When I last watched the Heaven family home videos, a striking trend emerged. In every clip from the early 1990s, one of my siblings or I was being encouraged to sing. We babies were bounced on daddy’s knee, and he sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ over and over again until — looking goggle-eyed and faintly hypnotised — we joined in.
Little did we know it was the start of a cunning plan: my parents moulded us into mini-musicians, then sent us to be cathedral choristers, and finally to audition for music scholarships at our various secondary schools. It worked beautifully: ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ saved an absolute fortune in school fees.
OK, it’s unlikely that my parents planned that far ahead. But all of us Heaven children — my two older brothers, me and my younger sister — were educated on the cheap (well, cheaper). And the same opportunity is there for any boy, and increasingly any girl, who can hold a tune.
All over the country, cathedrals help to pay for their choristers, from the age of about eight, to be educated at some of the best prep schools around.
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