It seems I was causing too much trouble for my mother at home so, at age twelve I was sent to a boarding school in the Monastery of El Escorial, about 60 Km NW of Madrid.  El Escorial is an impressive building built more than 400 years ago by king Phillip II and in one corner it housed a boys' school.  Now it is mixed, I believe. It was run by the Agustinian monks and the building was extremely cold in winter.
   Even though it was only 60 Km from Madrid, it felt like it could have been 2000.  The road was very bad and my parents only drove out to visit me once every few weeks.  Phone service was also very bad and so a phone call was also rare.  We communicated mostly by regular mail (I still have some of my parent's letters) and I even remember receiving a telegram or two. The wonders of mobile phones and the Internet were, not only far in the future, but beyond anyone's dreams.
    I had been a pretty good student until then but that year in June I failed two subjects: math and latin. Latin does not surprise me as I hated it but I am now surprised to discover I failed math because I enjoyed it and was pretty good at it.
    So while the other kids went home, my parents decided I should stay in school taking summer courses on the failed subjects. I had some free days between the end of school and the beginning of summer courses and I went to spend them at the country house my parents had in Alcocer, Guadalajara, near some artificial lakes.
    There were mice in the house and I managed to catch one with my bare hands (not easy, you have to be pretty fast!).  The mouse wasn't happy and bit my finger.  Then I was not happy and I threw the mouse into a water well outside.  It was probably not a clever thing to do as I now reckon the mouse probably went right back home.  At any rate, my father took me to the doctor who determined I needed some rabies shots just to be safe because you never know where a mouse might have been.  Rabies shots then meant daily shots in the belly for 40 consecutive days.  And, so, I was sent back to El Escorial where I spent the next couple of months receiving daily antirabies shots in the belly and pretty soon I looked like I was pregnant.
    In September I passed my two subjects and went home to spend a few days before returning to school. During those days I felt sick and so, it was back to the doctor who determined I had hepatitis which I had got from infected needles with the rabies shots.  So, school started without me and for the next couple of months I stayed home in bed until I recovered from the hepatitis.  In those days needles were reused (and not sterilised properly as you can see) and there was only one "hepatitis" without any of the qualifying letters we have today.
    As I was late for the start of the school year and with the hepatitis and all, my parents decided to transfer me to a school in Madrid so I could live at home.  I was enrolled at the school of Nuestra Seņora del Buen Consejo (Our Lady of Good Counsel) in Madrid, also run by Agustinians.  They were a mean lot and I hated their guts.  I just wished I believed in hell because I knew that's were they would all be. I absolutely hated Latin.
    I was now 13 and I passed all my tests in June so I had a free summer ahead and my parents sent me to spend the summer in England so I would practice my English.  I stayed in a farm house where the husband tended the farm and the wife, Mrs Peggy Payne, ran the home where she rented rooms to foreign students. It was an old, beautiful, country house.  I was one of several foreign students there. Another of the students staying there happened to be, by chance, another Spanish young man from Jerez de la Frontera, my father's birthplace.  His name was Miguel Castro and he was somehow related to my father's family.  He was 19 years years old which, to me, at age 13, seemed like something very impressive.  He was old enough to drive and he bought a Mini Morris in which he drove me around and did many crazy things which we were very lucky did not end with us in the hospital or worse.  He seemed to have a lot more spending money than I did and so, in my letters to my father, I probably kept asking for more money.  As you see in the letter he wrote me, not only did he not think I needed more money, but he disapproved of the reasons I gave him.
    The farm had horses which I rode often into the woods and around the fields.  I learnt that horses could be stubborn animals and easily frightened but I also learnt from experience that I could be more stubborn than them and get my way.  I found that persistence was the key to getting the horse to do as instructed, but sometimes it required a lot of persistence.
    One day I went out to the field to put the saddle on a horse. This was my idea but the horse had a very different point of view about the whole thing and would not let himself get caught.  Finally I cornered it but, as I got close, it kicked with tremendous force.  Luckily (?) the kick hit me right in the belly where it knocked my wind out and left me lying in pain, but no bones were hit and no serious damage was done.  Had that kick reached my head or extremities, a few bones would have been broken.  It seems I must have written my father about the incident and called the horse "stupid" in my letter.