Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

My wife is reading a book about the political and social upheavals of the 1970s. A gripping read, she's just got up to the three-day week. I clearly remember electricity cuts at home during holidays or half-term in early 1974 due to the three-day week, but I can't remember what the effect of the cut...

Camp Coffee? Many years ago my dad told me a tale about the stuff. Our hall at home was undergoing redecoration in the mid-1960s. My mum decided she wanted a particular shade of magnolia for the woodwork, but, after many attempts with different paints, my dad couldn't find a colour that my mum was h...

I have a vague recollection that food quality improved for a term in the early-1970s under a new Catering Supervisor. I even recall that we applauded the supervisor and the catering team for the Christmas lunch that year. However the next term the food quality plummeted to an all-time low. That's be...

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 ...

A small point.
MM - or Melody Maker - is actually no more.
Its last issue was in December 2000, 74 years after the first issue was launched in 1926.

jhopgood wrote:I can't believe that you mention Brian Augur without Julie Driscoll.

Ah, I'm talking about Brian Auger's Oblivion Express - the prog jazz-rock outfit he formed after the Trinity...

I find it difficult to envisage precisely what purpose they served and what they looked like. David :shock: It's been many years since I've seen one but as I said earlier in this thread, a toyce was essentially a large, legless desk that hinged off the dayroom's wall. As you progressed through a se...

Glad we've got back on topic here. My understanding - and certainly a tale circulating at CH during the late 1960s/early 70s - was that toyces were designed for CH dayrooms by Barnes Wallis, based on the 'swing wing' principle. I'm unclear how true that is, but it's possible. According to Wikipedia,...

I've got a vague memory that Peele A was half in one parish and half in another. Rumour had it that years ago some poor unfortunate wretch had become stuck between the two parishes when the new boundaries were drawn up and had died. Consequently his spirit was forever roaming the Peele A dormitories...

Sorry to take us on to a different thread. Kit Aitken did teach Latin while I was at CH, along with other subjects. Possibly he taught Latin to younger forms. Re: "Rough copy. Fair copy." I call it a mantra. It's what Kit would always utter repeatedly, as we were doing Latin translations d...

Slightly off thread here, but I do recall Kit Aitken's mantra of 'Rough Copy', 'Fair Copy', uttered many, many times during his Latin lessons. Oh, and that William James quotation that he loved so much: 'Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver...' Having delivered it, Kit would always say,...

I was taught French by Roger Biddick for a year or so during the early 1970s. As others have mentioned here, he couldn't keep discipline. Consequently his lessons were often chaotic, occasionally verging on near-riots. The further you sat towards the back of his classes, the more you could indulge i...

I was very lucky... and I owe a lot to Malcolm McKelvey. I'd learnt classical piano for a year or so before CH, plus flute. I wasn't that good to be honest, but stuck with it, even though I found classical music extremely hard work. It just didn't appeal to me, although I knew I had some affinity wi...

Thanks Jo.
Much appreciated.

Hi Jo, If it's OK with you, I would prefer it if my comment wasn't included as part of an official obit for Roger. It was just a jokey anecdote of a very left-field moment that I remember while he was my housemaster. I'm not sure who would be the right person to pen an obit, but if someone occurs to...