Singing Competition

[englishangel]

Ala is wing if I remember correctly.

Oh gosh, am I being erudite and wise again?

[UserRequestedRemoval]

Careful now Mary, you might need a sit down after displaying widom again

[englishangel]

A lie down, it was bedtime.

[Katharine]

Ala is wing if I remember correctly.

Oh gosh, am I being erudite and wise again?

Well I remembered too, even if I put in an extra R, but I wanted to show it phonetically - what were they called in 2s, Mary? Was it the universal name?

[Angela Woodford]

There is a Sixes query to which I have never known an answer. When I entered the House in 1965 (eek!) the cold dank loos at the side of the cloakroom were known by a Latin name. I believe it began with a 'v'. Can anybody help?

Welcome to the forum, Angela. If you came in August 1965 we overlapped just until your first Christmas, when I left from the third year Sixth. I have to admit I cannot remember your name, you however might just remember mine!

In my time in 6s those loos were the Arlas (never written down just said) I think it was supposed to be Latin for a wing, but haven't got a Latin dictionary so can't check.

Thank you Katharine! After all this time that I've tried to remember!

I most certainly remember you. After arrival at my New School in August 1964 - first year Junior House with the deeply scary Miss Miles - I was ushered up to the Wardrobe Room to be issued with my (smart new) uniform. Perhaps you had been delegated to 1's to help with the new intake? My home clothes were put in a pile to be taken home, and various old threadbare garments were put before me to put on. You were the real thing - a goddess-like grown up Sixth Former, strict but fair, I could tell. So I nervously told you that I thought these were somebody else's clothes... it was a shock when you informed me in a kindly way that this was my uniform! It was a couple of days before I realised that clean underwear, even if 'vintage' was only available twice a week.

(I've never lost the thrill of selecting some lacy frothy little item and realising that nobody has worn it before).

You were very understanding to a new girl!

Munch

[Liz Jay]

Hi Angela/Munch

Re lacy frothy little items, I can remember the awful sinfulness of those girls who tried to sneakily wear non-issue garments.
Despite being carefully selected for their insignificant plainness, these neatly-fitting knickers would be exposed sooner or later, and the wearer suitably chastised.
I do remember the issue garments being quite devasatingly huge and hideous - Bridget Jones and beyond - and round my meagre midriff hung loose and itchy. In winter the combined weight of blues and - er - white blues I think? - often became too much for the vintage elastic and the whole fabric sculpture would slide remorselessly downwards, necessitating a slight hitch in the gait to yank it all up again.
I especially link this problem in my mind with the long walk to Ashbourne. Yet another reason for my dislike of the winter fun of hockey!

[englishangel]

I think in the winter we wore briefs under the blues, we wore white bloomers in the summer. I thought my grandmother and mother were going to die laughing the first time I took THOSE home.

I had girth and hips so mine stayed up, but I can imagine for those of more Kate Moss proportions gravity might have overcome the elastic.

You do realise I have been accused in verse of talking about knickers?

[englishangel]

I think in the winter we wore briefs under the blues, we wore white bloomers in the summer. I thought my grandmother and mother were going to die laughing the first time I took THOSE home.

I had girth and hips so mine stayed up, but I can imagine for those of more Kate Moss proportions gravity might have overcome the elastic.

You do realise I have been accused in verse of talking about knickers?

It is not only I who do it, they made a BIG impression, and were very good as dusters when they finally fell apart.

From the Davebythesea is closing in thread.

And so we come to Mary, our English Angel-fairy
The only girl with buttons down her front
So erudite and wise, she cuts us down to size
With her comments never crude or coarse or blunt.
But, with all her sense and reason, if you catch her out of season
She will speak of things we men should never hear
You can hear the playground snickers, when EA describes the knickers
That the girls at CH Hertford used to wear.

[Liz Jay]

Hi Mary

What a BIG impression the knickers made on us all and how their fame has spread!
Still on undergarments, was it only at CH that the bra was called a B-square or was that B-squared and if so WHY???
I've NEVER heard or seen the expression anywhere else not even in the Damart catalogue (that last bastion of sensible underwear).

[midget]

Hi Mary

What a BIG impression the knickers made on us all and how their fame has spread!
Still on undergarments, was it only at CH that the bra was called a B-square or was that B-squared and if so WHY???
I've NEVER heard or seen the expression anywhere else not even in the Damart catalogue (that last bastion of sensible underwear).

Bust Bodice = BB=B squared. QED

[englishangel]

Hi Mary

What a BIG impression the knickers made on us all and how their fame has spread!
Still on undergarments, was it only at CH that the bra was called a B-square or was that B-squared and if so WHY???
I've NEVER heard or seen the expression anywhere else not even in the Damart catalogue (that last bastion of sensible underwear).

I would never have remembered that, what a memory!!

[Angela Woodford]

Hello Liz - and Mary -

Liz, destroy any poem I ever wrote which has survived. Please! Do you remember when Siobhan, chilled presumably at the prospect of compulsory hockey, wore scarlet long-johns to play? As she sped up the right wing, her tunic flew up to reveal the glorious flash of this illicit garment. The repercussions were enormous!

Mary, I think that in summer, the knickers were called "summer linings", but in winter we wore two pairs. Thick blue bloomer-style things, with another pair of Aertex linings underneath! No wonder the poet in you was inspired.

I triumphed for a while by concealing a small transistor radio in the false base of a pack of washing powder. But it was found in the end. Miss Scott-Haughton, on a routine locker-search, was startled to find a packet of Ariel talking to itself. This phenomenon couldn't even be blamed on the oxygen-depleted state of her mind brought on by 60 Craven 'A'/day.
Alas!

I've been thinking today about the fear and anxiety brought on by needlework!

[Liz Jay]

Sorry Angela, regarding your poem, I can't remember where it is to destroy the darned thing. My memory is only crystal-clear as regards totally useless snppets from the very distant past.
Anyway I can't destroy it NOW. It will soon be forty years old and could be valuable one day as a family heirloom.
I do remember the red long johns!! Like something from the Wild West....
And the subsequent tears and drama, something Siobhan did to perfection!
I also very dimly remember your illegal radio, you must have had the idea from reading about the French Resistance. Do you remember our illegal mice?? Mine was Hamishe (girl mouse so with an "e") and lived in my locker.
Crazy to think ANYTHING could remain hidden for any length of time with all the locker-searching and general inquisitions which went on - even though Miss Scott-Houghton was pretty nicotine-befuddled she still had the instincts of a true jailor and took her duties of regular ransacking and boundary invasions very seriously.

I do remember needlework as pretty terrifying, not so much the crochet/embroidery/handstitching stuff (though keeping it clean enough to pass muster was a nightmare!) but oh boy the sewing machines, always waiting to trap the unwary student.....especially the electric ones which used to bring me out in a nervous sweat.
Most terrifying of all was the needlework teacher, but selective amnesia has eroded her name from my brain right now.
So you can all chime in and supply it for me!

[Katharine]

Liz, our Needlework Teacher was Miss Richards, how long she survived after I left I don't know. She was decrepit in my day! My last term I knitted an Aran sweater for my school needlework, the night before it went in I finished the polo neck despite it being the last night before a Cambridge entrance exam - the needlework just HAD to be done! That sweater was supposedly the first time she had ever given a Distinction for knitting.

Thanks for the memory of B squared - I had quite forgotten that!!!

Yes we wore linings - changed twice a week, blues changed once a week I think.

Weren't we told that the sculpted head of a man at the foot of the stairs to the Dining Hall was Sir Harry Vanderpant who had paid for an extra set of underpants for the boys at Horsham?

Angela thanks for the kind words, Sixth Form were seen as goddesses by juniors weren't they?

[englishangel]

Miss Richards was there all through my years.

Caroline (Icomefromaland...) has mentioned her on Friends Reunited. she called her a guttersnipe for licking her thread before threading the needle. I still think of her every time I lick my thread. But at least my buttons don't fall off.