MORNING SERIAL

WE dressed up for all this; the girls in their tall black hats and red plaid skirts and shawls and we boys, there being no real defined national costume for our sex, hazily Welshified by addition of our granddads’ ‘Dai caps’, a scarf and waistcoat and little green and white felt leeks on our lapels that we had made for ourselves in class, held together with glue and a safety pin.

One particularly fine 1st of March, I remember the whole affair was conducted outdoors beneath the flagpole in front of the school, the Red Dragon flying aloft.

When we had finished our singing we were each presented with a medal in a plastic pocket with the Prince of Wales’ three feathers in silver superimposed on red enamel. It was for the ‘Investiture’ said Mrs Jones, our headmistress.

I had no idea what that was, but I loved the deep red colour of the enamel, and decided that from then on, that would be my favourite colour if anyone were ever to ask. We lined up behind a bed of daffodils and we had our picture taken.

Around this time of year there came, also, the most dreaded of all annual events: the chapel anniversary. This special service involved the Sunday School ‘scholars’ learning what we termed a ‘piece’, for performance in front of assembled parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles.

Although for the older children this might involve a hymn sung as a solo or something performed on a musical instrument, for us younger ones this generally meant a recitation of a ‘verse’, a short poem, in front of a packed congregation of mothers and fathers and grandparents.

This was terrifying enough but the rub was this: the verse had to be memorised and not read out. Weeks prior to Anniversary Sunday we were handed our verse handwritten on a sheet of lined paper by one of our Sunday School teachers in a neat, cursive style.

Almost immediately, we scrambled to compare them with one another, desperate to seek out and swap our own for better-prized examples that might be shorter than the rest.