that I'm not at school any more.
Damp January mornings in a freezing, crumbling Victorian building with one lukewarm radiator per classroom. The smell of cold, wet mud on a rugby pitch as your face was ground into it. An elderly man of dubious sexual predilictions shouting at you for failing to conjugate Latin irregular verbs correctly.
The past truly is a different place, thank God.
Mondays were especially shït in winter. We always had rugby on Monday afternoon. The pervasive reek of of Deep heat and sweaty teenage boys and Mr Dodd (a convicted pedofiddler) 'joining the scrum', 'keeping his hands warm' down the front of his tracksuit trousers and 'making sure we'd showered'. :-(Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir C
Character-building, mind.
I think it's the cold I remember more than anything. Freezing when you arrived, freezing all day, ridiculously freezing on the rugby pitch / gym, and then... the joy of an arctic changing room in which to shiver, secure in the knowledge that some ***** would flick you with a towel and raise a weal like a buboe on your bottom.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
And the most you had to look forward to at night was boiled mince and Coronation Street.
Yes. The odd thing, though, is that I seem to remember enjoying school very much. Obviously, the individual elements were shÃ*t, but taken as a whole it was tremendous fun. I've never really understood these chaps who like to bang on about how school made them miserable. i always think they must have been doing it wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir C
names. Food that had been prepared almost hatefully without the slightest attempt at flavour or quality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
An RI teacher with a suspicious tendency to flog only blond boys on the flimsiest of pretexts.
You've disinterred some painful memories :cry:
True that. Once we got to the fourth form, boarding school was like having a hundred brothers and no parents around to spoil it.
We had no heating, carpets or curtains in our dorms and when it dropped to freezing outside a saucer of water placed on a windowsill would form a layer of ice. (none of us died however ).
:nod: For anyone who wasn't monumentally stupid or hideously deformed, had a modicum of social skill and (ideally) some facility for sport, public school was tremendous fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
Fúcking hell, were you at my school between 1976 and 1982?Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
Not in the 1970s, it wasn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
It was fúcking brutal.
Hold the fúck on, you went to a boarding school?Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
Only to fix the bogsQuote:
Originally Posted by SWv2
I think I am a little older than you c, I escaped in '74. They were all much of a likeness. England was awash with sub-standard boarding schools that were basically dickensian relics that had refused to die an got away with it because no-one new how **** they were.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir C
Some new standards, enforceable by law, were introduced in the late 80's sometime which saw hundreds of them closed down.
I think my place was probably quite brutal if you were one of the chaps who weren't as described. I've met a couple of them in later life and they've told me how unhappy they were. I was oblivious to this at the time, of course, because no-one is more solipsistic than a kid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir C
Also, I left the fact that you had to be white and Christian off my list. God help you if you were brown or a four-by-two.
:hehe: You'd have noticed. Fúcking hell, being reasonably good at sport and socially viable didn't save you from getting a regular hiding. Being able to fight did.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
The great fun I had at school was most definitely in spite of the school and nothing to do with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
I shudder to this day to recall the brutal bullying that was a reality for the less popular, the dim and the fat ( we reserved a highly refined and quite vicious odium for fat people).
I have spoken of it many times on here so wind yer almost non-existant, irish neck in ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by SWv2
Agreed. Terrific fun, them days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
Yes. Fatness meant instant bullying back then. There was a chap called Jupp whose jelly-like frame would make him a constant target for vicious towel flicking after swimming. It has to be said there was a certain sadistic pleasure to be gained from watching his flab wobble when you caught him with a good one to the belly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
I suppose with hindsight that that was probably bullying :-( Mind you, there was a big fat Chinese lad called Pete Lam who you didn't mock because he was enormous and would fück you up if you did.
Well quite. There was a chap I recall was mercilessly tormented until one day he lost it and delivered a comprehensive and quite bloody shoeing to the tormentor-in-chief. None of us knew he could scrap and the bullying ceased immediately of course.
I thought you were a man of the people H, a man for the trenches so to speak as opposed to one of the officer class.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
Can’t imagine your pig ugly mug is on any of the boy did well photos in your alma mater. Perhaps one with a tool box and your arm sunken into a bowl of shÃ*te in an efforts to unblock another man’s excrement.
Good lord, h! A spud-munching bog-dweller is mocking your lowly social status. Are you just going to take that? I mean it's one thing Sir C and I doing it, but that's our right and duty as your social superiors. sw is Irish, ffs! :-(Quote:
Originally Posted by SWv2
Oh they didn't like the working classes one bit s. When I arrived the headmaster complained that I spoke a 'barely intelligible vernacular'.
By my third term I had topped the class in both englishes, lit and lang, and that seemed to annoy them even more. A grubby oik developing a strong command of the English language didn't quite fit with their perceptions though I must confess, the English teacher himself was always most encouraging.
Did you ever go to a real school s?
I suppose I could always use my military connections to have him sought out and properly horse-whipped but he's a harmless enough creature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
How could one make him understand that an English plumber is a veritable aristocrat compared to the toothless troglodytes of the six counties?
He's being dangerously uppity, h. It doesn't do to allow these chaps to get ideas above their station. No good ever comes of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
I think your Warlord membership will have expired by now H.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman
often found browsing here https://www.modellersloft.co.uk/ no doubt.Quote:
Originally Posted by SWv2
ANY school, that makes you play rugby is a wrong un imo.
Play that game and you'll be drinking a teammate's piss before long.
I think one thing the troubles taught us was that cracking down on sedition over there was an expensive and largely unnecessary exercise. Left to his own devices, paddy will drink himself into a stupor and start singing lachrymose, maudlin ballads about chaps called Danny before passing out and ceasing to be a nuisance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
Sometimes against your will :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by IUFG
I largely enjoyed it, particularly when we got to A levels and the studious but stupid started dropping from straight A to C the minute you had to actually, you know, do some thinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burney
It is hard to put your finger on precisely why one kid gets bullied and another doesnt but certainly whatever the social skill is it is hugely important.