Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

adlop wrote: and the one with Richard Gere where he joins the Navy and is a bit of an outsider and at the end he goes in to a factory to carry out his girlfriend. ....

An Officer And A Gentleman.

I married a marine engineer, of who (as a profession) it was once said 'It took an Act of Parliament to make you Officers*, it would take an Act of God to make you gentlemen', which I have found to be very true of all the marine engineers I have met

*after the sinking of Titanic, I believe, in honour of all her engineers going down with the ship.

You guys aren't going back far enough.
I can remember seeing Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia and marching into Horsham to se Olivier's Henry V.

Welcome, wombat!

What, you mean real marching, house by house, all the way to Horsham, to go the cinema...?

golly

Yes, the whole school as I recall marched into Horsham.
Incidently I don't know what Big School is like now but when I was there in the 40's it was freezing cold and no problem staying awake.
One question - I notice looking in the magazine that some of the girls wear yellow stocking and some grey - why is that?

wombat wrote:Yes, the whole school as I recall marched into Horsham.
Incidently I don't know what Big School is like now but when I was there in the 40's it was freezing cold and no problem staying awake.
One question - I notice looking in the magazine that some of the girls wear yellow stocking and some grey - why is that?

Yellow socks are for juniors, grey tights/stockings for seniors. BUT yellow socks are worn by all for formal wear.

wombat wrote:Yes, the whole school as I recall marched into Horsham.
Incidently I don't know what Big School is like now but when I was there in the 40's it was freezing cold and no problem staying awake.

The marching to Horsham was no big deal in those days. I also remember going (ie, marching) to see "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Coronation" in Horsham.

As for films in Big School, I seem to remember that we all took a blanket or a rug.

Foureyes wrote:

wombat wrote:Yes, the whole school as I recall marched into Horsham.
Incidently I don't know what Big School is like now but when I was there in the 40's it was freezing cold and no problem staying awake.

The marching to Horsham was no big deal in those days. I also remember going (ie, marching) to see "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Coronation" in Horsham.

As for films in Big School, I seem to remember that we all took a blanket or a rug.

Blimey ! Thats just bought back a memory.

We used to take the one blanket we were allowed to bring from home !

One Big School film I rmember with great clarity is "Lost Horizon" in which a bunch of Brits are in an aircraft which crashes in a remote Himalayan valley named Shangri-La. The people have discovered the secret of eternal youth, but only if they stay in the valley. One of the men decides to leave and takes his Shangri Laian girl friend with him and as they cross the pass out of the valley she changes from a lovely 20-year old into a gruesome corpse. "The End." With that we were all decanted out into the wintry night and few boys slept well, haunted by that appalling ending.

With hindsight, that setting of a remote and isolated valley, with clearly defined boundaries, where time stands still, people dress oddly and the real world is an irrelevance "somewhere out there" puts me in mind of a well-known educational establishment in West Sussex - but I digress!

Love it, foureyes! Eternal youth; hmm, I'm abandoning the anti-ageing cream and heading for Horsham.

BLANKETS FROM HOME....?????
(in your day which was also mine..?)
I can't believe it. And there I was thinking that the boys at Horsham had the more spartan existence......
I do remember being cold (very) on several occasions, but in my day, at Hertford, there was nothing 'extra' in which one could wrap oneself. One could not even strip a school blanket off a bed and use it (unless one was in the dormitory and getting into bed anyway.....). When one was not actually in one's bed (i.e. during the day) it stayed there pristine, having been made up very smartly that morning with the sheet folded over with right angles, and all the blankets and the sheets folded into perfect 'hospital corners'. And in the early days when I was at CH, when the beds were surrounded by 'hospital style' metal poles, one had to carefully fold the heavy golden curtains into three and then two, and leave them hanging (straight lines again....) over the bar at the foot of the bed. And the basket containing dressing gown, nightdress, slippers (and goodness knows what else) had also to be geometrically placed under the foot of the bed. It was like an army camp....
It's time I went and turned my bedroom upstairs into even more of a tip, in rebellion!
And I have turned on the central heating this evening.....

I was just thinking that Kerren, except by the time I started the curtains and poles had gone.

But I seem to remember reading somewhere that the only heating in the boys dorms was a single pipe running round the edge, and we did have radiators under each window.

And it's all right to turn the heating on it is almost October.

I turned mine on yesterday morning as it was 11 degrees but tonight it has not come on as it is quite mild.

Yes, I agreee....the poles and the curtains disappeared during my time, but I cannot be sure as to when. And at the moment I am most certainly enjoying the central heating at home today.... whilst also remembering those occasions when one curled up on top of a radiator (at the same time being admonished that one risked 'floating kidneys') when one was really really cold at school!
Ho Hum. In what luxury do we live these days...
Kerren

kerrensimmonds wrote:Yes, I agreee....the poles and the curtains disappeared during my time, but I cannot be sure as to when. And at the moment I am most certainly enjoying the central heating at home today.... whilst also remembering those occasions when one curled up on top of a radiator (at the same time being admonished that one risked 'floating kidneys') when one was really really cold at school!
Ho Hum. In what luxury do we live these days...
Kerren

I always thought it was haemorrhoids, or perhaps that was sitting on a cold stone step. Or moving from one to the other and back again.

The most popular radiator was the one at the top of the dayroom - could accommodate three derrières at once whilst waiting for the post to be given out.

(There! See? I actually want to show off that I call do accents now...)

J.R. wrote:We used to take the one blanket we were allowed to bring from home !

If my memory serves me aright, it was not a blanket, per se, but an object known as a travelling rug. These were usually red or brown, thicker than a normal blanket, with a tartan motif on one side only and fringed on two edges with tassles. I believe they dated from the time when passengers in stage coaches needed something to keep them warm and spread them across their knees. I am not, of course, speaking from personal experience of stage coaches!!