Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

gemmygemmerson wrote:( Handed in my d.t project today, I am delerious with happiness )

Great news, Gemma. Were you able to rescue the original, as planned or was it completely new?

gemmygemmerson wrote:Sauna. hmmmm

I'm thinking about taking russian, aswell as Italian. Though it may be a little much since I'm taking Latin as an A level.

( Handed in my d.t project today, I am delerious with happiness )

Will I be taught to march?. I did Air Cadets and from what I can see from the marching, they do it differently so, will I be taught to march or will I have to fumble along for a bit until I manage to seam in perfectly?.

I may carry on the tradition of watching the Rugby matches but I shall not commit to anything lest people think I am slightly weird. They will realise that by the time I go there but it will be nice not to have a few people thinking I am weird.

My daughter`s going to spend part of Sunday in DT school working on her GCSE project (it`s Leave Weekend) - the "advantages" of living on site I suppose!

It was a salvaged version of the original. I may post a pic on here of it if I can. I had spent every day this week, including today at school until 7.00 working in the textiles room. Doesn't sound that bad to people who go to CH I don't think since they would be there but after that I had to get home on public transport, carrying a huge project that still had wet fabric paint drying on. and on top of that I had homework to do. This week I was just exhausted.

I had to practically re make the whole of it. Which is silly since it took me since november to do the first version.

marching=just walk, with your arms straight, preferably in step.

Did your mum do a new throw for you Gemma.. or were you able to rescue your first attempt from the washing machine? It sounds as if you have a lot of ambitious ideas about what you are going to study/enter into when you get to CH. Just get the GCSEs and off you go!
The members of this Forum will need to meet up with you once you get there, to see how you get on.
And re. Marching... my observation is that at Horsham the Girls' Houses ALWAYS march better than the Boys'. Girls have a nuch better natural rhythm re swinging arms and putting legs forward. The boys often look really sloppy and scruffy (sorry, lads!).
At Hertford we were not 'taught' to march.. we just did it. I remember standing in the hallway in House, 'taking your distance' (i.e. placing your hand on the shoulder of the girll in front of you and standing at the arm's length behind her), and then stepping out with the right or left foot, depending on what she did....and following her left for left and right for right, as you moved out of the House, turned up the Square, and marched towards Dining Hall. I think it fell apart a bit when one got into the precincts of Dining Hall (otherwise on this Forum referred to as the Crush Hall) but I THINK that some Houses actually managed to 'march' up the stairs into Dining Hall itself. At least at Horsham the Dining Hall is on ground level!
You are going to have such a ball for the last two years' of your secondary education, Gemma!
We all wish you well, and hope to meet you soon.
Kerren

I hope to meet as many of you as I can aswell, probably at CH, in my Housey coat.

I salvaged the duvet and pillowcase, but they were mostly ruined when I had to re start. It's really annoying since the product is 36% of the final GCSE grade, I doubt I am going to get very high in D.T.


Of course Girls look better than Boys when marching. Girls are far more graceful and from what I saw, they don't wear their Girdles/Belts around their knees.

Don't forget Kerren we marched without music too, and STILL managed to keep in step.

the girls march far better, BaB were always very good, we had a real pride! The boys specially MidA boys always seemed to be doing everything they could to make themselves look 'cool' whilst marching as if they were trying to show off to people, when it was only the rest of us watching!

Absolutely Mary (and others...).. it was always that the girls marched better than the boys, with or without music. Keep it up, girls!

kerrensimmonds wrote:Just to clarify for non-Hertford Old Blue members of this Forum. 'Mons' = Monitresses. The Senior Girls in each House, those who led the procession as we marched from our Houses (in Midget's day they were called 'Wards') up to Dining Hall for our meals.

For Gemma's benefit, monitors /esses are what you would call prefects.

The name goes back to a teaching system in vogue in the 1800's (and still occasionally in use when I was at CH).
More advanced / older pupils would be given lessons on one day and on the next day, acting as teachers, they would teach that lesson to younger pupils. Got over the shortage of teachers.
At CH in the 50's grecians would take classes when the scheduled teacher was not available. Generally they were pretty good.

Grecians = educated people (from the days when people were deemed well educated if they could speak ancient Greek).

Oh, I was wondering about what a Monitor actualy was. I had an inkling that it was something to do with Prefects but I couldn't figure it out. How old do you have to be one?, are there just one group or different ones for different years.

Marching order!. Well.

I've seen that some houses are 'boys' houses and some are 'girls'. Which ones are which, just so I could get a clue of which of the houses I could be allocated?

gemmygemmerson wrote:Oh, I was wondering about what a Monitor actualy was. I had an inkling that it was something to do with Prefects but I couldn't figure it out. How old do you have to be one?, are there just one group or different ones for different years.

Marching order!. Well.

I've seen that some houses are 'boys' houses and some are 'girls'. Which ones are which, just so I could get a clue of which of the houses I could be allocated?

............ or which houses to visit after sunset ???

gemmygemmerson wrote:Oh, I was wondering about what a Monitor actualy was. I had an inkling that it was something to do with Prefects but I couldn't figure it out. How old do you have to be one?, are there just one group or different ones for different years.

You have to be on the Grecians ie the final year.

When I was there there were school monitors & house monitors. School monitors had special privileges like walking along the path next to the boarding houses Or sitting up on the dais with the powers that be. Or reading grace at lunchtime.
I was a house monitor - all that meant was that you had to take prep for the juniors and erm well, it just sounded good I guess.

Girls houses - Leigh Hunt, Barnes, Coleridge and Thornton

Boys houses - Maine, Lamb, Middleton and Peele

Vonny wrote:When I was there there were school monitors & house monitors. School monitors had special privileges like walking along the path next to the boarding houses Or sitting up on the dais with the powers that be. Or reading grace at lunchtime.
I was a house monitor - all that meant was that you had to take prep for the juniors and erm well, it just sounded good I guess.

Commenting on the boys school pre joining, yes, monitors were de facto grecians. In Col A there was a fixed number which might not be the number of oldest boys - the decision was made on poisonality.
You have to remember that the house was actually run by the monitors who made most of the decisiona from afternoon sports to who laid the tables to ...... They also had punishment powers backed up where necessary by the house master.
The "rules" were laid down since time immemorial so the job was not too compliocated. For example, as trades monitor I knew that the second year were the swabs (slaves to the monitors), third year set and cleared tables .......... first year cleaned the house (no outside cleaners in those days - the boys did almost everything) ...... It was generally an overseeing role but I did have to do the roll call at stated times.
Thus the housemaster's appointment of monitors - and especially the trades monitor - were critical to the smooth running of the house.

As for "school monitors" there was a senior grecian but apart from that there was no school wide heirarchy that I knew of.