Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

There was an interesting reference in the above episode transmitted on Sunday to the word " Kiff ". The character Detective Inspector Thursday,
played incidentally by Roger Allam ( Peele B and Thornton A 1964-72 ) said it was what smoking pot was referred to in the desert in World War 2.
Has this any C.H. connections ? I cannot immediately lay hands on my copy of "A Dictionary of Housey slang which would give the date of origin I am sure. Was there an alternative spelling of this as "Kyph " ?

Kit Bartlett wrote:There was an interesting reference in the above episode transmitted on Sunday to the word " Kiff ". The character Detective Inspector Thursday,
played incidentally by Roger Allam ( Peele B and Thornton A 1964-72 ) said it was what smoking pot was referred to in the desert in World War 2.
Has this any C.H. connections ? I cannot immediately lay hands on my copy of "A Dictionary of Housey slang which would give the date of origin I am sure. Was there an alternative spelling of this as "Kyph " ?

You beat me to it Kit! I was going to post much the same thing.

I think the word in question maybe 'keef'

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meanin ... on-of/keef

and

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesau ... juana.html

'kiffen' is standard German slang for 'to smoke pot'. And 'verkifft' means 'stoned'.

If it was an expression picked up in the desert in WW2, it may be that the Brits got it from the Germans, or both got it from the natives. I think a CH connexion unlikely.

michael scuffil wrote:'kiffen' is standard German slang for 'to smoke pot'. And 'verkifft' means 'stoned'.

If it was an expression picked up in the desert in WW2, it may be that the Brits got it from the Germans, or both got it from the natives. I think a CH connexion unlikely.

.... unless of course Roger was partial to a 'cuppa' with his 'puff' !!

It is also a hashish type material (arabic). I had always thought that, like Tiffin, it had a Raj origin but I can find nothing to substantiate that

I believe the spelling is 'kif or 'kief'.
I am reliably informed that this is the North African word for cannabis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kif
So, sorry, but I think the CH slang connection is unlikely.
It was a great 'Endeavour' episode', btw.
They clearly had a lot of fun, particularly with the 1960s pop stars, who were a heady mix of Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, The Beatles and more.

Years ago, not long after leaving school, I read David Niven's autobiography The Moon's a Balloon, in which he refers to hashish as having been known as kif in his early days. I immediately assumed that the tea at CH was known as kif because the pupils c.1920s believed it to have been drugged by the school authorities in a bid to keep them mellow and containable. A bit like the long-standing belief at CH that bromide had been added to the tea to suppress teen libidos, which I must say I half-believed myself at the time, because kif didn't exactly taste like any tea I've encountered before or since.

Keith Dobson, sometime drummer with legendary British hippy band Here & Now, used the assumed name Kifkif le Batteur for a number of years, though whether that was a veiled acknowledgement of an epic cannabis intake on his part, I've no idea. They certainly shifted a lot of substances in their day, did Here & Now.

I recall that the rumour about bromide being put into the tea was going the rounds during the early days of my National service in 1949.

The 'bromide in tea' story is a hoary old chestnut. As Kit says, it was widespeard in National Service days and I have come across it when reading World War Two reminiscences. I was a uinit Messing ~Officer in the late 50s and we never had any bottles/tins/packets of potassium bromide, the contents of which were to be added to the great urns of tea. All I can add is that if it was true it did not have any effect on anyone I knew!
David

Foureyes wrote:The 'bromide in tea' story is a hoary old chestnut. As Kit says, it was widespeard in National Service days and I have come across it when reading World War Two reminiscences. I was a uinit Messing ~Officer in the late 50s and we never had any bottles/tins/packets of potassium bromide, the contents of which were to be added to the great urns of tea. All I can add is that if it was true it did not have any effect on anyone I knew!
David

OK, so it wasn't bromide nor chlorine but did you ever go to CCF camp at Aldershot? It was definitely something and the something was something else

Sugar?

The Army would have bought tea leaves in vast quantities and at the lowest possible price, so it may have been that any peculiar taste was inherently due to the cheap-o leaves rather than to any supposed additive. After all, remember the Housie Sunday morning coffee which bore no relation whatsoever to actual coffee as known to the rest of the Western wolrld!
David

After all, remember the Housie Sunday morning coffee which bore no relation whatsoever to actual coffee as known to the rest of the Western wolrld!

Indeed. CH tea was recognizably tea, though not what you'd hope for at the Ritz, but CH coffee didn't really pass the recognizability test. But then again, neither did much British coffee at the time. Did anyone ever taste 'Camp' coffee? The predecessor of Nescaf, except it was liquid, and far, far worse.

No. We never had coffee in my time at Hertford. Although in the sixth form we were allowed to make hot drinks for ourselves after prep. Why were we second class citizens in all ways?

seajayuu wrote:No. We never had coffee in my time at Hertford. Although in the sixth form we were allowed to make hot drinks for ourselves after prep. Why were we second class citizens in all ways?

Perhaps you were actually lucky. A group of us with access to the Scout Hut at all times used to do our homework there and have instant coffee (I think it was Nescafé) but couldn't get milk. Yeuch - since then I h a t e instant coffee though after a spell down under I love strong black coffee.