A wonderful way to start the school day

The new school term meant one thing for me when I was a kid - hymns.

Even now I cannot understand why my friend could stand there for ages and pretend to be singing a hymn but no words would ever leave his mouth.

He would just move his mouth up and down as if he was some fish out of water gasping for air.

When the teacher passed by he would sing a couple of words before going back to miming again.

The strange thing is he knew all the words.

In fact, everyone who did this knew the words but preferred to mime everything. I found that quite weird.

I began miming at the age of six.

I thought it was the done thing at first and managed to do everything but sing the hymn.

I thought I could get extra points for not singing.

But by the age of seven I could take it no more.

I came to realise that I loved the hymns. So what if I liked a little singing?

Maybe I came from a long line of singers. My eldest brother admitted he would belt out Onward Christian Soldiers' in the sixties. He said it was good tune.

The hymns were harmless at most and if nothing else they praised the Almighty and everything nice.

Slowly, I began uttering the words and then one day they flowed out of my mouth like some majestic, wonderful thing that had been set free from the shackles of ignorance.

And do you know something? They sounded beautiful.

Some of the hymns weren't religious at all. They were really catchy.

In the morning I would sometimes hurry to assembly in the hope we would be singing one of my favourite tunes, like The ink is black..the paper is white..together we learn to read and write'.

Oh what beauty. What brilliance. What a wonderful way to begin the day.

But as I glanced around there were those who still chose to mime it. How dare they, I thought to myself.

Once the music stopped and all you could hear was me bellowing out Morning has broken...blackbird had spoken'.

It was embarrassing but, to be honest, I didn't care.