Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Well, in my day (late 70s, Horsham), the term 'bokker' pretty much denoted all non-academic CH staff except matrons, the Catering Manager and the Estate Manager. All groundsmen, all Dining Hall staff, all house-cleaners, wardrobe staff and linen-room assistants were bokkers. The staff of the Tuck Sh...

I live on a very far-flung island on the other side of the globe, so I'm rather out of touch, see. Are today's dining-hall bokkers all East European or what? Or have bokkers been phased out in favour of some load of old automated cobblers? Is Richard Ruck a bokker, by the way? And do bokkers (if sti...

No sexism was intended by the author of this thread, okay? There were fewer girls at CH Hertford than there were boys at CH Horsham in the old days, so I didn't see that there'd be any greater lack of uniform-availability for girls at CH's wardrobe today than there might've been at Hertford in the p...

Well, frankly I think it'd be a spanking, spiffing idea if Old Blues could go back to the old dump for an entire weekend once a year, don Housey, sleep in the Houses, eat in the Dining Hall (or maybe the Court Room), etc., etc. Oh what fun it'd be, especially seeing elderly men with long white beard...

I remember a big confrontation in Shelley's Wood in the early 70s with a bunch of guys from some place I think was called Muntham. This would've been Muntham House School, a very tucked-away institution for kids with behavioural problems, near Barns Green. So low-key, I never even knew it existed w...

As I understood it when I was a student in Leicester, Holy Bones takes its name from the fact that it was cut round behind a Saxon church, disturbing the churchyard graves in the process.

Dog Woof Lane? Nice one. I've just voted, Herr Moobs.

My large thanks for the responses to my questions. Much appreciated. But now I'm confused by thriftymatron's response "Pupils now change in their bedrooms and use the usual bathrooms after sport." The usual bathrooms ? Dear Lord. Bathrooms ? For pupils? Whatever next? Fleecy-lined underpan...

I've always found the smell of mud and steam - which i don't come across all that often!- instantly takes me back to the changing rooms on cold autumn afternoons on the second form. Oh gawd yes, mud and steam. Reading the above grabbed me by the viscera, it did. O how I hated the changing rooms and...

I was just reading a book about the contemporary State educational system and was surprised by a few things I read regarding changes to long-established practices. Then I started wondering whether the reforms were specific only to the State system or whether CH has gone the same way too. Does anyone...

sejintenej wrote It is the government which you/your parents / ancestors helped to vote intp power who sent those soldiers to France / Malaya / Borneo / Honduras / Falklands / Oman /Macedonia area /Iraq / Afganistan and the rest so YOU bear some responsibility. It is also a reminder to those in pow...

With hindsight, the concept of punishing pupils for being late for chapel or for missing chapel strikes me as abhorrent. It's like something out of the Cromwellian Commonwealth period, isn't it? People having to suffer statutary punishment for not going to church....presumably for the good of their ...

I refuse to believe in the Soggy Biscuit Game. Brain simply rejects the concept. (Will never be able to eat Digestive biscuits again, though.) I now realise that the 1970s were a golden age, when all pupils (mostly) were (mostly) straight as a dye and very little seriously pervy funny business went ...

(coughs politely)

Still none the wiser re. soggy biscuits and helicopters over here.

Will someone please spell it out for the benefit of the old and feeble?

And did this sort of thing (whatever it is) go on as a mainstream activity or was it for connoisseurs of depravity only?

This talk of soggy biscuits and helicopters means nothing whatever to persons of my generation.

I'm unable even to guess at what these terms might mean.

Does this mean I'm a sad old git, doctor?

That incredibly distinctive smell you always get around organ-cases. I've niffed it in many a church over the years and it always transports me back to the organ loft at Big School and the gallery of the Chapel. Also that smell of musty sheet-music, which is the same everywhere in the world. Yellowe...