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disease! I have no idea what the teacher, Mr Bartels, thought was happening to me - some kind of minor anxiety attack perhaps, but thankfully nothing was said. I quickly found my cousin who was the same age and in the same class who verified that he too had had a similar experience but in his bed at night. Trust me to have had my experience in the front row of a class of forty boys!
In spite of the above incident, and the aforementioned abuse, school remained mostly fascinating for me. Having teachers who loved their work and their particular subject helped enormously. In those days we had a different teacher for each subject - one for religion, one for history, one for French and so on. I was a bit of a class clown even though I was extremely shy and would have the desk lid up doing impressions of various teachers, especially our maths teacher Mr Heinrich, whom I used to call Spot, because he would look at me and say âIâve spotted you son. Close that lid and pay attention!â One day he had a particularly nasty cold and climbed over a boyâs desk and spat out the window but the wind blew it all back onto the ladâs leg! As Mr Heinrich was on his knees cleaning the boyâs leg I went into total hysterics. I laughed so much that I started to retch and had to leave the class room, followed by a prefect who, thinking I was ill, took me upstairs to the school nurse who was a tartar. If she thought a pupil was faking it - and she obviously thought I was - she would give them a glass of warm salty water to drink down in one gulp, which she administered to me, causing me to almost heave my heart out! I soon stopped laughing but have always been a bit of a giggler.
In my last book I wrote at length about my abuse at school, both physical and sexual. I survived and probably came through it all a tad stronger. I have been surprised by the number of people who contacted me after the release of âMy Hi-de-Highlifeâ who suffered much worse abuse than I and they also felt that they were able to grow from their experiences. Sadly, many more fall by the wayside and slip through the gaps. Their abuse was so deeply scarring that in many cases they were not able to see any light at the end of that awful long tunnel. I am especially saddened by the peer abuse of young gay, lesbian and transgender persons today in these supposedly enlightened times, particularly on the social media. Sach and I still occasionally have a nasty comment thrown at us and it is never easy to just shrug it off. It still hurts!
As I was learning piano I was often asked to play the organ at Benediction in the school chapel. It was a pedal or pump organ and my legs barely reached the pedals. After a hymn such as Tantum Ergo Sacramentum I would be so exhausted from pumping away and singing that I had to put my head between my legs before I passed out. I only reached third grade in my pianoforte lessons because the nun teaching me kept whacking me on the knuckles with a ruler whenever I hit a wrong note, so one day I grabbed the ruler out of her hand, snapped it in half and quit! To think - I could have been the next Liberace ! I was a bit sad about quitting piano lessons when the acclaimed Australian pianist, Eileen Joyce, visited the school and spent an hour playing the most exquisite music I had ever heard. Her fingers seemed to barely touch the keys yet this heavenly music filled the room.
Speaking of attending chapel at school and being very religious - I desperately wanted to be a priest at one time - I loved attending Benediction, which is not the Mass but is a very old devotion in the Church. As a hymn of praise is sung the priest incenses the censer and then blesses the congregation with the Blessed Sacrament, while making the sign of the cross. Whenever the incense was lit the chapel or church was filled with the most wonderful aroma that almost sent me into a trance. I would be on my knees as an altar boy behind the priest,