Double Happiness by Joe Bennett

Author:Joe Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-12-21T05:00:00+00:00

16

O sing of His grace

I attended a state school, but it was modelled on the traditional private school. It was for boys only. We were divided into houses, even though we went home each night. Everyone studied Latin for the first couple of years at least, there was a boisterously sentimental school song, we faffed around in uniform on Friday afternoons doing paramilitary stuff, and though there was no chapel and no chaplain, there was token Anglicanism in the weekly school assembly, consisting of a prayer, a reading and a hymn. At the conclusion of which the Jews and Catholics were allowed in for the holy recitation of the sports results. (They had to stand.)

I’ve forgotten the sports results, though they mattered at the time, but I can remember quite a few of the hymns, which didn’t. No one paid the least attention to the lyrics, of course, which was as well because they constituted an intellectual insult.

‘All things bright and beautiful’ was not the worst of them, but it will do to illustrate a few of the notions that the church tries to inveigle into young minds by putting words to music. ‘All things bright and beautiful’, we sang, or murmured, or simply stood through in silence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.