I think I must have been eleven or twelve at the time, if I seem a little vague about it it’s because it really was a very long time ago. I lived in a small village with two shops and one chapel. For those old enough to drink there were three pubs in a row next to each other (About a half a mile away) they all had their own names but in the area they were known as the top house, middle house and the club.

     At my time of life it was mandatory to attend church (Chapel) on Sunday morning at eleven-o-clock. This to me was no hardship as there was a very pretty girl that used to attend and I always tried to meet and walk with her. I remember thinking that she was the most beautiful girl in the whole world and some day I would kiss her and marry her. Well I did get to kiss her but never married her; to me she will always remain a very beautiful young girl and will never age. The chapel itself was small; if there were thirty people in there it was crowded. There was a small organ that had a small electric motor that on occasion failed to deliver the required power. It was then up to a member of the congregation to take his coat off and with his great manly strength give voice to the organ by means of a hand pump in the rear. I have done that very thing on more than one occasion.

      The person that used to take the services was a man that I will only name as Mr H, I know not his qualifications for taking the service and to be quite honest at the age I was then there was nothing I cared less about. This Mr H has long since passed away but it seems that he had something of a murky history. About ten years ago I was reliably informed that he was a member of the black shirts at the outbreak of the Second World War, for those who don’t know the meaning of this it meant he was a Nazi sympathiser. None of this was common knowledge at the time, and if anyone did know they never told this school boy who had eyes for that pretty girl.

       It was a fine summer’s day when it happened, a day that will go down in infamy, a day that threw a dark cloud over my small life. It was the day that scared me forever, for as I saw it then made me seem foolish in the eyes of that pretty maid. I had walked her to church and was sat next to her and enjoying just being next to her, watching her smile and feeling a slight embarrassment and not knowing why. Then as I was lost in my own little world a huge hand grasped me by my shoulder and a voice said “You come with me”. I was whisked into a small room at the rear of the chapel and Mr H said to me “You are now in the choir”. “But I can’t sing”. “Makes no difference you are now a choir boy”. Stunned; that does not describe how I felt at that moment, but there was worse to come. “Quickly” said Mr H “Put this on” The this, that he was talking about was a cassock and surplus. While I struggled with the voluminous garments that I had been given Mr H had left and in very short order had returned with two more victims. Needless to say they were just as thunderstruck as I was, but at least I was now not alone, and they too could share in this horror. Once attired in cassock and surplus we looked at each other in laughter, embarrassment and disdain. This was not too bad in the confines of this small room, but then the thought struck me that I would have to walk down in aisle to the very front of this chapel to the pews where the choir sat. Not only would all and sundry see me but that pretty little girl would see me. She would see her admirer walking down the aisle dressed in a large black frock surmounted by a fluffy white blouse. It had crossed my mind that every time she thought of me she would see me as a very large penguin. That was it, my life had ended, no more to be seen as a handsome young boy on the cusp of manhood but forever known as an ugly penguin.

      I somehow got over it and she cared not one jot about it, but nevertheless that was a very bad day for me. It is my experience that adults care not a lot for the feelings of pubescent children. I remained with that role, wearing cassock and surplus for two years. But I was right, I could not sing, especially taking into account that my voice was breaking all the time I was there. Serves them right! It was during my time in that choir that I experienced one of the most wonderful Christmases’ I have ever had. On this particular Christmas, at about nine at night, I was going to the chapel early to ring the bell and call the congregation. This was a time before global warming was even contemplated and all the seasons came and went like clockwork. So it was Christmas and there was snow on the ground, as I walked to chapel there was that deadened sound that snow brings, the snow crunched under foot. For the most part the sky was clear with the stars bright like jewels. An occasional snow flurry from a passing cloud that had lost its way, but on the whole a crisp star lit Christmas night. The chapel looked liked it had fallen out of a Christmas card and one may have expected Dickens himself to come stumbling towards you with a “HO HO HO Merry Christmas”. That was the most perfect Christmas that I can remember; it sticks in my mind even to this day and after all that time. But would that Christmas have made the same impression on me if I hadn’t been made to join that choir? I think not.