Boarding school revisited

I always found returning back to boarding school after each holiday very difficult.  Lying in bed, I would cover my head with my blankets, and pushing my face firmly into my pillow, would as quietly as possible, shed more than a few tears.  It was always the same at the beginning of each term.  I would be woken in the middle of the night by the distant whistle, as well as the slow chuff, chuff, chuffing of a train being shunted into a siding.  I would lie motionless in bed, as I waited for the train to gather momentum until all the chuffs began tripping over each other, in a frantic effort to reach the finishing line.  At this point, fresh tears would spring to my eyes, as the cold reality of being at school once more, and not on the farm hit home.

We slept in a very large dormitory with about thirty beds, as well as matching lockers and chairs.  At one point, I refused to have my locker standing next to my bed at night, as there seemed to be noises emanating from it.  Each night, much to the amusement of the other girls, I would pick up my locker and trundle it to the opposite side of the dormitory, only to retrieve it once more the next morning.  This must have gone on for a good six to eight months.  I was convinced that there was a little man living in my locker.  On reflection, I was probably going through some sort of crisis in my head.  

Having to get out of bed at night to go to the bathroom was a major problem.  As many children will know, that there under the bed, resides a large animal, ready to pounce at a moments notice.  When I felt brave enough, I would stand on top of my bed and jump as far away from it as I could in order to live to tell the tale.  A mad dash down the dormitory and across the washroom with large shadows playing across it's walls, and into the toilets, would have my heart pounding wildly.  A moment of great relief, before having to make the mad dash back again.  On those nights when I didn't feel brave enough, I would find myself dreaming of floating down a nice warm river.  In the cold light of day, I would have to deal with the fallout and the subsequent embarrassment.

Amateur concerts

Concerts were always an integral part of growing up on the farm, and whenever our cousins came to stay with us during the holidays, we would spend and inordinate amount of time perfecting our concert, which would be staged for our parents.  We would usually need to use the dogs as part of the cast, and invariably they would be pushed to the fore, bedecked with ribbons and bows.  They were very long suffering, as they stood with embarrassed looks on their faces and heads hanging low, wondering what next to expect.

My big sister, who was the dare-devil in the family would perform a whole lot of tricks on her horse, culminating in  galloping past the audience, while standing up on the back of her horse, and finally galloping past once more riding past with one foot on each of the backs of two horses.  It was all very exciting!  We would get together with our cousins and using scraps of material, make all sorts of different costumes.  Like everything else in life, the preparation was the real fun part, and could go on for many days before the concert was staged.

Our parents would be seated in front of the "stage", while we sang and danced and acrobatted our way through each item.  At the end of it all we would be rewarded with enough encores and bravos to satisfy the hungry need every child has, for recognition and acceptance.

My grandmother was very musical and at the age of forty something, took herself off in a cart and horse each week, to learn music at a place which was at least ten miles away from their farm.  Later on, she taught both of my sisters as well as one of my cousins to sing.  Although I was a bit too young at that stage,  I do remember her sitting at the piano and singing lustily, while playing a whole array of negro spirituals.

My father taught himself to play and many an evening when the family was visiting us, we would all congregate around the piano and have a big sing-song.  My one Scottish uncle who used to share the piano playing with my father, would play and sing all these wonderful Scottish songs with great passion, crying all the while into his whiskey.  We just loved him to bits and no holiday would have been complete, without my uncle taking us on a trip down Scottish memory lane.