Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Reading the new Harry Potter book (sorry, but I do like them!) - she mentions a lesson being a "doss"....a word I'd completely forgotten!

J

New word to me ! - Explain Julian.

Haven't got round to starting the new book yet. Reading a large book about Dr Shipman. (Nothing like a bit of 'light entertainment').

Doss: meaning to scive (or is that skive?), bunk off, mess about, not do much, divert attention from curricular activities. A 'doss lesson' would usual involve an easily side-tracked teacher (such as Smeggy O'Meara) or even better - no teacher at all. Does anyone recall the 15 minute rule - if the teacher hadn't turned up within 15 minutes of the lesson starting you could leave.

marty wrote:Doss: meaning to scive (or is that skive?), bunk off, mess about, not do much, divert attention from curricular activities. A 'doss lesson' would usual involve an easily side-tracked teacher (such as Smeggy O'Meara) or even better - no teacher at all. Does anyone recall the 15 minute rule - if the teacher hadn't turned up within 15 minutes of the lesson starting you could leave.

No 15 minute rule in my day.

I don't ever remember a teacher NOT turning up.

I think the best teachers were the ones who were able to get "sidetracked" into something far more interesting than the lesson in hand and still ended up teaching a useful lesson!

the 15 minute rule was genious! always tried to modify it down to a 5 minute rules tho..

Never remember a 15 minute rule but we certainly invoked something.
We had Roger Biddick?? for Russian in the top classroom nearest Big side in the Maths block. (For those who remember, Pop Massen's room).
Our class started at 10.55 I think.
He was nearly always late and once we waited until 11 struck and a bit more and then as quietly as possible, went down the stairs and out of the block, scattering along the quarter mile.
As I came out I looked right and saw a bemused Biddick under the arch, watching us all leave.
We only had Russian once a week, a sort of elective for Grecians, and the next week, he was on time and made no mention of the Great Escape.

Russian, eh, John ?

Did you make it to a Cambridge Uni ????

Some of the best lessons were sidetracking teachers... in most cases, it was oh so easy!

Tom Keeley was the best for that.. I deliberately got into the bottom set in Latin so I could get him.. He either fell asleep or read from Lord of the Rings...

top chap

I seem to remember geog with Gunning to be pretty cool.. Half the lesson spend shooting the breeze about anything we liked and then the other half doing geog...

Nice, because this garnered our respect for him and thus we all wanted to concentrate in the second half of the lesson.

slater was always a gooddun for sidetracking about the sewers in rome, or smeggy about the shrapnel in his head.

i don't think the 15 minute rule ever formally existed. it was certainly infamous though. you had to be really quiet when waiting outside the classroom otherwise the teacher next door would come out, bitch at you, and send for a replacement teacher from the school office.

We tried the 15 minute rule when Mr Fleming was late for a 3rd form latin lesson once... we were all walking out of the prep block when he strolled in... that didn't go down too well!

Mr Fleming rocks! He was the reason I actually enjoyed Latin on my Squits - nothing like learning how to swear to make classes interesting. "Flocci non facio" is still one of my most favourite phrases.

I was also very fond of his euphemisms; who remembers what Caecilius and Metella got up to in the horto? That's right, they were "having a chat"... apparently. This meant huge hilarity when another master inadvertently used one of the phrases that Mr F had hijacked. That way he got us on side early on and we respected him for gently taking the mickey out of the other masters. Pure genius.

Food and Nut was generally a "doss" lesson, plus we got something (vaguely) edible out of it... or RE/History/etc when the teacher couldn't be bothered and a Black Adder/Monty Pyton/etc video was guaranteed to keep us amused!

i think i only had mr fleming for one lesson. he was covering for his wife, so he put on 'chelmsford 123', a comedy series about the romans in britain. legend.

I loved that programme!