Memories of 1953

Being taken back through the thick smog to my central London boarding choir school after a sunny day at home on the outskirts of London • Not being able to see across the road or the platform on the other side of the railway track.  (The school’s Head Master was Malcolm Melville who was later curate of Ingoldisthorpe and taught at St Michael’s) • I learnt to ride a bike • Going over a hill and seeing, spread out below us, the village of which my father had just been made Rector •  We had our first television which had a very small screen. It was gift to my father from his last parish • Watching the Coronation procession and service on the television in a room with thirty plus other people (my next older brother was head chorister at Westminster Abbey and sang the only solo during the service (O Taste and See) • Starting at a new boarding school in the middle of acres of farmland as the London smog had effected my lungs (the school is now a Cheshire Home).

 Michael Catterick