Part two of my sister's crazy Catholic convent school and the mad nuns who ran it.

This is the second part of the true story of my sister's  life in a crazy Catholic convent school, and her experiences of the mad nuns that ran the place. All of these stories are absolutely true, and illustrate that not all so called 'Representatives of God' act rationally, and many of them should definitely not be allowed to be left in charge of children. 

Now normally most schools have a fire drill in place so that in the event a fire breaks out, all of the staff and pupils know exactly what they have to do to get out of the building safely.

Bear in mind my sister's Catholic convent school also had a number of boarding pupils whose parents lived abroad, so of course when the fire alarm went off one day the boarders all needed to be got out of the school as fast as possible. The only problem was that the convent had never implemented any kind of fire drill, so no-one knew what to do. Guess what the solution was that the nuns came up with for this problem!

Well, instead of getting the children out of the school whatever way they could (the logical option), they decided to round up all of the girls into one room, and whilst awaiting the arrival of the fire brigade, the nun in charge of looking after the girls got them all to stand in the room saying Hail Marys.

Fortunately it turned out to be a false alarm, otherwise most likely the girls would all have been toast.

Another occasion during class one of the nuns was attempting to read a passage from the Bible to the girls. As she opened the bible to the appropriate page, she discovered an ancient stained and battered looking 'Holy Host'. Now true Catholics genuinely believe that the Host and the Wine in Church are literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ, so to throw it away was simply not an option to this nun. Instead, and in spite of the dishevelled state it was in, she ate it in front of the class rather than risk offending Jesus. Apparently if you had seen this old and dusty Host there is not a chance on earth you would have ever considered consuming it, but she still did. Yuk!

One of the former pupils at my sister's school was 'Lisa Opie', now known best for being an international champion squash player. At this convent school the nuns were not known for encouraging any of the pupil's extra curricular activities. Upon leaving the convent Lisa went on to win numerous medals all over the world with her squash playing abilities, and suddenly the nuns seemed to appear from no-where and tried to claim it was all as a result of their encouragement whilst she attended their convent. Many other former pupils were stunned by this hypocrisy. It wasn't that the Nuns 'actively discouraged' Lisa, but it was just generally noticed by pupils at the time -and since- that the nuns were very quick to 'claim' Lisa as 'their' success-story while omitting to make clear that everything she'd achieved was as a result of her own dedication and commitment outside school hours as Squash wasn't even on the school curriculum! (even after Lisa's success).

My Sister was always very artistic, and because of this she was frequently roped into designing and making things for school projects. On one of these occasions the school was raising money for a charity, and they needed a 'Totaliser' to illustrate the amounts raised so far. My sister was roped into this without having any choice in the matter, and ended up spending many lunch hours and break times making this Christmas Tree shaped 'Totaliser' for the event, with appropriate milestones financially marked on the sides of it.

After many days of work on her own time the 'Totaliser' was finally finished. When the nun in charge of the project came to inspect my sister's work she went absolutely crazy, complaining it was several inches too short, and completely failed to appreciate that Hayley had done this on her own time and had been given no choice in the matter.

On this occasion one of the other nuns actually did try to defend Hayley a little by pointing out that Hayley had said she could make it a bit taller by adding further decoration to the bottom of it. Unfortunately this held little sway with the crazy nun's complaint, and poor Hayley didn't get so much as a 'thank you' for her efforts.

 One female pupil (whose guardian was her Auntie) was caught reading the 'James Herbert' book 'The Rats' by one of the nuns. This nun was horrified and said to her "Does your Auntie know you are reading that?", to which the girl honestly replied, "It was my Auntie who gave it to me".

My Sister Hayley won a competition during her time at the Convent School. I believe it was a writing competition from what I remember. The first prize was tickets for two to have a day trip to St. Malo in France.

Weeks later Hayley still hadn't been given the tickets, and our Mum kept asking Hayley what had happened to her prize. Each time Hayley asked the Reverend Mother about the missing prize, she would say, 'Now make sure you remind me next time you see me to give you those tickets'.

Dutifully Hayley kept on and on reminding Reverend Mother about the tickets to no avail. Then, one day in Assembly Reverend Mother in front of the whole school said, 'And you Hayley, I told you to remind me to give you those prize tickets but you completely failed to do so'. Apparently Reverend Mother had suffered a complete convenient lapse of memory.

Hayley did eventually get her tickets, but the general opinion was that Reverend Mother was so annoyed a non-Catholic girl had won the first prize in the competition, that she begrudged giving her the tickets at all, hence the lengthy delay!

 This particular Convent had a sign outside with their Latin Motto printed on it. I would quote it here, but it would be too easy to trace back to the school today. Next to the motto used to be the phrase in English ' *********** College Convent for Young Ladies'. Over time this sign seemed to evolve as things changed, so soon it became, '*********** College Convent for Young Girls', and then it went on to say ' *********** College Convent' until eventually it simply said '*********** College'.

My guess is that by this time the nuns had given up hope of turning the girls into the robots they wanted them to be.

My Sister had to go into Assembly one morning at a time when she really needed to be in the toilet doing what nature intended. Of course Convent Assembly's tend to go on a long long time what with all the prayers etc.

Throughout this ordeal my Sister kept her bum cheeks firmly pressed together in the hope she could hold off until Assembly had finished, but three quarters of the way through it, whilst Reverend Mother was reciting a 'Hail Mary' Hayley could not help but let rip, and an enormously loud pungent fart reverberated throughout the room. Reverend mother went bright red, and Hayley did what any embarrassed child would do, and looked over her shoulder as if to see who was guilty of this terrible crime.

Once everyone finished falling about laughing, and gagging on the stench, Assembly finished. One of the other girls trying to make Hayley feel uncomfortable said in a loud voice, "OOOOHHHH, Hayley, was that you?"

Instead of owning up Hayley said " Of course not, it was Sally Saunders", who happened to be a girl nearby, possessing a sarcastic sense of humour that Hayley had often been on the receiving end of. Poor Sally got the blame for this terrible fart when she was actually totally innocent.

Hayley always says, that even after leaving this Convent school it was amazing how many ex-pupils would see one of their former Convent's nuns coming down the local High Street or past the shops, and would instinctively dive into various shop doorways to avoid having to interact with them now they had finally escaped at last.

Last, but by no means least, was the occasion as a special treat our Mum made Hayley fresh crab sandwiches to take to school for her lunch. When it came to lunchtime the sandwiches had gone missing from my Sister's bag. She hunted everywhere, but they had vanished.

When she got home she told Mum that she must have forgotten to put the sandwiches in her bag, but Mum was adamant that she had definitely put them in there.

The following day Hayley asked one of the Nuns who was taking her class if anyone had found some crab sandwiches. Of course no-one knew anything about them, so instead of just forgetting about the whole thing, the Nun got the whole class to pray for the return of my Sister's missing crab sandwiches.

You couldn't make this stuff up I swear, and not surprisingly the sandwiches never did turn up!!!