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13 hours later.
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An improvement.
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How is it that dreams almost always instantly disappear from the mind, unless you write then down?
At least, I have read that this is so and it is certainly true in my case.
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Generally not though, if it’s a nightmare which you’d love to forget.
These days my dreams don’t qualify, but for many years when I was younger I used to wake up screaming.
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As far as I can recall, nothing particularly terrifying ever happened to me, so I assume I was just very impressionable.
Films tended to scare me.
One in particular was Mole Men.
Later there was Psycho.
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Some experiences later on made me feel oppressed and I think they caused the majority of my nightmares.
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As a child in London, I was often taken to view Newsreels and I remember being frightened, for example, by the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya.
But those people I knew were far away in Africa.
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What worried me every night was that someone would break in and steal me.
That was the word I thought of.
Maybe I’d not yet heard of kidnapping.
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No-one would have wanted to, but I clutched my bed sheets, telling myself that if such a thing should happen, the person would have to take the bed as well, which might be difficult.
Child logic.
Once when I was home alone with my mother, a burglar broke in, scaring her. That registered.
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We had a flat in Earl’s Court, occupying both the basement and the ground floor. It was cold, having tremendously high ceilings and huge draughty windows.
The bathroom, kitchen and scullery – and the budgie, usually – were downstairs, the rest was up.
My parents and brother’s bedrooms were at the back, mine was toward the front, overlooking central drains.
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There must be a name for that gap at the centre of those blocks of flats where the drains are, but I’ve never been able to discover it.
As views go, it wasn’t fabulous.
There were two doors, one that let onto a corridor and the other giving access to the front or living room.
My bedroom had an old fireplace but I don’t recall it ever being lit. I think in the old days that room was probably an extension of the front room.
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We were across the street from an Anglican church, St Luke’s.
One day at school, I’d been part of a group of children who our teacher singled out as “Mary Magdalene’s” because we were not baptised.
While I wasn’t too sure what that meant, I could tell from the teacher’s face that it was a bad thing, so I went home and told my mum I wished to be christened.
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After all, the church was right across the road, but I was told no and the matter was closed.
My father was an atheist and although he’d allowed Mum to have my brother baptised, in my case he forbade it.
Yet, until I was sent to the States, I was educated in religious schools.
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Years later when home on holiday from the convent school in Vietnam, I brought up the matter of being christened again, with the same result.
In the years that followed, I was sent to a series of other convent schools and growing up, I observed behaviour that turned me against the religion.
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Impressionable and needing badly to belong somewhere or to something, I could so easily have been indoctrinated.
Yet one sister confronted me sternly:
“No one with any intelligence does not believe in God!”
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At the time I thought she was referring to my father and I wondered how she knew he was an atheist, but I’ve realised since she meant me, even though I had not by any means decided then what I did or didn’t believe.
The woman accused me of sitting in her religion classes with looks of doubt on my face.
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But it wasn’t the only turn-off.
Every day, I saw the way the sisters behaved toward each other. I heard their conversations and I observed the way they treated the priest who came to say mass.
It was my first experience of hypocrisy.
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Which is not at all to say that I believe all Christians are hypocrites. Of course they are not and nor are those who subscribe to other religions.
In this country, sadly, there are many so-called Christian groups whose practices are so far from the teachings of Christ as to make a mockery of their religion.
My experiences turned me against organised religion, choosing instead to take lessons from a variety of sources and to form my own code of ethics.
Being irreligious doesn’t make you immoral.
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One lesson I learned as a child has always stuck with me, though I don’t remember who taught me it:
“Do as you would be done by.”
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“Do as you would be done by” is a sound way of living. Unfortunately, it seems that “Do unto others before they do unto you” is the maxim of so many now!
Thank you, Carolyn, for your wonderful philosophical thoughts. The quote comes, I think, from the Bible. I love the photos of the stunning sky! There is another saying, “Do as I say, not as I do”, coming from many politicians. I am sorry about your difficult childhood. You certainly deserved better!
Joanna
Lots of ‘truths'” inside these reminiscences, which are, as always, interesting to read.
I agree … the behaviour of some Christians toward each other (and other non-believers) makes it difficult to accept Christianity. It’s such a shame.
Although my family was not religious, I was christened as a baby. My mum showed me the christening certificate when I was much older and I asked her why she bothered. She winked at me and said “In case they are right”.
I can only imagine how much that flat in Earl’s Court is worth now. So I will look it up. A low estimate would be £3,000,000, and top price almost £5,000,000. (I checked on some London estate agent sites)
Best wishes, Pete.