Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Jo, how funny!



I remember a moment that filled me with confusion/embarassment. Darling Mrs Bett was reading to us from Chaucer - (hell, was it a Canterbury Tale or Troilus and Criseyde? , that I have forgotten...)

We reached the line

"And Nicholas let out a monstrous fart"

which Mrs Bett read quite happily. I'd never heard anyone utter this word. Horrors! (Sheltered upbringing!)

She really was lovely.

I know we've talked often and at length about Queenie, but I remember her doing a deft sidestep when we encountered the word for a sheath in a piece of Latin prose. We were all squirming a bit about how she was going to deal with it (why do teenagers get so embarrassed about straightforward language, particularly when used by elders?? ) "Vaar-ghee-narr" she intoned, "or more properly, waar-ghee-narr"....and moved swiftly on.

We'd been doing Latin for about three years by then. We should have realised it wasn't pronounced "vagina" as in English.

Hmmmm. Favourite teachers.
Well there are Roger Martin and Richard "pinky" Palmer who both gave me a lasting love of English Literature. Pinky also introduced me to Derek and Clive as well as several coctails of his own invention the year after I left CH. Was anyone there when pinky was asked what he thought of the band Yes, his answer was typical of him "no".
There was Mr Kemp who believed in me and coached me when I expressed an interest in hockey. I went on to play for the 1st XI and win my "colours", then I later played at county level. Before him I had always thought I was just another boy with no real talent, he showed me that everyone has a talent for something, you just need to be ready to look for it.
DR D H Newsome was not the most popular of teachers I have found since leaving the school but he was always very good to me.
I am sure Mr Fry was in Airbourne forces because of a conversation I had with him after I left the school and returned on Old Blues Day wearing my father's winged badge on my jacket (I was in the process of getting a commission in the Paras at the time) and he told me that he had served in AF during WWII. It was at that moment that I realised why he made me so nervous.

Sean wrote:

Welcome back!

Thank you kindly Andrew

Richard West doing what he did best

I am trying to be a detective and date this pic.

Boys in the quad without coats -- so clearly post 1975 or so. This would've been unthinkable in my day. And apparently without bands either.
Trees still standing, so presumably pre-1987.
Apparently no girls, so presumably pre 1985.
From the hair length I'd say ca. 1980.

little_r wrote: Richard West doing what he did best

That brings back memories!

Vonny wrote:

little_r wrote: Richard West doing what he did best

That brings back memories!

Um, yes, but not for all of us. Who was Richard West and what did he do best?

Great photo, by the way!

Richard West was an English tutor.. im guessing pic is circa 1982/3 as thats approx wen Plumleys book was published

michael scuffil wrote:I am trying to be a detective and date this pic.

Summer 1984 (ref: p3, The Blue, Summer Term 1984)

Ah yes, I remember it well...

Sean wrote: I am sure Mr Fry was in Airbourne forces

Parachute Regiment; won Military Cross in 1944 re D-Day landings (ref:The Blue, Summer Term 1987)

I have a feeling he was attached to 'Special Services' for a time, possibly immediately after the war or at the end of the war.

He was I think a Special Branch officer. He once told me (a rabid left-winger at the time, those were the days) how he had to spend hours attending Communist party public meetings to keep an eye on subversives, and how I shouldn't allow my idealism to befuddle me into thinking these people were idealists too, or indeed anything but Soviet lackeys. Which, I now realize in retrospect, many of them were.

He was sent by the police to university, where, he said, he realized there was more to life than watching subversives, and so became a teacher.

J.R. wrote:I have a feeling he was attached to 'Special Services' for a time, possibly immediately after the war or at the end of the war.

In a conversation with him, many years after I left, he talked about working behind enemy lines in Burma. He never explicitly said which branch of the service he was in, but it clearly wasn't the Catering Corps