Values.

I went to boarding school,,not because my family were rich, quite the opposite. I was the beneficiary of 19th and early 20th century philanthropy, attending schools originally founded as orphanages fir the children of Merchant Navy seamen lost at sea. By the time my father was lost off the coast of Wales on Christmas Eve 1951, they were schools, and when I was 7, a month or so before my 8th birthday, I started the summer term at the Royal Merchant Navy School, in Collington Avenue, Bexhill.

Since my father had died, my little sister had been born and I had been to many schools, as my mother travelled the country, doing any live in job she could get, and keep her daughters with her. I can't say this did my formal education much, each school seemed to be at a different stage of the curriculum on my arrival, so I still have some peculiar gaps in my understandings!

The staff at RMNS Bexhill were mostly very fine, caring people. I remember the Headmaster coming and tucking in the the new kids for the first few nights, singing us to sleep, trying his best to ease the transition for very young children.

In due course, we moved on to the senior school, at Bearwood,  near Reading. This was in a very grand mansion, donated by a newspaper magnate just after the First World War, at which time, of course, there was a very large increase in the number of Merchant Navy orphans!  One of the first things that happened was a medical check up (in the elegant Sanatorium donated by Lord Nuffield) where it was discovered that I was so severely short sighted that they were rather amazed I was doing as well as I was, academically,  as most teaching was via a blackboard in those days, and I cannot possibly have seen what was on it! Amazing what a lonely little bookworm can teach herself, if her mind is hungry enough!

Despite being the boys' favourite victim, it was a wonderful place to be, with enormous grounds in which a child could wander and feel safe, caring, if strict, staff and a solid moral structure to give children a degree of emotional security. In fact, ex pupils still return, and are devoted to the school, even now it has been sold and become the flagship school of a big public/private school chain.

And here's where the values come in. In 1961 the girls part of the school closed,  and we were dispersed, at the Merchant Navy's expense, to schools nearer to our homes. At the end if each year, the school held a Leavers Service in the beautiful St Nicholas Chapel (Nicholas being the patron saint of sailors, amongst others)

At the end of the service, those leaving were lined up at the altar rail and presented with a bible or prayer book, dedicated to us and signed by the Headmaster, with a little card inside. On the card was the statement made to all leavers by the Headmaster as these were handed out. I can still, over 50 years later,;remember it word for word, and it's values have guided me ever since.

"I charge you to remember always the great bounty you have enjoyed at Bearwood, and in the years to come, to do all you can to help others by thought, word and deed.
Remember, too, that you carry with you the good name of the Royal Merchant Navy School.
May God Almighty direct your course,  and strengthen and inspire you through all your days."

I no longer believe in any god, but those values have stayed with me, along with the gratitude for the caring and generosity of people who had no obligation towards me. Somewhere in the intervening years our society has lost touch with those values, and it is a great loss. It was a far from perfect world then, and people were no more perfect then than they are now,;but there was a great deal more compassion and generosity, and we knew that, mostly, we really *were* all in it together. Rich or poor, we could all suffer misfortune, deadly diseases and war, and there, but for the grace of fortune, any of us could go.

As a society, we have lost our sanity, our sense of balance. I do hope we find it before collective suicide is unavoidable.

Early history

On Christmas Eve 1951, my father was lost at sea off the Welsh coast in Cardigan Bay.  I was 4 and a half years old, and my mother had just discovered she was expecting what turned out to be my little sister.  This event left my mother destitute, as my father was a handsome, charming man, loving and a joyous companion, but prone to borrowing and putting bills behind the clock on the mantelpiece, metaphorically speaking, and never actually getting round to paying them! He left debts of over £3000, an enormous sum at that time.

We travelled wherever Mummy could find live in work, until my father's father also died, and left money in trust for my sister and I. My father's brothers bought a little terraced Victorian house in Canterbury (almost the exact twin of the house we rent now) for £500, and spent a further £500 gutting it, restructuring it and fitting it out to a modern standard.  That left a further £1000 to be invested to provide a little income, and gives a reasonable idea of the scale of my father's debt!

About 18 months after we moved into the house, I was sent to boarding school, just before my 8th birthday in 1955. My father's aunts had discovered that because he was a Merchant Navy Master Mariner, we were entitled to free education at the Merchant Navy School, which meant that my mother did not have to house, feed or clothe me for 2 thirds of the year - saving a fortune. So, in the spring, off I went to Bexhill, on the south coast,  near Hastings.

Let's gloss over how I felt, which was pretty bloody awful, to be frank. I knew this was taking an enormous load from my mother's shoulders at the time, and have only understood more deeply as the years have gone by - she was doing the very best she could for me, painful though it was for a frightened, lonely and bereaved little girl. I was fed and clothed for 10 years, better than I could ever have been at home, and taught to think.

That education was an enormous, incalculable gift - because it truly was an education, rather than mere processing through a schooling system. I met some extraordinary people, both fellow pupils, and fascinating and dedicated staff members. In the post war years there were still many British service families posted residentially all over the world, sending their children back to Britain for their education, and many of my peers only saw their parents for the summer holidays.

Many of the staff, too, were still in recovery from their experiences in the war, seeking out their way forward in the peace time world, emotionally  and physically battered by their war time lives. However, with few exceptions they cared deeply for the children in their care, and we were lucky. I remember the first few weeks of my first term, when I, and a couple of other little girls, were desperately homesick, the head master came to tuck us up at night, chat to us and sing us to sleep!

I was a funny little scrap, desperately short sighted, but not yet with spectacles, so I couldn't see the blackboard, and buck teeth to put a rabbit to shame. I was also desperately shy and unconfident - a bully's dream! It was a mixed school, unusually for boarding schools of the day, and the boys got much entertainment, for much of my school life, from pressing my buttons.

I was taught to have an open mind, to ask questions, and to understand,  rather than merely store information, and do/be what was expected of me. I was taught to respect others, but that respect needed to be earned, too. I had an education, while most of my contemporaries got schooling. I shall always be grateful for that.