Things you brought with you from home.

Share your memories and stories from your days at school, and find out the truth behind the rumours....Remember the teachers and pupils, tell us who you remember and why...

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Vonny
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Post by Vonny »

cj wrote:Am I correct in thinking that at Hertford we were only allowed 3 things on top of our bedside lockers?
Probably, being that you were in 1's! :lol:
I certainly remember having more than 3 things on top of my locker! But then Laurie couldn't see very well at all so we got away with a lot more than other houses!
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Post by michael scuffil »

sejintenej wrote:(For the benefit of the ladies and youngsters a beating of between 4 and 8 strokes was carried out with a hard slipper or a long cane on underpant covered buttocks with the skin well stretched.
This is the first I have ever heard of this. I was never beaten, but of those I knew who were, they never had to remove their breeches.

I said in another thread (on bullying) that it was all down to housemasters. I mentioned Col A and Peele B unfavourably in this respect. (Kit was obviously more of a sadist than I realized; Matthews in Peele B was lazy and hands-off).

What I mainly meant about Hertford was the total invasion of privacy. At Horsham that wasn't a real problem -- the place was too big and open for Big Brother to watch you very much.
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J.R.
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Post by J.R. »

sejintenej wrote:(For the benefit of the ladies and youngsters a beating of between 4 and 8 strokes was carried out with a hard slipper or a long cane on underpant covered buttocks with the skin well stretched....
I'm sure the maximum amount of strokes with the cane was 6 in my day.

I know I received one lot of six fom N.T. (Bogey), Fryer.

I also remember the punishment night in the dorm in Prep B, where penalty points were added up and a designated number of strokes of the gym-shoe were administered.

This was over taut pyjama's and probably hurt just as much as a cane aministered over breeches !
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
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Great Plum
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Post by Great Plum »

As I was a non foundationer, I didn't board until my Grecians - I had so much stuff in my study, it would often take 2 car loads from one end of the Avenue to the other to pick everything up from my study!
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J.R.
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Post by J.R. »

Great Plum wrote:As I was a non foundationer, I didn't board until my Grecians - I had so much stuff in my study, it would often take 2 car loads from one end of the Avenue to the other to pick everything up from my study!

So you have dodgy legs, eh, Plummo ???????
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
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Jo
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Post by Jo »

Euterpe13 wrote:I remember always taking back a set of clothes + makeup and shooes to change into on LongSats - strictly forbidden to change out of uniform, but we did it anyway.
It's so funny to hear you say that now. I just about remember you at school; you must have been five or six years older than me and seniors in another house always seemed particularly distant, authoritative and intimidating. So to learn now that you were a bit of a rebel (don't I remember you saying you were one of the organisers of the food strike?) just seems so funny. I guess every year thinks it's the first to break certain rules when in reality it's been going on since time immemorial!

As to what I brought from home......yes, tuck and jams, as Kerren says, locked away in the tuck cupboard and strictly rationed. No clothes at first, except slippers and indoor shoes, although later on we were allowed to wear trousers at weekends (though many of us also brought our own nightwear once up in cubies). Ornaments for my locker, and a teddy, books, writing paper and envelopes (do you remember letter lists, or has that topic already been done?), oh yes and pocket money, though I can't remember how much - at any rate in junior years it was kept by the housemistress.

It was strangely dehumanising to have so little personal stuff around, so little privacy, and so few basic rights. I've become very protective as an adult of my privacy and human rights.
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Post by Katharine »

michael scuffil wrote:What I mainly meant about Hertford was the total invasion of privacy. At Horsham that wasn't a real problem -- the place was too big and open for Big Brother to watch you very much.
I think you are right about our lack of privacy at Hertford, although it was possible to get completely away from everyone else it wasn't as easy for us as it seems to have been for you.

As at Horsham, the Housemistress/master made all the difference. Ours was a nosey old bag and NOTHING was private from her if she wanted to see it. We were allowed three ornaments on our lockers - one of them, but not more than one, could be a family photograph. We had our tuck and home jam locked away and let out under sanction on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. As Jo says we had our writing paper and envelopes but again as a lack of privacy SHE could read any of our letters home.

I had no problem changing into home clothes on a Long Sat as I went home! It was all of 6 miles away - but I never went to Hertford in the holidays!!!
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Great Plum
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Post by Great Plum »

J.R. wrote:
Great Plum wrote:As I was a non foundationer, I didn't board until my Grecians - I had so much stuff in my study, it would often take 2 car loads from one end of the Avenue to the other to pick everything up from my study!

So you have dodgy legs, eh, Plummo ???????
no, I just wasn't walking over half a mile with 150 CDs...
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Post by blondie95 »

Great Plum wrote:
J.R. wrote:
Great Plum wrote:As I was a non foundationer, I didn't board until my Grecians - I had so much stuff in my study, it would often take 2 car loads from one end of the Avenue to the other to pick everything up from my study!

So you have dodgy legs, eh, Plummo ???????
no, I just wasn't walking over half a mile with 150 CDs...
no i and wasnt dragging a holdall fully of clothing, shoes and other stuff half a mile home either
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J.R.
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Post by J.R. »

How easy the youngsters of today have it.

No wonder they call themselves the YOB'S
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Post by Crippen »

I used to smuggle back 4 or 5 cans of McEwans ale that my auntie gave me. They seemed to fit quite nicely into an empty cornflake packet, which I'd keep in my dayroom locker in LHB. Don't think anyone ever saw me having a crafty can at lunchtime behind the locker door.
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Post by postwarblue »

Thread has reminded me of battery-powered internal lights in one's locker worked by a switch made of drawing pins.

Illuminated v chaste pic of 16 yr old starlet called Joan Collins.
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Post by michael scuffil »

postwarblue wrote:Illuminated v chaste pic of 16 yr old starlet called Joan Collins.
...and there was me thinking Joan Collins had been 33 all her life.
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Re: Things you brought with you from home.

Post by Wuppertal »

What I had from the beginning of my UF onwards, and still have at the centre-front of the shelf in my room here in Italy, is a football league ladder. Basically, an A4-sized bit of card, folded around the outside into a pentagon, with the 4 professional tiers of the English league plus the SPL (Scottish Premier League). There are little slits where a miniature card T-shirt of each club sits, according to the position they are in in their league. Every time there is a set of games, I change their positions in their leagues where necessary. Yep I'm an anorak. :rolleyes:

When I first got it free from a magazine in August of 2001, a family friend in his 40s told me that he had one once and lost interest in it after about a month, and that I would do the same. But I have not, and will probably always have it and update it every Saturday forever at 4:45pm! I suppose the ease of finding the results of the internet makes it little effort really; I used to have to keep looking through the back of the newspapers in the boarding house and that got a bit tedious.

The most crucial (practical) possession I have had, since my GE - when I got a single room - is my clock radio. It is set to Radio 4 at nighttime and in the early morning, and Radio 2 in the daytime. I'd wake up to the Today Programme, go to breakfast, come back from breakfast and either lie down or get on with work, still listening to Today, before going to period 1. When in, I'd listen to Steve Wright etc. in the daytime on Radio 2, then go to sleep with the comedies on Radio 4 at 11pm, and then Today in Parliament and the Midnight News if I hadn't fallen asleep yet. And if I still hadn't gone to sleep (which was very rare), then Sailing By and the Shipping Forecast would guarantee do the job. Extremely uninteresting, looking over it, but the routine really kept me sane when I was at school, and it still does!
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Post by jhopgood »

michael scuffil wrote:
postwarblue wrote:Illuminated v chaste pic of 16 yr old starlet called Joan Collins.
...and there was me thinking Joan Collins had been 33 all her life.
Saw Joan Collins in John Lewis last year at a book signing. Everyone treated her like royalty and despite all her fairly obvious (to my wife anyway) operations, she still looked older than all of the living British Royalty.
Barnes B 25 (59 - 66)
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