Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

(and in 4 cases that I know of absolutely literally)

Now that sounds like an exciting life...

at CH i did notice just how much it rained on sundays. anyone know why?

It was the Ineffable Will to make sure you really appreciated being in Chapel

Deucharse features fairly regularly What an unfortunate name for a beer... Theakston's Old Peculiar. aahh. There used to be a pub in Beverley, Yorks run by two 90 year old sisters in the mid 1960s. Wonderful place, real Victorian relic. Lit by gas, no bar, no pumps but with the barrels on a table a...

As well as the five lengths, you also had to complete a dive in from the side of the baths. As I remember, the brown bather (made of a canvas type material) replaced the red bather in about 1950 or 51 as some sort of economy measure. It certainly wasn't a figure-hugging garment and anyone well-endow...

menace wrote:
No kidding - I'd rather not remember some of it though. Was not always happy, unlike our childhood summers which I KNOW were sunny.

But it always rained on Sundays...

Man you go back....

Don't remind me...

It's surprising what comes crawling out of the memory banks.

BTW the school has a long tradition of chemical jokes. In my day the science crowd would mix up some elixir that would explode when put on hot radiators after a short delay. Scared the bejeezus (originally typed something else there) out of whoever was walking past at the time. Only just caught up ...

four boys at a time would share the tepid brown soup of the Middleton A trough after rugby Only four? In LaA everybody went in the trough after a game and the water by the end of it was the colour of brown windsor soup and the consistency of oxtail. Especially nasty after a wet-weather game of &quo...

older blues: how much homosexuality was there when CH was still all boys? not takin the pIss, genuinely interested. not just chaplains but boys too It's a difficult quesion to answer because it wasn't something that possible partners trumpeted to the world. You have to remember that the school was ...

Mmm - red hair, moustache, and a very smelly spaniel called Iphegenia. Deputy to Sam Sargeant as Hall Warden. He was also the Chief Scout which was the reason I refused to join the fun and games. He must have taken over the air corps after my time (he was a cavalryman/intelligence officer during the...

DavebytheSea wrote:er .................................... what's a bocker, please?

I'm surprised you don't recall the bockers, they were normally seen wandering around with a handcart, smoking a roll-up and cleaning the bogs.

On my squits in MaB, we were warned of impending "knob inspection" whereby all new squits would have to expose themselves to matron. God we were terrified. It never happened, of course. Instead, we had to expose ourselves to the doctor at the sicker. In the early 50s, and presumably befor...

In my day (49-54 -oh gods so long ago) in LaA it was the cane only, no slippers, and housemaster only. I was lucky and escaped by the skin of my teeth (or arse?) because Johnny Johnstone was late for some do. There was one famous occasion when one lad, trousers down peed over his armchair during the...

I see how you could misunderstand! I think that any "rent boy" activity was entirely on a voluntary and unpaid basis - lurv, dontcha know. I was lucky and had a swab-master who was pretty lenient though I came in for my fair share of bollockings. However, I think that just like real life, ...

Cleaning shoes, making beds, lighting study fires, general dogsbody - Illegal? Of course, as a hanging offence, the other alternative was an unpaid option I guess though I can't recall any specific cases. That has triggered the memory of another bit of slang - "small boy" and "big boy...