Quick questions and (maybe) answers Hertford Memories thread

[englishangel]

I am not sure about the mouse breeding, but when I was doing A level (I didn't do O level) we had to dissect rats, unfortunately the trains were on strike and the post was very slowly and the carcasses were (how shal I put it?) past their best when they arrived. We soldiered on though, with facemasks.

[Jo]

Sorry to be tedious, but please can someone post the link to these photos again? I've looked on the Hertford photos board, and also done a Google search as I was sure I'd found them that way last time - but nothing. I'm obviously not looking carefully enough, but maybe someone can short circuit my labours by giving me the link ?

Ta very much in advance

[MaryB]

Off topic: sorry.
Munch, I've sent you an e mail, I hope. Can you let me know here if you haven't got it.....

[fra828]

To go back to Mrs Oliver, Biology teacher - she used to either bike to school or drive red mini. When I was in LV1 retaking Bio Ol evel, which I had failed the year before, she invited a small group of us-can't remember who the others were-to her house in Ware. Her husband, also trendy, hippyish-played us Leonard Cohen's 'Suzanne' and Mrs O sang! It was a brilliant afternoon, and we had tea and cakes too! She was quite unlike other teachers at CH at that time!

[fra828]

In my previous post, I meant to put that Mrs Oliver's husband played guitar !

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Sorry to be tedious, but please can someone post the link to these photos again? I've looked on the Hertford photos board, and also done a Google search as I was sure I'd found them that way last time - but nothing. I'm obviously not looking carefully enough, but maybe someone can short circuit my labours by giving me the link ?

Ta very much in advance

Hi Jo

I think that they are in Hertford photos from the 60s. They were also on the Old Blues website. If all else fails I will try to dig out the original and rescan, but it's terribly yellow and aged .

xx

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Sorry to be tedious, but please can someone post the link to these photos again? I've looked on the Hertford photos board, and also done a Google search as I was sure I'd found them that way last time - but nothing. I'm obviously not looking carefully enough, but maybe someone can short circuit my labours by giving me the link ?

Ta very much in advance

Hi again Jo

No idea where they have disappeared to on the forum, but CHA, Old Blues, Hertford Photos.

Rather disturbingly, they have now been given the header 'Photographs From The 1910s and 1920s' - I have laerted the web editor.

xxx

[englishangel]

I think they may also be on friends Reunited

[Jo]

Ah, FR would be good. I've lost my userid and password for the OB site, though I'm sure Wendy could remind me. Thanks for the suggestions.

[kerrensimmonds]

You don't need a user name and password for the CHA website, Jo. Only for the OB contacts part.
Kerren

[Jo]

Brill, thanks Kerren. I've found the photos. I was interested in the one that Mary mentioned of three girls walking into town, as I'd seen it before and didn't recognise anyone. But Libby Jeremy was mentioned and I remember her being in the VIth form when I started. She had a glorious singing voice and rumour had it that she wanted to be an actress and DR frowned on her for that reason. Probably not true, but we did like a good rumour.

[MaryB]

I've now found the Hertford Mercury bus stop photo in "CH in Photographs II" and it's Linda Gamlin, not Libby Jeremy. Linda was in 3's two yearsahead of me - she was my house mother when I transferred from 5s in the summer term of 1965. She must have been "taking me for a walk", unless the whole thing was posed simply for the paper. I don't remember.....

There's also a picture of what looks like "square bashing", which I seem to recall we did for 15 minutes on Sundays, possibly in summer, to give us some exercise. But why not in winter? Or was it the other way round. Did we only go for walks in winter? Wasn't there a theory that we could get Sunday fresh air in summer by sitting on the field on blankets - only it was never warm enough so we lay on our beds instead?
On second thughts it can't be Sunday, because the girls are wearing gymslips and blazers. How confusing.

[Angela Woodford]

Linda was in 3's two yearsahead of me - she was my house mother when I transferred from 5s in the summer term of 1965. She must have been "taking me for a walk", unless the whole thing was posed simply for the paper. I don't remember.....

There's also a picture of what looks like "square bashing", which I seem to recall we did for 15 minutes on Sundays, possibly in summer, to give us some exercise. But why not in winter? Or was it the other way round. Did we only go for walks in winter? Wasn't there a theory that we could get Sunday fresh air in summer by sitting on the field on blankets - only it was never warm enough so we lay on our beds instead?
On second thughts it can't be Sunday, because the girls are wearing gymslips and blazers. How confusing.

I'm pondering all this, hoping that the effect of some strong tea will hit my memory in a minute.

Did we transfer to Senior Houses in the summer term of 1965? I thought it was at the beginning of the new year autumn term - but that did begin in August. I've got all my letters home somewhere and must look. I know I wrote home saying how quiet I found the Senior House after the extreme noise of 36 Juniors in 1s! My new schoolma in 6s was Mary Verge, who continued the custom of providing me with a list and useful facts about my new House. It provided the names and numbers of all the girls, along with a brief hint as to the character of each plus any 6s expressions with which I should become familiar. I read that the outside loos were called "the alahs" - but once in 6s this name seemed to be used only occasionally, and then not at all.

I divert for a moment to comment on this House list custom. You could also encounter House lists in the back of books in the infirmary. Their unchallenged tone was frequently more frank, possibly exacerbated by malaise. Late at night, in dorm or cubie, murmuring gossip circles could spring up amongst the insomniacs; commenting on habit and personality of each House member one by one by number. I came back from a midnight trip "down the end" one night, to hear such a session in progress, and eavesdropped guiltily outside the cubie door. I learned how stupid I was considered to be, how daft, how how overweight - and - one analyst raised her voice a little -that I had "that terrible laugh!" I'd thought that she was my friend. I crept, in my stupid, daft and overweight way, back to my cubie, chastened, very chastened.

I've an idea that we were taken on crocodile walks up until the L1V, then in groups of three along with a Black Apron, if one felt like going for a walk. I remember the occasional custom of stomping up and down the Square as "Gravel Crunching". This was commanded for no particular reason by DR every so often - the name must have been fixed several decades before when the Square actually was covered in gravel. It seemed a completely pointless exercise to me.

Blankets on the Field - certainly on summer Sunday afternoons, but also allowed for revision before O and A levels. But wearing blazers? That's very strange.

Strange how the memories come back so vividly.

Have sent you a pm, MaryB!

[MaryB]

The abolition of junior houses was definitely Easter 1965 - a term before we would have expected to move in the normal course of things - although each junior house had a small group of LIVth including 2 "Junior Mons" - Elinor something and Gillian Thorn, inevitably known as Prickles in 5s that year. I felt sorry for them because they were the only LIVth still wearing knee length brown woolly socks (remember how they smelt when wet?) - LIVth in senior houses wore the ribbed fawn stockings, and of course the famous suspender belts.

Munch, that's a dreadful story about the dorm. How horrible and upsetting. Can I just say that you were the person (or one of a small number) who made our form distinctive and fun to be in... and your not-dreadful-at-all laugh was an absolutely essential part of that.

[Jo]

Oh Angela, how awful for you. If it's any consolation, I think that unfortunately such bitching sessions were not uncommon amongst a bunch of girls cooped up together. It was almost certainly just a sort of game, the whole point of which would have been to find something awful about everyone, not necessarily a considered opinion, and not necessarily how they would have described you to someone else outside of those sessions. So even a saint would probably have been described in disparaging terms.

I don't remember specifically being involved in anything so systematic, but I was an awful gossip at school and so probably was guilty of such. I do remember in my second year, when everyone gets a bit more confident because they're no longer at the bottom of the heap, and people are no longer trying to be polite but are becoming ruthlessly blunt with each other, each of us in my year in 5s was sent to coventry by the rest for some reason. In my case it was gossiping/bitching behind people's backs, so I was frozen out by my friends for a week, which seemed like a very long time, particularly as we weren't encouraged to be friendly with other years or other houses, and there was no going home at the end of each day to welcoming parents and forgetting about it. It was cruel but it happened to all of us, and probably we each deserved some sort of punishment in our own way - though I forget what the others' misdemeanours were now.

It's no wonder we all left school with very mixed feelings about our experience there.