Ryde Reminiscences

Yes, folks, your family folk historian is back, thanks to your positive response. Just a couple of Ryde stories before we move on.

I lived in Ryde from three years of age to eleven. When I was eight or nine, it was, of course, time for me to become an altar boy. I trained with others at St Charles Borromeo, where I also went to primary school. I can't remember who trained us (was it Fr Munday, John?) but I used to ride to church on my Malvern Star. (Dad had taught me to ride back in Bowden St. He held on to the back of the saddle as I pedalled down the street - it was only when I looked around to find he wasn't there that I fell off! After that, things were fine.)

I remember my first performance on the altar. It was a weekday morning and the other altar boy hadn't turned up. I had to do everything. Worse still, Mass was being said by the parish priest, Fr Phillip Reeves, a thoroughly tough old crank. After communion I was down turning the altar rail cloths back and shouting responses to the priest. The boarders from Holy Cross College found this very amusing.

As I say, Fr Reeves was a total tyrant. As were the only other parish priests of my "Catholic" years - Charlie Smith in Goolmangar ( a total nutter) and Bill (?) Power at Strathfield, among other things a great apostle of the corrupt US-supported regime in South Vietnam. None of them would lead a young person to believe that Jesus was meek and mild or might, indeed, "suffer the little children". Nowadays I realise that they all three were severely in need of psychiatric help, but that didn't help back then.

But now a happier story. I was in third class, seven years old, and sat next to Colleen Flynn, the most beautiful being I had ever seen in my life. At playtime the boys would play Cowboys and Indians over the gravestones and the girls would retreat to the holes in the privet to play House. (NOT Doctors and Nurses, we knew nothing about that stuff - just imaginary tea parties.) Of course, you're way ahead of me, I played with the girls. One day they dared me to kiss Colleen and I did, discreetly on the cheek. I had never felt anything so soft and sweet in all my life, and if I close my eyes I can feel it even now, almost 60 years later. She lived at 17 Sherwin St, Henley, an address I have never written down, but never forgotten. Many years later, when I was teaching at St Pat's, I saw on the class roll that a pupil lived at 15 Sherwin St. I asked if the Flynns still lived next door (I didn't tell him why!) and they did. But Colleen was married with children and lived somewhere else. I wonder where she is now.

More when I'm in the mood.

Hugh