I had been taught to say my prayers by my father and loved the bedtime routine. But when I was thrust into the confines of the boarding establishment that was St Augustine’s, night prayers and day prayers and any other time prayers took on a totally different significance. Within a week of being there I had added up our prayer times to almost forty episodes a day. Were we saints? We were not. I certainly wasn’t and I was going to complain.

Let me show you. 6.30 am – getting up prayer. 7 am ( on Wednesday I think and Friday) – Mass.  Prayers before Mass and after. 8 am – Grace before breakfast and after breakfast, 9 am  – School Assembly. – prayers.

9 15 am – start of lessons. The potential – depending on the teacher, I think, to say a prayer before and after every lesson.  There were eight of these. In addition the bell rang for the Angelus at Noon.

Wednesdays there was Benediction. Lots of prayers in Latin mainly – but I enjoyed those. Then 4 pm tea – Grace before and after. also grace before and after lunch. Then prep time from 5 to 6 30 pm – prayers before and after. Then supper. grace before and after. then play till 7.45. Then night prayers.Lights out at 8. How many is that? I’ll count.

36 or thereabouts.  I’m sure this did our souls lots of good, but Reverend Mother had made one inadvertent mistake when she accepted me as  a St Augustine’s girl. Holding my hand very affectionately (she held everyone’s hand I noticed over the years) she reassured me that I could come to her with every trouble or problem.  I’m afraid I took her at her word, and within a few weeks I went to see her to tell her about the prayer excess.

She was absolutely lovely and held my hand again, she agreed with every word I said and then asked how she could help me, as the prayer times had been established since the seventeenth century – or something like that!. I was a bit nonplussed and then she had an idea – she would let me off going to Mass one day a week. Result!

Fat lot of good it did me in the end, because although I didn’t have to go, the other girls made me feel so uncomfortable that I started going again.

And then I sort of got used to it! Amen.