It was 9 o’clock on a Friday morning in June and the pupils of classes 1,2 and 3 of St Andrew’s Church School, Totteridge, were gathered in the big hall, awaiting the arrival of their headmaster, Mr Hope Hawthorn, fondly known as Prickles.
Every first Friday of the month, during term time, Prickles directed the upper school in choir practice. He conducted the proceedings from a small podium on the stage, whilst, to the side, Mrs Mansfield, Class 2 teacher, banged away on the piano.
The object of this exercise was to ensure that his charges were permanently tuned to sing as sweetly as nightingales, should the need arise to stage an impromptu welcome ceremony for any civic dignitaries or church elders, who descended on the school unexpectedly.
The choir also needed to be kept in trim for speech days, parent days, Christmas and Easter concerts and end of school year celebrations.
Prickles took this task very seriously and put the children rigorously through their paces. By way of a little light relief,
for the last 15 minutes, he would invite requests from the floor, for any favourite hymns or songs to be sung.
On this particular Friday, there was a general feeling of disquiet in the air, connected in some way, with The Naughty Boys. Trouble was afoot.
On Jordan’s Bank
The Naughty Boys consisted of a rumbustious and raucous gang of four,
The well known trouble makers: Johnson, Ilsley, Harris, and Shaw
Today, they were huddled together, in a conspiratorial cluster in the back row,
Their general demeanor confirming that there was indeed, ‘something on the go.’
If they spotted anyone looking at them, they would pull horrible faces and stick two fingers in the air.
Punishment for this caliber of boorishness, if spotted, was ‘six of the best.’ The Naughty Boys didn’t care.
The headmaster breezed in through the double doors, with Mrs Mansfield in tow. His pupils leapt respectfully to their feet.
The Naughty Boys, made an incredible, (and almost certainly deliberate), clatter, and with a monstrous crash, Shaw fell off his seat.
Prickles bore down, with gimlet eyes, upon the hapless Shaw, and, grasping him by the ear manoeuvred him into position.
“Pull another stunt like that laddie, and you’ll find out what’s meant by severe admonition.”
For the next 30 minutes, the upper school was immersed in the seven elements of music, and what they meant.
The occupants of the back row were showing signs of restlessness –which was the way it usually went.
They seemed completely impervious to the fact that they were already skating on very thin ice,
And that any further transgression, would exact a dreadful price.
At last, the headmaster moved things forward and invited us to select hymns of our own choice.
The Naughty Boys erupted, in unison, all of them of one mind and of one voice.
“Sir! Sir!” … they shouted, … ‘On Jordan’s Bank The Baptist’s Cry.’
And suddenly I knew what those shameless boys were up to and why.
-
It was all to do with the third verse of the hymn they had selected,
Where golden opportunity for salacious innuendo had been detected.
The verse in question included the phrase ‘then cleansed be every Christian breast’…
This last word offered ample scope for bawdiness and vulgarity at their very best.
Soon, everyone was tittering. They all got it. They all knew.
And, very unfortunately for the Naughty Boys , Prickles got it too!
Carefully articulating in icy tones, his voice suffused with rage,
Prickles requested that Shaw join him on the stage.
He ordered him onto the podium, leaving him there alone
Remarking that since he was so keen on this hymn , he could sing it now on his own.
Shaw's ears were scarlet red as he battled through the hymn.
Everyone held their breath in expectation; as he neared the third verse, Shaw's face
was grim.
Somehow, he got through it, and fortunately, there was no slavering over that dubious word,
It turned out that Shaw had, in fact, a very fine singing voice, though at the moment it was understandably, somewhat blurred.
The Naughty Boys were hangdog, they’d all been given lines,
‘On Jordan’s Bank The Baptist’s Cry’ - to be written out, in its entirety, twenty times.
But had they learned their lesson? Had they suffered pain?
Patently they hadn’t because they soon bounced back again.
Maggie Smart
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