“Something deep in the human heart breaks at the thought of a life of mediocrity.”
C. S. Lewis
On one of the few days when I decided school – my Girls Grammar School, St. Helena School for Girls, Chesterfield - was a better option than shoplifting in Sheffield, that day always started with assem-ber-ly. Voices hopeful, soaring to reach notes of the school song, ooops sorry school hymn, Pioneers.
“All the past we leave behind:
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, conquering, holding, daring, venturing, so we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers! “
We didn’t know then that it was words extracted from a Walt Whitman poem ‘Pioneers, O Pioneers!’
We weren’t made aware that these 'Pioneers' were the exhausted women tramping behind the wagons, alongside their cattle, whilst their menfolk and small children rode the wagons.
Women pulling together ‘vittals’ into meals along the way, using sour dough starters and handed down recipes along with handed down hopes and dreams.
We didn’t know we might become feminists, so we sang very loudly, with great fervour.
As an institution, albeit attended intermittently its traditions seeped into my motherless, working class world.
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