Shellshear was my best mate in my last year at Brisbane Grammar School. He was repeating the senior year, having done rather poorly in the previous year’s exams. This repeating student and I seemed to share such kinship (apart from our academic failures that is). We were both small in stature, cheeky beyond reason and we both sought out the laugh in every situation. Now the Grammar hymn book was issued to every student in form 2, some 5 years earlier, and it soon became the focal icon of the headmaster’s assembly each Monday morning. We were each expected to still have this, by now, ragged blue book and its possession was often the subject of inspection by the masters prior to the start of this ritualistic event. The 6th form students sat right at the front of the assembly directly under the headmaster’s elevated stage. We were meant to be the shining examples, to the rest of the student body seated behind, of the fine young men that the school could produce. Now the fact that only half the 6th form students still had there hymn book was easily dealt with at inspection time by a system of unders and overs. That is, as the master walked passed and checked off each student in the row behind, the cleared 6th former would pass his hymn books under the chair to the waiting hand of the student in front, who would in turn pass the same book over to the student in front of them and …. until all 200 6th form students were cleared as OK, by simply producing 100 original books. Shellshear soon devised a way to overcome this constant and hassling problem. He ended up cutting up a school book with similar blue colours and placing blank white sheets in between the covers which made it easier for him, me, Heffernan and Miller to pass the inspection each week without incident. Trouble was, that when the ancient hymn was chosen, it became obvious to the masters lined up before us that our lack of singing may mean the lack of words on our obvious blank pages. Shellshear went back to the drawing board. This time he managed to get a brand new hymn book, from some unsuspecting 2nd former, and proceeded to find a solution to our problem. At the next assembly, when the hymn was chosen, Shellshear gently opened his brand new hymn book and handed me the first page and said in a whisper pass it on. Now the sight of that hymn book opening out into one long concertinaed sheet stretching along the row of boys was as much a shook for me as it must have been for the headmaster looking down from his elevated lectern. By this time, I am convinced that the headmaster was simply crossing the remaining days off his calendar until we all would leave his school. See, it’s the only explanation I could come up with as to why nothing was made of this action, in spite of the sniggering, giggling, shoulder gyrating actions of that row of Grammar 6th from boys, at assembly that day.
