The Hidden Roads: A Memoir of Childhood

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

99–100

text excerpt

[M]y father began to give me singing lessons each weekend, with a view to my winning a Choral Scholarship to Saint George’s, Windsor, which provided the choir for the Chapel Royal.  […] 

As my father was away in London all week, my weekend lessons were long and intensive.  I stood beside the Ibach baby grand to the right of my father, and the hymns I sang, or tried to sing, are tarred with the same brush as my days at Prestwood.  

In particular, I never hear more than a couple of bars of Hymn 106 in the English Hymnal without feeling a sense of strain, and of knowing that, hard as I tried, I was disappointing my gentle, determined teacher’s expectations: 

There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.

excerpt from 'The Hidden Roads: A Memoir of Childhood' pp. 99–100 (145 words)

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1546711370660