Thanks for the response above.
I regret that my parents elected to return to UK after so many years at CDM. By the time I was in Std 7 at Littlewood House, Wynberg Boys High in Cape Town and really, really loving it despite the rigors of discipline etc., the news that I was to leave WBHS hit me hard. I'd be saying goodbye to my little world in which I lived and grew up. I was not a happy chappie.
I'd just become used to my knew teachers at WBHS and the curriculum and importantly how to study and would now have to go through the whole process again in a cold, wet, cramped, continuously overcast, completely green, no desert to go explore or search for tiger-eye and agate stones avoid snakes etc etc.
Most important of all, the sense of freedom Mother Nature provided us OM kids in the form of the Namib desert and knowing our parents knew we were safe was snapped away from me. No more would I be free to go out and wander around without being aware of the danger around the corner.
It was vital to learn/adapt to a new form of independence and was a very steep learning curve BUT I think all of us kids who were schooled at OPS already learned discipline and to be more independent and to a degree than most kids our age.
Yes we were naughty as all kids tend to be BUT we had the oldest and best and biggest after-school playground any child could wish for - The Namib. And we had the swimming-pool, the park, the old quarry, the Pink Pan, tennis courts, the best maintained rugby, cricket and soccer fields, squash courts, etc etc etc
All we could wish for as kids was right their within easy walking distance from our front doors.
I wish I could say that now!