(Footnote to First Night at St Augustine’s)

When I went to Saint Augustine’s, it was a weekly boarding school. My father had wanted me to go to a catholic one and he searched high and low for one that was within a reasonable distance of where he lived, and which was cheap. It was a quarter of a mile away from where he lived in Park Royal. I have a lot of the correspondence from various schools while he was looking. After he finally chose the cheapest, (and nearest) I remember going to St Augustine’s for an interview.

 I was a bit overwhelmed but Reverend Mother seemed very pleasant as she held my hand and took us to the highest point of the building and told us to look out of the window. She proudly showed us all the land that the school possessed.  Indeed, the fields and tennis courts and hockey pitch were quite spacious. There was a little wood at the side to shield the school from Hanger Lane and there was even a small kitchen garden and farm which the nuns cultivated as well as their rose garden.  But what she didn’t say was that where the school’s actual land ended.  There were more green fields beyond the schools boundaries, but they belonged in fact  to the Barclays Bank Sports Centre;  there was a ha ha in between the school grounds and the Barclays playing fields and so it all looked quite magnificent.

Anyway, my father was quite taken in and very impressed. As a 10-year-old I thought it looked quite nice and that was that, really.  We were taken to see the chapel, I seem to remember, and probably a classroom or two. I had to do a little test which seemed incredibly easy and then the next thing I knew I was there that first night. 

I discovered soon after that they were 20 boarders of varying ages between five and 18. The policy seemed to be to mix the ages and so I shared a room with Fanny Chow and in the end, we sort of made friends despite the enormous difference of our ages and cultural background, but this is what was fascinating to me.

I remember trying very hard to get her to teach me some Cantonese. She was very reluctant saying it would be impossible for me to get my tongue around it, but in the end she taught me how to count to 100 and was eventually impressed with my pronunciation. I believe I can still count to 10 in Cantonese though I’m not sure that any self-respecting Cantonese person would actually understand me. Apart from counting. I tried to talk to her about her school in Hong Kong and this is where I came a cropper.

She told me a little bit about her school, and her friends whom she must have missed badly, and then in a fit of kindness she lent me her school magazine or yearbook. Quite a heavy volume – very glossy and full of photos. And at the end of the week I took it home with me to have a look at my leisure.

Trouble was I forgot to bring it back with me on Monday and the next weekend I was staying at my mother‘s house,( I alternated weekends with my parents.) 

Fanny was livid. I promised her that I would get it back to her as soon as I was at my father‘s for the weekend. Luckily, she was staying with some relations quite near my father’s house; unfortunately, I couldn’t remember her address when the time came to deliver the magazine. My father was annoyed yet took me to all the roads in the area which had the word Park  in them;  and we knocked on all the number 36s until we arrived at the  right one. I was quite upset by this time, but couldn’t do or say anything, of course.

At last Fanny opened the door to us, took the magazine from my hands, said thank you, and I don’t remember ever speaking to her again after that.  Oh dear.

I haven’t thought about this incident for 60 years, or her, in fact. I wonder if she will ever google herself and if this will come up?