Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

At the risk of rousing Avon from his slumbers I might mention that the proverbial Nick Duffell says in his books that when the press started to pick up on his discovery of Boarding School Survivor Syndrome they led with headlines like "Mr Squeers laid to rest" and "New bugs get squash...

Was that Polki vs Dayton Services or was that another Polki? I seem to remember Mr Polki cropping up in my research when I once took an ex-employer to a tribunal and wacked the b*ggers for a large sum of money.

Back on thread. In my day when people were expelled they were sent straight to the Sicker from their houses after being given the grim (or welcome) news, before being sent home. This always struck me as being a bit like spending your last night in the condemned cell next to the gallows before being ...

Yes I've come to the same conclusion JR. Listening to my kids and their friends way back when (and even allowing for a bit of bragging) I got the impression that 14 seemed to be a typical age for some kind of serious sexual involvement. Fascinating how different societies see these things. In our da...

Totally agree. When I left home in the 1960s in an era when private rents were controlled, my little flat in north London (on the Northern line into the West End) was one fifth of my salary. Now it might well be half. Someone had a letter in the Guardian the other day saying just this, that we need ...

I'm not sure that workers' pay is the whole story when it comes to efficiency. What about all those well-paid German workers and their strong trade unions and the traditionally excellent German productivity and balance of trade figures (exports versus imports)? I wonder if investment (or lack of it)...

I had one of my mischievous thoughts the other day. Was it wise of Karim to big up his Ugandan refugee status in his defence? He's perhaps not au fait with Private Eye which use to refer to sexual misdemeanours as Ugandan relations.

The enigmatic title of this thread sounds a bit like a film by the German art director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. One supposes that it might have been promoted by posters showing Cairncross wearing nothing but a black basque and stockings and suspenders.

Replying to Michael 's piece on boarding and the subject generally, I wonder if there is a compromise here in what I believe is a system elsewhere in Europe and particularly in Denmark. This is a mainly state-run system of weekly boarding for youngsters in their mid-teens who are just needing to stu...

Yes, nothing surprises me. Nigel Lawson himself has now become a professional climate change denier getting lots of lucre from vested fossil fuel interests. And he's also defected to France with some kind of non dom status which is going to allow him to stay there even after Brexit. He himself was a...

Freaky gets another of his letters into the Guardian today (Sat). Titled "Brexit risks: food and a weak pound", and challenging the notion that a cheap currency is an unalloyed blessing for our exporters given the countervailing costs of oil and other materials which are traded in dollars,...

I was fortunate enough, thanks to CME Seaman, Old Blue, headmaster of CH, ... to get a job St. Clarence? Surely not? I wonder what he did for Buck's victims? It's a good point. If the sainted Clarence had duly recorded all this in the school records then Buck would presumably not have been able to ...

Sorry to go Back to Buck again. It was my information to JR that caused him to close the AH Buck site way back when. A quick pedantic note. I don't think Buck left on a Sunday. I remember going up to Big Side with a friend, the two of us laden with bats and pads for a house cricket match (a non-Sun...

Sorry to go Back to Buck again. It was my information to JR that caused him to close the AH Buck site way back when. A quick pedantic note. I don't think Buck left on a Sunday. I remember going up to Big Side with a friend, the two of us laden with bats and pads for a house cricket match (a non-Sund...

I had a different version Richard, having been in Col B at the time. A 13-year-old friend of mine told me that he had been reticent about going back for the start of the summer term in 1956 and his mother dragged out of him why this was the case. He was one of those to whom Buck paid particular atte...