I can't sing

There is very little I can remember from my early school days.

I do remember there were two red brick buildings - the smaller one for the infants and the more imposing one for the juniors. They were separated by a playground.

I can remember my first day at school with my elder brother completely disowning me, despite reassurances from my mother that he would look after me.

The toilets were unheated and outside in the far corner of the playground. In fact, I'm pretty certain the urinal bit had no roof. This was a facility I spent an awful lot of time visiting due to an embarrassingly weak bladder. My Mum said it was just nerves.

I do remember an enormous flying bug coming through the classroom window when I was in the infants. It made the most evil noise and I nearly shat myself as it whizzed around the room. I now have good reason to believe it was a hornet.

There was a time when we (as a class) were ascending the massive, polished stone stairs in strict formation, and we passed a pile of vomit. The stench was enough to start my own bile on it's upwards journey only to be thwarted at the last second by some serious intervention by me.

I was chosen to be a pirate in an ambitious school production of The Pirates of Penzance, which fuelled a lifelong love of Gilbert and Sullivan.

I can recall a foreign girl in my class. I haven't a clue where she came from but she had a funny accent and was called something like Olga. And she was disposed to frequently peeing herself. She would often exit the classroom having left a puddle under her desk, and once, during PE, we all had to step over the piss on the floor.

And as I write this, I'm starting to remember more and more, which is fun, but not my intention. However, there was one event, so mind-blowingly crucial in my life, that I don't think it has ever been surpassed in it's ability to negatively effect my whole life.

I was about nine and a new headmaster had arrived. He was Welsh and had an unfortunate stammer. And he loved singing. He loved to hear the school sing, and 'singing' quickly replaced many of the more diverse activities within the school.

Striving for perfection from the singing throng of pupils, he once did a walk-by, pausing by each of us with his ear close to our mouths as we sung our hearts out. The 'spoilers' were quickly identified and the order given that the guilty few must always mime in future. And so I started a life time of miming. And as the implications of miming grew, my hatred for his cruelty has grown also.

He was right of course. I can't sing!

Okay, there are many other 'talents' I possess, but I just can't sing. I have since learnt this is something I have in common with the delicious Stephen Fry. He has written about his grief much more eloquently than I could ever achieve, but he summed it up perfectly when he said of his inability to sing, "You can't join in".

He's right, you can't join in! I've never been able to join in singing 'Happy Birthday', at funerals I'm unable to join in, at weddings, Christmas Carols, and the very thought of a Karaoke evening would induce me to throw myself under a bus rather than attend. And the worse thing is I love music. I can hear music note perfect in my head but vocal reproduction is impossible. Singing is a sociable event, and when there's singing, I'm unsociable.

Maybe if we hadn't had a change of Headmaster I wouldn't have spent my life miming the words. It wouldn't have made me a better singer but, just maybe, I might have felt able to join in once and a while...