Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Ruthie-Baby wrote:apart from when they hadn't cleaned the urn properly and it had recently had coffee in it!

Can't say I ever remember that problem!

eugh, i do!

there was a period when it was very difficult to tell which was coffee and which was tea...

Ruthie-Baby wrote:there was a period when it was very difficult to tell which was coffee and which was tea...

COFFEE?!
I am almost certain that in my time the only coffee we had was our own, which we were allowed to brew in the House kitchen when we were in the Study (i.e. UVI). I don't remember having school coffee - but then the old grey cells are wearing out!

At Horsham in the 70s there were still some of the bowls arounf, even refered to as Kiff bowls, but used to keep other things such as sugar in!

Kiff (and what was suppoesed to be coffee for Sunday breakfast) came in mugs/large cups, white at first replace by green plastic at some stage.

Kiff was carried from the urns to table in the metal jugs, these could get quite warm (as I discovered when I slipped on a bit of wet floor in dining hall and managed to dump the coffee down my neck!)

The coffee (Sunday breakfast) tasted like no other.. well probably coffee mixed with tea.....

by the nineties they'd gone...

another here from the eighties?

I seem to remember kiff during the week and coffee on Sunday morning. Kiff again on Sunday evening.

Since I drink both tea and coffee with no sugar, I seem to remember that the tea came with the sugar already in. There was a jug without sugar, but once that was gone, there was no more.
Coffee was always with milk, which was not to my liking, so I rarely drank it.

At morning break, after PT, we had milk to drink and some milk was kept over for the monitor's coffee at night. It was kept in a saucepan with a cloth on top, from about 11.00 a.m. until 8.00pm. During the winter it was ok, but during the summer it sometimes seemed to curdle.
No matter. As the junior swab, it was my duty to take the saucepan of milk upstairs and boil the milk on matron's small gas stove.
We also had to collect bread from the kitchens for the monitors for them to toast while having their coffee. Another duty was to try and smuggle flab out of the hall after tea. (Flab = margarine). This was surreptitiously put in a bottle and held under ones coat as we filed out under the beady eye of whoever was on duty. (E.A. Littlefield most of the time)
It was my misfortune one night to have to smuggle the flab out and pick up the bread for the toast, about 20 slices, not in a nice bag but in loose paper. Holding the bread needed 2 hands, one of which was already holding the jar of flab, so I got caught.
Not a happy experience.

Bidding finishes tomorrow, (11th.)

hot chocolate at tea time was the best, i fogot totally about it until i went back to do entrance exams then i remembered-best bit of offering to do those!

Ruthie-Baby wrote:another here from the eighties?

Gone by the 80's as well.

HOT CHOCOLATE AS WELL...??!!
My goodness, how the younger generation was pampered!

I remember having coffee and I think it was for Sunday breakfast as at Horsham.

I think it came in while I was at Hertford, and it was in the same urns as the tea, so, yes, some times difficult to tell which we were drinking. No sugar in either though so you had to add a lot to make it palatable.

I then gave up sugar for Lent when I was about 14 and over the six weeks entirely lost the taste for it.

(I wish that worked for chocolate)

For drinking tea around the house I had a pint glass for a while (the sort with a handle). This was fine until someone dropped it, it didn't break at the time but the next time I put hot tea in it I was left holding just the handle (in front of my housemaster!)

blondie95 wrote:hot chocolate at tea time was the best, i fogot totally about it until i went back to do entrance exams then i remembered-best bit of offering to do those!

we never had that