Welcome to the unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum - for discussing everything CH/Old Blue related. All pupils, parents, families, staff, Old Blues and anyone else related to CH are welcome to browse the boards, register and contribute.
Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....
Angela Woodford wrote:Mary! The Ultra best Behaved Girl who was the Agony Aunt was in your year! I know Alex will remember! Where are you Alex??
Happy Mothering Sunday, Caroline!
Thank you
Thinks... you could watch this programme in your negligee, whilst your clothes dry. You could mix a little something-with-orange-juice - mmm.
Hmmm - flannalette jimjams? May, however, crack a bottle of something. Had a very nice bottle of colombard/viognier last night. Can't begin to describe what it smelt like (guess I need to be in a sensory booth, under neutral lighting), but it went down very nicely, accompanied by a snapper fillet. Actually, a boneless snapper fillet, which cost more per kg than plain old snapper fillets - sometimes I find South Australia just a wee bit parochial.
I'm just going out for the paper, although it will be filled with Tony. My main grudge against his time in office is Cherie's hairdressing expenses.
My Mum has never forgiven her for meeting HRH sans headwear.
See you in a minute!
Munch
Oh my - I scored higher than one of the Einstein Factor contestants in their specialist subject round .
Signing off to scoff some pan-fried chook with desert lime while watching
Robin Hood - 'You shot the Deputy, but you didn't shoot the Sheriff' - gotta love the script
If it was the Valerie I am thinking of there is a photo of her somewhere on the forum, taken in the Biology lab with a group of Sixes girls and a frog on the blackboard.
She was a little saintly in manner and awfully clean and tidy around the problem areas of hair, hemline and shoes, which were all as straight and shiny as they could be. Not the sort of young lady to be in trouble much!
The Agony Aunt sketch was after my time but sounds such fun.
The nursing stories are wonderful, just the stuff that young men's fantasies are grounded in. I'm absolutely sure that a little romance would aid recovery anyway, by giving a natural boost to the immune system via a release of endorphins (hope I've spelt that right?) - also found in a good bar of chocolate of course!
My only cliche romance was with my driving instructor when I was a student...I found him on the Web recently when indulging in a spot of googling, and have to say he looks an old man now. In the seventies he was not an old man, just an Older Man (there is a huge difference isn't there??). And I was a bit of girlish fluff.....sigh!!!!
Liz Jay wrote:If it was the Valerie I am thinking of there is a photo of her somewhere on the forum, taken in the Biology lab with a group of Sixes girls and a frog on the blackboard.
Liz triumphs yet again
The only Valerie I could think of was Valerie Wharton, who was neither 4s (6s), nor Lower VI at the time (being younger than us).
To my shame, I think that you are in that photograph too, but it took Mary V to remind me
It was driving me crazy trying to remember. Alex recalled that, in addition to being the Ultra Best Behaved, Valerie was also good at sport.
Here is a thought -
When you left Hertford, was there a tendency to fall madly for your first boyfriend - a sort of Sleeping Beauty thing? Unless, of course, you had led a rather more interesting life in the holidays -
I laugh now when I consider my first boyfriend. My parents refused to allow him in the house. We ran away to Morocco together, beginning with getting on a lorry at Clapham Common. I feel sure that if I'd been allowed contact with males in my teens, I would have made a happier choice.
I especially enjoyed seeing my daughters handling their first romances with ease and sophistication. How very different. At their age, at Hertford, life was enclosed in those walls with the broken glass on top.
Angela Woodford wrote:We ran away to Morocco together, beginning with getting on a lorry at Clapham Common.
Wow, sounds pretty exciting!
Catherine Standing (Cooper) Canteen Cath 1.12 (1983-85) & Col A 20 (1985-90) Any idiot can deal with a crisis. It takes a genius to cope with everyday life.
Angela Woodford wrote:When you left Hertford, was there a tendency to fall madly for your first boyfriend - a sort of Sleeping Beauty thing? Unless, of course, you had led a rather more interesting life in the holidays -
I'm sure there was, my first was totally unsuitable - but I saw through him before long. I didn't do a very good job of dumping him as he didn't believe he had been dumped!!!
Angela Woodford wrote:I laugh now when I consider my first boyfriend. My parents refused to allow him in the house. We ran away to Morocco together, beginning with getting on a lorry at Clapham Common.
How far did you get? Please tell us more in your own inimitable style!
Just come in from own garden, covered in potting compost - filled with vision of lots of nicotiana sylvestris - what a beautiful graceful plant -
Yes! down through France and Spain (most Spanish lorry drivers operating lorry under influence of a weird Spanish brandy) and over to Morocco. I had no idea that the sight of a woman's legs was so offensive to Islam, and wondered why I was being sworn at - nearly raped, certainly made passionate passes at if ever alone, got into a fight in the Northern mountain range. I fought my way out of a dubious situation where we were being held prisoner in a hut, was arrested and spent the night in a police cell, the nature of which I would not describe to anyone of a sensitive nature.
"I am an Englishwoman and must be released!" I declared haughtily through the bars. In the morning they crossly let us go.
In Ouzezete (probably spelled wrongly) we fell in with a gang of boys led by one Mohammed, who fell hungrily on me one afternoon, breathing "Etes-vous vraiment fille - ou femme?" The gang of boys + my boyfriend returned at that moment - they'd been practising throwing rocks at a telegraph pole. I was extremely pleased to see them.
I do remember spending a very cold night in a mountain cave, feeling rather curious that I could hear gunfire not too far away.
In Rabat we stayed about 15 to a room with student "revolutionaries". They seemed rather sweet and conventional to me, bless them - but then I'd been a Hertford girl. They were planning to overthrow the Government! Very exciting, too.
Mint tea! With loads and loads of sugar!
On the edge of the Sahara, a trader offered 20 camels for me. I could have stayed there for ever if we'd accepted, heaving around pots and other heavy burdens, but was rather pleased the boyfriend declined. After all, he'd then have had to have swapped the 20 camels for another girlfriend. We'd begun to argue quite a bit by then, any appeal he'd had for me obliterated by the dire situations through which we'd passed.
I used to think - mm, it's 11.20, time for Break, 2.30 All-Out, what would Miss Morrison say, it's Friday, Cheese Fish. And then remember that I had left that world behind for ever.
The major major bonus of this perilous hitchhiking trip was that on return, I discovered that I had lost a terrific amount of the misery weight gained by over consumption of Spong with Custard, Spotted Dick, Sausage Hotpot, Thames Mud and Barges and masses of B-r-e-a-d. Hooray!
I also said goodbye to my Very First Boyfriend. What had I seen in him? I applied to St Georges, was accepted, and began as a student nurse. The boyfriend would hang about the hospital premises, threatening suicide. Then he vanished and I never saw him again!
Love
Munch
Last edited by Angela Woodford on Mon May 14, 2007 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
On the Doctors & Nurses & Patients thing - I could relate a few stories about local A&E's, (or 'Casualty' as it used to be called), from my days in the Traffic Division of 'plod', but then again, that's nothing to do with C.H. !
J.R. wrote:Wow Angela - The truth is finally emerging !
On the Doctors & Nurses & Patients thing - I could relate a few stories about local A&E's, (or 'Casualty' as it used to be called), from my days in the Traffic Division of 'plod', but then again, that's nothing to do with C.H. !
So could I.
I lived in the nurses home for a while and the local lads would come in for their 2am break. My most memorable was a friend's 21st, 2 girls and 4 PCs in the local pub, then all piled into a Beetle (old style) for the 300 yards to the nurses home. As the car swung into the the drive, the passenger door flew open depositing me (on someone's lap) into the road.
Danny Gilhooley, where are you now? (He had just passed his sergeant's exams then)
Happy Days
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
J.R. wrote:Wow Angela - The truth is finally emerging !
On the Doctors & Nurses & Patients thing - I could relate a few stories about local A&E's, (or 'Casualty' as it used to be called), from my days in the Traffic Division of 'plod', but then again, that's nothing to do with C.H. !
Who cares I bet it's highly, er, educational.
My first 'real' job after Uni was a Research Assistant position at King's. Could never decide which stories which came out of Casualty were true, and which were fiction, but they were all entertaining. The one which immediately springs to mind involves a couple who were admitted - he with a lacerated penis and she with a fractured skull. Have any other forumites heard this story, but centered around another hospital?
englishangel wrote:Danny Gilhooley, where are you now? (He had just passed his sergeant's exams then)
Happy Days
Oh dear, I'm coming over all unecessary at the thought of men in uniform.
With me, it was sailors. My ex, and many of his friends, were Marine Engineers, back in the days when ships spent several days in port while being unloaded. No matter where they were in the World, the first thing they did after the phone lines were hooked up was ring the local Nurses' Home: 'Nurses are always good for a party'.
Poor Martin. He ended up with a Hospital Scientist.
Me? I learnt that Marine Engineers make great boyfriends (for girlies who have led a bit of a sheltered life behind broken glass-topped walls), but cr*p husbands
Caroline! Consider Martin fortunate to have married a Hospital Scientist!
Most erudite. Perhaps you could tell the story about the lacerated penis and the #skull?
Liz! Please tell about the Older Man Driving Instructor, you little piece of girlish fluff!
And what about the one you dumped, Katharine?
I'm encouraged to think I wasn't the only girl released from incarceration to fall instantly for someone "unsuitable". Or even Impossible!
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