Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Fjgrogan wrote:My own daughter Maria had the same experience - her friends from primary school seemed to think that she had been sent away as a punishment. (No doubt she will comment further when she reads this!)

True... one particular comment I remember was "what did you do wrong?" as a number of the children I was at primary school with lived on the local council estate (and this sounds REALLY snobby!) their only idea of going away to school was "borstal". As the daughter of an OB I had known about CH my whole life and had wanted to go there as long as I could remember... I had no idea what borstal was!!

I remember when I came home for the first holidays being teased by local friends because I sounded 'as though I had a £5 note in my mouth'! That was in Fulham - obviously CH had done something to my accent that I was not aware of - I started out as not exactly Cockney, but decidedly West/South London (and still am). In later life I had a theory that there must be a certain age at which accents become fixed. At CH we all gradually levelled out; later at training college we arrived with individual accents and kept them - ie the Welsh remained identifiably Welsh etc - so the age must be somewhere between 11 and 18. I myself seem to be a 'sponge' linguistically - on my first weekend visit home from college my father said to me 'your room-mate is from Manchester' - he wasn't far wrong; she was from Oswaldtwistle, but he had recognised his own father's Lancashire accent without having met my room-mate. Once I realised that I had been doing that unconsciously I started to do it deliberately. Even later I found myself deliberately adopting what I called my 'public-school parent' accent whilst visiting my girls at Horsham - does that make me a snob? I hope not!

I don't remember picking up any specific accents, which is odd because one of my best friends was was from Zomerset . However, I do remember being aware that over the years we all melded into one neutral accent and that since school I have had the ability, presumably learned at CH, to adapt my accent, speech pattern etc to suit the situation, most notably when I speak with my Father's family I slip into a "SARF LUNDUN" drawl - I am not ashamed of it!

When I first came to Finland I travelled with a friend with a very strong Geordie accent. I felt confident that I could speak clearly enough to be understood but she was nervous... it turned out that she had no trouble whatsoever - Geordie being related to " skandahoovian!"

There were certainly some things about life at Hertford which I hated, and which I think have done me lifelong damage psychologically. but overall I am grateful that I got an extremely good academic education; the opportunities were there to benefit in other ways, but I was just not musical, artistic or athletic. Most of my problems were caused by a stormy relationship with a particular housemistress, so I had no qualms about sending my daughters to CH and I don't think they regret it either. (Please confirm, Maria!?) See my comment above & below! In retrospect I feel that what I experienced at Hertford was clinical depression and if it had been recognised as such at the time my subsequent life would have been very different.That Woman just wrecked my self-esteem!

But I am straying off the topic of this particular forum .............

Funny to think that one of my lasting regrets was a poor relationship with my O level english teacher which led me to choose science A levels instead of english. My A level results bear testament to the fact that I spent all my spare time at Housey in the theatre gathering experience and knowledge and developing a love of the theatre which in the end became my career!

Generally over the years I have laughed with friends that they can't tell that I'm actually a "Public School Girl"