Реклама. ООО «ЛитРес», ИНН: 7719571260.
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒ Before Universes Existed
✒
✒ Parousia
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
✒
Fifteen minutes from my home and astone’s throw from the pearl that was the Roman Catholic Church was the school that I attended. It was my first day to school and, clutching Iris’s hand as though I was King Kong’s favourite godson, we entered the school gates alongside other parents and children. Cautiously we inched our way to the schoolhouse that to me had seemed like a very imposing building. In truth the building was not thathuge; but to my youthful eyes, compared to the tiny wooden structures that I had been used to in my neighbourhood, the two-story wooden building seemed like Everest.
Iris and me walked to the school’s door. The Head Mistress, Miss Grimm, a smile-machine and cheerful woman in spite of her frightening name, stood outside the entrance of the school door waiting to meet the parents and her new pupils. Grimmy, as she was called behind her back, was a proud islander. Of average height, she was rotund and was blessed with a row of white teeth dazzling enough to compete with the most brilliant flashing light of a lighthouse.
.....
Another day, another lesson. Aside from Christopher Columbus, the class learnt about the adventures and exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Oliver Cromwell and Guy Fawkes. In this outwardly insignificant building our brains were also burnished with knowledge of the tea planters of Ceylon, the Maharajas of India, the Yangtze River, the Nile, and other general knowledge questions. Then, without warning the teacher would ask, ‘Earl, how long is the Yangtze River?’
‘3602 miles, teacher,’ I answered.
.....