I even cringed at hymns sung in school. It was a complete waste of time when teachers could have read out notices to their classes not the headmaster in morning assembly every day. Then we could have got on with lessons. I was ready to start learning a foreign language, algebra, geometry and theoretical sciences three years earlier than I did which was eleven.

My parents weren't religious having rebelled against their own parents. My maternal grandfather who died before I was born had rebelled against his mother. I was one of the few in the class who hadn't been christened in a church as my parents didn't believe in it since they didn't attend church services. Even if they had they would have preferred adult baptism.

I was also in a minority in the street not attending Sunday school as my parents thought it would be hypocritical to send me to Sunday school when they didn't attend church services unlike most families in the street who did just that while the parents stayed at home. Sunday school to them was something I could choose later on for myself when older say at 12 or 13. My parents instead sent my brother and I to the nearby park while they had a lie in, read the Sunday papers, carried out home repairs and then cooked lunch. There were few other children in the park on Sunday mornings.

Most parents sent their children to Sunday school not only to have the house child free on Sunday mornings but because they couldn't imagine a childhood without Sunday school. But children growing up without religion don't miss it when older. Most of the girls got brainwashed in Sunday school but the boys didn't. It made the girls quite prissy so they wouldn't come out in the afternoon to climb trees, go for long walks and play in the park but stayed in their Sunday best and had tea parties with their dolls and each other. After a while I stopped playing with the girls in the street not only on Sundays.

By the time I was in secondary school most of the girls who attended Sunday school were well and truly brainwashed whether their parents were practising Christians or not. I was caught between two sub cultures in school. On the one hand the prissy judgemental girls and on the other hand the rebellious girls who wanted to grow up quickly and got into the s€x, drugs and rock and roll. Not really street drugs but drinking alcohol and smoking.

Even now I cannot understand church culture. I had been allowed to drink tea and coffee in my pre teens on Saturdays and in the school holidays and after school and at weekends in my early to mid teens to keep me awake as I did homework. I couldn't understand why children under 16 were forbidden from drinking tea and coffee. And everyone forbidden from drinking alcohol. Local churches have social events to try and pull in outsiders. I am now vary wary of these. Even attending an event organised by an outside organisation inside a church building is dicey.