taught.

I found life on the farm incredibly lonely without my siblings.  I would sit myself down at the old oak roll-top desk in the corner of the sitting- room and do my best to concentrate on the work at hand.  Although I learnt to add and subtract, to multiply and divide, and to read and write, the loneliness of it all was just too much for me.  When I reached screaming point, I would corner the Fox terrier behind the desk, and cracking my miniature whip on the floor, would tearfully demand that he talk to me. 

My arrival at boarding school was tempered by the fact that both my sisters had already spent a number of years there, so I knew what it was all about.  That didn't mean to say that it was all plain sailing for me though.  I had many a lesson to learn, and many a hiding to endure.  In fact I was hit so much in the first few years, that I very quickly learnt how to catch the stick I was being hit with in mid air, and run away with it.  Such was life!