Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

... House “Duty”. This was the evening spiritual readings in the dayroom on the 6 days without Evening Chapel, after first prep and just before juniors went to bed. In my house only the house captain read and one of the two housemasters always attended. In ColA (late 50s-early 60s) the monitors too...

Just as some people collected postage stamps, there was a boy in Col A ... who collected loo paper. He even had some which were printed O.H.M.S. I'd forgotten that until you mentioned it. For those too young to remember: every business, factory and institution would provide its staff loos with pape...

... if you became a Grecian, you had to leave the RMS. Quite right too. The RMS was training you, at somebody else's expense, to be a navigator in the Royal Navy. By the age of 16, say, you should have been a useful midshipman. If you were still skiving about studying the classics, why would the RM...

I don't think the tube extended as far as the station. Its northern end was at the boilerhouse, which was in the same building with the gym and swimming pool - i.e., just beyond the post office. The original function of the tube was to house the pipes that distributed hot water from the boilerhouse ...

DavebytheSea wrote:One 70 year old has practically signed up already so age really is no bar.

Who? Me? Damn, I feel as if I have just been outed. Except that everybody does know I'm (almost) 70, and I'm the only one who isn't aware of it.

My time was 1954-62, overlapping with sejintenej. This discussion about "asked to leave if you didn't get so many O levels/GCSEs" needs to be put in context. The normal school leaving age in those days was 14 or 15, and that's as much schooling as the vast bulk of the population got. The o...

Anyone know if a netbook running Linux is actually going to be compatible with anything at CH? :? Well, I don't know that, but I would be very surprised if the school were to use features that Linux couldn't cope with. That might be a feasible inexpensive way to provide a laptop. If you can scroung...

When Corks was a canon of St Paul's, he lived at No 4 Amen Court, one of a terrace of wonderful 17th-century houses which were the canons' tied accommodation. Having no wife and family, he filled the house with student lodgers, mainly ex-Col A. I stayed there for a month or so, and so did several of...

I certainly cannot recall any pupils of the Jewish faith in my time. ... I think it pretty safe to say that during my time in excess 0f 95% of pupils were C of E. There was at least one Jew in Col A whose time overlapped with yours. (Not me, notwithstanding my surname, but that's another story.) He...

For food it would be hard to get much worse than 1952 food ... Before my time, so I can't comment. But I did experience institutional food of that era, at a strange "camp" (long huts, actually) at St Mary's Bay in Kent where the LCC sent primary school kids for an occasional week's "...

... boring, pedantic Kit Aitken with his tin leg and bike with one pedal removed. And his skill of peeling and eating an orange on a plate with a knife and fork without getting his fingers messy. Of course, his neighbours at table got frequent eyefulls of juice. It was safer when he was served a pi...

I'm impressed by the clarity of everybody else's memories. I can't match that level of detail, but I do remember that the kitchens were completely refitted in (I think) 1955. I saw the old equipment lying outdoors, presumably awaiting some scrap merchant. It was very basic stuff - huge kettle-drum-s...

In this list, two stand out for me. One is Coleridge's Pirates of Penzance, .... In case anybody hasn't found the link in the "photographs" section of this forum, there are pictures from the Pirates of Penzance, including my renowned Major-General Stanley, on Flickr in the set http://www....

Yes indeed. What memories! I recall being directed by Kit Aitken in The Crimson Coconut. Rehearsal in the junior dorm. Coconut is concealed under a hat, and it falls to me to reveal it. I whip up the hat. Coconut should appear on the table, but instead it catches in the hat, soars into the air, and ...

Yet again, our Ladies do better than our men ! Right enough, but the men did provide us with a brilliant day out on Box Hill yesterday - nine circuits, in good weather, and looking strong and confident each time around. Shame about the final result, but as an Olympic event the whole thing was prett...