Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

brian walling wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 7:54 am , ..............because it was said to be good for us and the growth of our bodies (calcium, good for bones etc). .............., I'm inclined to accept that the little bit of brainwashing about "good for you" was probably justified and did me some good.

Interesting that I am hearing the same thing even now, However my wife has a stomach complaint for which they recommend to avoid all dairy products and a pack of other things.

sejintenej wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 3:27 pm

brian walling wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 7:54 am , ..............because it was said to be good for us and the growth of our bodies (calcium, good for bones etc). .............., I'm inclined to accept that the little bit of brainwashing about "good for you" was probably justified and did me some good.

Interesting that I am hearing the same thing even now, However my wife has a stomach complaint for which they recommend to avoid all dairy products and a pack of other things.

The fact that some people are lactose intolerant doesn’t change the fact that, for the vast majority, including dairy products as part of your diet is a good thing.

Otter wrote: ↑Tue Jan 28, 2020 2:03 pm Thought I would add some levity while discussing the incredibly important issue of milk in boarding houses.

I remember in the mid 90s we got biblical quantities of milk delivered every weekday to every boarding house. A massive crate of 15 or 20 bottles of 2 pints each.

A lot of it went unused. Those who felt like it, were free to take vast quantities, a bottle or more each.

I occasionally took an entire bottle and drank it out of my large plastic measuring jug that I used for cup-a-soups. When I got to my seniors and meal attendance monitoring became lax, 2 pints of milk served as an entire meal if it was lousy weather and I didn't want to walk to dining hall.

I was recently reminded of this time in my life as my toddler son now takes that very measuring jug and loves vocalising into it to make funny noises, or just carrying it around the house proudly.

People used to mostly drink it from the bottle...

Jack Hards !!
That name brings back memories.

J.R. wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2020 2:50 pm Jack Hards !!
That name brings back memories.

Little bald headed bloke wearing a brown coat in the wardrobe is how I remember him.

On the actual topic of Milk, 'loringa' has described some elements that I recall it from my time. 'Nice' biscuits were particularly coveted.

eucsgmrc wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:01 pm

brian walling wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:38 am ... to clean up afterwards. They disposed of the unused milk, after setting aside enough for the monitors' late night coffee and cocoa drinking, then placed the crates and empty bottles outside the back of the house for pick-up.

"Setting aside": we couldn't keep the bottles back, so, in Col A, the reserved milk was poured into a large black enamelled saucepan and simply left in a relatively safe place in the dayroom. Woe betide anybody who tipped it over or dropped anything in it. On hot summer days it might go off a bit before the evening. That was accepted as normal - after all, fridges were not part of most people's daily lives. It was an era when even the fanciest households were used to relying on pantry, larder and meat safe to keep food, and daily shopping to have fresh food. Many of our families were buying their first ever fridges in that decade.

Same in Barnes B, where as a swab, I had to take said saucepan up to Matron's and boil the milk, a difficult job as it was nearly always filled to the brim, and then take it down to the dayroom, before going back upstairs to get washed and ready for Matron's inspection. I was also charged with smuggling flab out of the Dining Hall for the monitor's toast. Someone else got the bread for the toast.

loringa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:39 amI seem to remember nobody ever used a knife but just wiped the bread on the still-wrapped butter.

knives were hard to come by, but I remember doing this too. Peeling the top of the butter pack, then rubbing it on the toast until the coverage was acceptable. I did this in the first share house I lived in (I was very drunk) and still remember the look of disgust on a housemate's face when they saw me doing it. It wasn't as common a practice as my time at CH had led me to believe

scrub wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:05 pm

loringa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:39 amI seem to remember nobody ever used a knife but just wiped the bread on the still-wrapped butter.

knives were hard to come by, but I remember doing this too. Peeling the top of the butter pack, then rubbing it on the toast until the coverage was acceptable. I did this in the first share house I lived in (I was very drunk) and still remember the look of disgust on a housemate's face when they saw me doing it. It wasn't as common a practice as my time at CH had led me to believe

This was very common in Maine a in the late 90s

scrub wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:05 pm

loringa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:39 amI seem to remember nobody ever used a knife but just wiped the bread on the still-wrapped butter.

knives were hard to come by, but I remember doing this too. Peeling the top of the butter pack, then rubbing it on the toast until the coverage was acceptable. I did this in the first share house I lived in (I was very drunk) and still remember the look of disgust on a housemate's face when they saw me doing it. It wasn't as common a practice as my time at CH had led me to believe

Thing is, it worked so well in getting the toast buttered...

loringa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:39 am If I recall correctly, during the 70s it was delivered in milk churns daily to the boarding houses from the home farm dairy.

Yes, I think you remember correctly. Sometimes the milk was distinctly off even by breakfast time, though the staff (Mrs Keeley I think) tried to persuade us that it was just "creamy" - but no amount of Nesquik would make it drinkable.

In my time, late 70s, big yellow buckets of the stuff, which always had a whiff of stale milk (inevitably) and up to LE, drinking lots of it. There was some blurb about its high fat content, comparable to Jersey and Guernsey cows. It often had a sour edge.

Once when we shared the Dining Room annexe (the Court Room?) with Barnes A, they salted our milk one morning out of spite.

My main dairy-related memory was the mounds of EEC intervention butter, (there was a 'Butter Mountain' at the time due to EEC subsidies) and putting huge pools of butter on every slice of toast, couldn't get enough.

And there was so much butter that we found that warming a brick to soften it and putting a 'French Banger' in created the most fantastic shower of butter. We set one off in the LHB Day Room and the butter seemed to fly in slow-motion everywhere, some stuck to the ceiling, impossible to remove. Mr Critchtley came rushing in having heard the explosion (a nice guy, Tweedy Edwardian look) and with the whiff of gunpowder and butter splattered everywhere, someone told him we'd dropped a bench when dismantling the TV viewing set-up (long benches perched onthe long tables). He seemed happy and walked off.

I was in Prep A later Leigh Hunt A 1964-1968.
In the prep school, breaktime was around 10.30am. We all had to queue in the prep school hall in front of the stage to receive what I think was a third of a pint bottle of milk and 1 biscuit, usually a custard cream. Sometimes the milk was off, especially in summer. The milk was dished out by 2 characters known as Squit Hardy and Bocker Hayes (I kid you not). They both wore blue boiler suits, and Squit had a wooden leg (so we all believed). You didn't cross squit.

You are quite right about the 'gentleman' with wooden leg. He was there in 1958. Rather a miserable guy if memory serves !

He had work connected with the wardrobe department. I believe his surname was HARDS.

Glad to read this thread... it's brought back a lot of memories!
I remember the milk churns from the 70s. Normally the milk was OK, but when it was off - yuck!!!
Fortunately it wasn't off the day that I got the largest electric shock I've ever had in my life... and celebrated my recovery with a very large chocolate milk shake.
I've probably mentioned it on another thread, but I was in the LHA hobbies room during morning break, circa 1971, testing a Scalextric car.
Having tested the car, instead of switching off the transformer at the mains and removing the plug, I pulled the plug straight out of the socket, with the power still on.
Unfortunately I had lost the retaining screw on the plug top and had temporarily fixed it on with Sellotape.
The plug top came off in my hand and one of my fingers went inside the plug, briefly touching the live fuse.
Almost immediately I was shot right across the hobbies room floor, smashed into a cupboard, and lay there, shaking.
I was still shocked and shaking about 15 minutes later, although by now I was calming down, helped by a very large chocolate milk shake, made with CH milk!
Needless to say, I've always been extremely careful with electrics ever since that ghastly incident.