"Screw Kick!"

Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....

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Jo
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

Post by Jo »

The mangle was the scene of another of my embarrassments. I was stil quite new, and very young, and I was just going to put my swimming costume through the mangle when an older girl arrived and said "after you". I thought she was being polite, so I said "thank you". I wondered why she gave me a strange look. I didn't realise that "after you" at CH meant "bags the place after you", rather than "no, please, you go first", as I had been taught. :roll:
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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It really was a nightmare first of all - all these rituals and CH jargon and ways of speaking and doing that you just had to pick up somehow. Until you managed that, you were looked at very strangely indeed and often with great contempt.
It wasn't just swimming costumes that went through the mangle!
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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chaosriddenyears wrote:It really was a nightmare first of all - all these rituals and CH jargon and ways of speaking and doing that you just had to pick up somehow. Until you managed that, you were looked at very strangely indeed and often with great contempt.
It wasn't just swimming costumes that went through the mangle!

'Mind your fingers!' I can remember Nellie Norman warning us as new girls as we wound those soaking black costumes through, but still inevitably accidents happened tho fortunately I can't recall anything serious. Just thinking about tho.... ouch!!
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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This reminds me that I don't remember what happened about towels. I vaguely we remember we had individual towels, that went to the laundry once a week. Did we use those for hair too? I don't remember having hair towels. We had our own (ie brought from home) flannels, I do remember that. What about swimming towels - did we use our normal house towels or did we have separate swimming towels that we kept downstairs?
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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Jo wrote:What about swimming towels - did we use our normal house towels or did we have separate swimming towels that we kept downstairs?
I can't remember at all :?
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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Neither can I, but over the years I have tried th forget the traumatic experience the was swimming at CH.
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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We had separate swimming towels, which were hung on a rack in the cloakroom to dry (in theory - in practice the rack was so crowded that the towels were still wet when we had to use them again). I also think we had hair and foot towels, as well as the "main" towel - not sure if this was for swimming or regular use, or both.

I was accustomed to wringers, as my mother had one, and don't recall ever catching my fingers in one, either at home or at school*. At one point we had two wringers in our tiny kitchen, one "confiscated" from our 87 year old neighbour, who couldn't be trusted alone in her house with it, for fear she would wear herself out using it. Normally we wouldn't have worried, but she had just got home from hospital following an operation...

*I was not so adept with the meat mincer.
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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Weren't our swimming towels and costumes hung on that rack thing that we then pulled up towards the ceiling with a cord? I've never seen that kind of contraption since although not long ago I was in a very old building and saw someone opening the window with a window pole, something I also haven't seen since CH.
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

Post by englishangel »

I have forgotten what the contraption is called (a something maid) but you can still find them around, hung with herbs, copper pans etc. I remember a "House Doctor" programme where the presenter was very scathing about it. But if you have a farmhouse kitchen it is great to have one over the Aga, it dries stuff in no time.
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

Post by MaryB »

Is it a Molly Maid? Very Kirsty Allsopp.... (what... property programmes... me?)

After the towels were dry we were supposed to roll our swimming costumes in them (with foot towels: see below) and then they went into a special rack, divided into cubby holes in number order (poor 37....) by the lavatories (or whatever - bogs in 3s) outside the cloakroom. In winter hockey boots lived in the same rack. Foot towels - yes, now I come to think of it they were small and yellow, possibly made of the same stuff as the bathroom curtains, and putting them on the duckboard in the changing cubicle (hop hop) was presumably supposed to prevent the spread of athletes' foot.

Can't you tell I'm supposed to be on study leave, reading for an essay!
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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chaosriddenyears wrote:Weren't our swimming towels and costumes hung on that rack thing that we then pulled up towards the ceiling with a cord? I've never seen that kind of contraption since although not long ago I was in a very old building and saw someone opening the window with a window pole, something I also haven't seen since CH.
Yes they were-well remembered , chaosriddenyears! My husband's aunt still uses one and calls it a pulley(sp?).
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

Post by englishangel »

How about this after a quick 'google.

http://www.pulleymaid.com/Classic_Clothes_Airer.htm

That is not the one I am thinking of but obviously that is what I mean.

Molly Maids is a franchised house cleanng company.
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

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Pulleymaid! What did we call it? Was it just "the rack"? Dryer? Can't remember.
I can also remember Nellie Norman telling us to mind our fingers on the mangle. She wasn't a bad sort.
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Re: "Screw Kick!"

Post by Lizzyfrog »

chaosriddenyears wrote:Pulleymaid! What did we call it? Was it just "the rack"? Dryer? Can't remember.
I can also remember Nellie Norman telling us to mind our fingers on the mangle. She wasn't a bad sort.
I can still hear Nellie Norman's voice yelling at me "Elizabeth F, will you PLEASE just lift up the flaps of your swimming hat so you can hear what I'm saying to you before you drown ", and on the tennis court, "Elizabeth F, you have treacle all over your shoes". I looked at them, puzzled, before realising that she meant I should move around more! I was useless at all sports except possibly rounders, where my "left-handed thwack" (technical term, there) stood me in reasonable stead. I remember glowing with pride when Linden Fletcher congratulated me about it - she was a bit of a heroine to me. Strangely for such a sports clutz, I later wrote a series of How to Play books which were used in schools by some of the the Nellies of this world. Ha!
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Post by olefours »

Katharine wrote:I had hoped that the 'Screw Kick' was an invention of MKP (Miss Park) our elderly games mistress and that it had died after she left. It obviously didn't.

I never had more than a white stripe, narrow ordinary tape. The orange stripes were made of quite different stuff. Normal progression was stripe for breast stroke, cross for back stroke, H for front crawl and box for life saving. It always annoyed me that I wasn't allowed to do anything else until I had got my stripe (ie never). I was a lot safer in the water than many others who did not have a screw kick.

One year I won a breast stroke race which really disconcerted MKP, they did not know whether to disqualify me or not as I did not have my stripe and thus obviously could not swim the stroke.

Still feeling disgruntled (does anyone ever feel gruntled?)
I hear MKP's voice often Katharine, invariably as I swim my daily kilometre in heavenly Guildford Lido. (If any other OGs use this wonderful facility, they'll be able to spot me. I'm the one doing life-saving kick with my hands in the air, as 55 years on they creep up involuntarily to cradle the head of an imaginary drowning person.) When my right foot comes up for air during breaststroke, I still hear Miss Park's shout of 'screw-kick'. I also hear her cry as I miss balls thrown or batted by little grandsons: 'Miss King would have caught it'.
Never got even my stripe, but outdoor swimming is such a pleasure now. Thanks MKP.
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