...I was recently browsing Farrokh Chothia's excellent collection of pictures from Lovedale when I came across this - a picture that wafted me back to Prep School in an instant. The Assembly Room for grades 4-6.
Swirling, vivid memories of daily assemblies, plays, and elocutions in front of thousands hundreds a roomful of people. Sardonic coughs punctuating the silence, shuffling feet shushed by sibilant whispers. Also known as a time of intense public humiliation as one stood, gripped the lectern and tried to clearly articulate Oh, Captain, My Captain without a microphone while trying to quell wobbly knees and an intense need to use the loo.
Multitasking? We invented the word.
I'm not quite sure what the TV is doing on the stage, but that's the approximate place we used to stand and deliver. I'm amused to see the piano apparently hasn't moved an inch in decades. I'd think I'd hate to dust underneath. Then again, it might reveal a treasure trove of artifacts...
This stage was also where we practiced several plays. Voices from the past - I can almost hear the Wicked Queen from Snow White singing...:
Magic Mirror, on the wall
Tell me who is the fairest of them all...?
Followed by the Mirror's laconic response and an ear-splitting shriek from the Queen:
Lady Queen you are fair and tall
Few can your charms outdo
But Princess Snow White, fair and sweet
Is lovelier far than you
Oh, what the heck? Let's step up to the lectern one more time - just for old-times sake. Can you see it in between the two rows? Now, place it on the stage and clear your throat... <<<koff!!>>
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.
The flames rolled on -- he would not go
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.
Picture courtesy: OL Farrokh Chothia. Edited on Nov. 11th. Minor typo.
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