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Communion; as that date got nearer, the emphasis on religion took priority over the basic fundamentals of teaching us to read and write. My clearest memory of this period (apart from learning my sum tables and being able to write my name down, or copy simple phrases from a book) is of an endless series of mock confessional runs. These were conducted with the aid of a screen that lived permanently in the classroom. Sister Charlotte installed herself behind it and, one by one, we knelt at the opposite side and roared out ‘bless me Father, for I have sinned and this is my first confession.’
    She even went so far as to tell us what sins we had committed, how we should present them to the priest, and in what order, for example: ‘Father I’ve had dirty thoughts.’ None of us knew what this meant; however, true to brainwashing stereotype, we figured that we must have had them (and it must be a pretty bad sin), since this was the number one on the list. At first Sister Charlotte tried to get us to recite that we had had ‘impure thoughts’, but as none of us could pronounce ‘impure’ properly she gave up and amended this to ‘dirty’. She always enforced this statement, while pacing up and down the classroom, by changing her facial expression into a look of absolute piety, pointing to the front of her gown and saying, ‘You know, touching yourself down there.’ Which caused more than one boy to piss in his trousers and he would have to be sent home for the rest of the day. Next in line for major sin-telling in confession was, ‘I have said bad words and taken the name of God in vain.’ Failure to recite all of these sins in their correct order resulted in the poor ‘guilty’ kid being placed in a corner for the remainder of the class, complete with a large pointed dunce’s hat adorning their his head.
    The practice for the first communion ceremony was always more fun, as this involved us all lining up in rows and waiting our turn to kneel, in groups, at the front of the class. We had to stick out our tongues as far as they would go and were given a piece of an ice-cream wafer, which the nun had broken down to the same size as the communion wafer that we would eventually receive from the Bishop. It was constantly pounded into our heads during this rehearsal that if we were to let the wafer drop out of our mouths during the real event we would be committing a mortal sin. For this was the ‘body and blood of Jesus our Saviour’, and the shame involved in picking the wafer up from the floor of the church was far too great to contemplate. As for the culprit, well, he would be doomed for eternity into the fiery pits of hell. It was amazing the effect this threat had on some of us: we would concentrate so hard on keeping the piece of wafer balanced on our tongues that the nun would have to tell us to close our mouths and swallow.
    During the winter, when the heating was turned on, head lice rampaged unchecked amongst the pupils. I had a mop of wavy blond hair and the mother (who didn’t want to cut off my curls) produced the lice comb every evening when I got home and proceeded to remove the nits that had taken up residence during the day. Having succeeded in dodging the de-licing ritual for a few days, I passed the grandmother in the hall one evening, whereupon she noticed that I had fleas and lice leaping from curl to curl. This set the whole household in uproar, as she dragged me around like a sack of spuds and screamed at the top of her voice that once the fleas got into the house we would have to burn the place down to get rid of them. And hadn’t poor Claus seen enough of them to last a lifetime during his mattress-making days, as turkey feathers were full of them? And what was the mother doing allowing me go around with a head full of lice and making a show of them? What was her Ronny going to say when he got home? While she roared all this out