Dear esteemed collective,

In this year of Our Majesty's Diamond Jubilee my truly unintentional misdemeanour during the Silver Jubilee year of 1977 comes flooding back to me and I desperately need to reveal my wickedness and remove this burden from my chest. I was a 14 year old pupil at a church school called Our Saints, where we had a Deputy Headmaster who took great delight in telling us that he always answered the telephone to the cry of 'Our Saints here!' and that all of us within were indeed nothing short of saintly!

My halo came unstuck that year when it was announced in assembly one day that there would be an inter-schools competition across the whole of the county to celebrate the Queens Silver Jubilee. For this we were required to write an essay of several hundred words about the Princess Elizabeth and how she came to be crowned Queen. The coveted prize for the winner would be a free place on the annual school exchange trip to France. While this may not seem a lot today, when I was a girl only the wealthy travelled afar and to depart these shores was a momentous occasion for any youngster.

Well I wasn't really interested in this competition, but my best friend in all the world was. Form tutors the length and breadth of the county had told all pupils that if they intended to enter the competition then they would be given the privilege of using the library to complete their research during ASSEMBLY time! My friend didn't want to do this on her own so in pleading tones she begged me to join her in the library and therefore benefit from the great joy of missing assembly!

Now the problem for me was that although I had the pleasure of skiving assembly to look forward to, I still had to write an essay, so off to the library we went with me glumly resigned to the fact that I would have to write an essay about the Queen!

Still adamant that I had no interest in the competition and that I had helped my best buddy as far as could reasonably be expected, I set about thinking how I could get through this torturous time without wasting any more effort than was absolutely necessary and suddenly I saw the light, there was the answer, right in front of me.... BOOKS! Hundreds of them! I set about searching the many shelves and to my unashamed delight, sat there screaming ‘use me, use me’ was a book on our dearly beloved Queen. So whilst my friend chewed her pencil and struggled for inspiration I flicked through the pages of my book and yes, I copied, or plagiarised as it’s better known, paragraph after paragraph on how Her Majesty had made it thus far.
My finished essay was a literary masterpiece far beyond the capability of any 14 year old, it would never fool even the most stalwart of judges, but that wasn’t my concern, I just didn't want to be inflicted with detention for skiving assembly on my friends behalf! My essay was submitted along with my best friend’s and all the other equally excited children in the county.

My friend babbled excitedly every day about what winning this coveted prize would mean to her. In the end I was sick of listening to it and quietly and patiently looked forward to the date when my misery would be over and the winner would be revealed.

The day arrived, it was assembly 9am and all Our Saints pupils were gathered waiting for the wondrous news. I had switched off, my friend was doing my head in, I just wanted it all to be over and then...the winner of the county inter-schools competition to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee is...ME!

O.M.G! They called my name, in a shocked state of numbness I looked at my dearest friend who was sat next to me, she looked at me like she was preparing to kill me because she knew what I’d done and my deceit, albeit undertaken only to help her, had now robbed her of that which was most precious to her, A FREE TRIP TO FRANCE.

I had to continue the charade and accepted my prize, my triumphant win was plastered all over the local media, my family were overflowing with pride and telling anyone that would listen, the whole school was talking about how one of their very own little Saints had won this prestigious competition, but my friend didn’t talk to me for many many months.

So dear Father Simon and the collective this seems like an appropriate time to ask for forgiveness, not for skiving assembly or dodging the shame of having my deceit revealed, but for the pain and suffering I caused my best friend when she lost that most sacred of prizes following her many hours of hard work, and not only her but all the other honest students who to this day never knew that the prize they fought so hard to win was cruelly taken from them by a fallen Saint.

Desperately yours in hope

Brittany