Hertford photos mid/late 60s to early 70s

Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....

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Liz Jay
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maths and mr mulholland

Post by Liz Jay »

Hi Alex

It was largely thanks to Mr Mulholland I'm sure that I also passed Maths "O" Level with a "C".
After I left CH my next Maths teacher was a Miss Ingham, who seemed to be grumpy with a permanent hangover, and favoured the boys something dreadful. I tended to sit at the back and keep my head down, and without the constant coaching as previously supplied by Mr Mulholland my shaky Maths abilities began to fade. My father took this as a personal challenge and began to "help" me, what a nightmare!!!
Night after night up until midnight with him getting ever crosser and more impatient, as I grew more and more exhausted and panicky, until two plus two made my head spin and my confidence sunk to rock bottom.
An angel must have sat on my shoulder the day of the exam because I was able to somehow pick the questions I could cope with, and nobody was more surprised than I was by the good result! Of course Dad took all the credit - and I made a private vow to avoid Maths for the rest of my life. Thanks to calculators I get by, though frequently used to try to give people £3.50 change for their £20 notes offered for the £17.50 price of their Westie trim....until I solved that one by putting the price up to £18 and then £20!!!!
Funny I can SPELL almost anything, and read maps better than TomTom, and have all sorts of useful skills from schooldays and beyond, but any suggestion of Maths makes me come over all unnecessary!!! I'm sure my late parent is responsible for my phobia, after all he also coached me for the CH entrance exam.

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Liz (was Plummer now Jay)
Ex - Sixes ''66 - ''68
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icomefromalanddownunder
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Re: maths and mr mulholland

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

Hi Guys

My bright and bubbly daughter who taught herself to read before she started school, was assessed by an Educational Psychologist when she was about 8. The school insisted that it was the Psychologist or explusion because she was being so disruptive. My explanation of her being bored just made things worse :roll:

To my amazement, she was diagnosed as being dyslexic, which, in my ignorance, I thought meant that people had trouble reading. But, no! Many different forms, and in Jess' case she just doesn't see patterns in numbers. If she is asked to repeat a short string of numbers she can, but if asked to repeat them in reverse order, total garbage comes out. She also has difficulty telling the time from an analog clock, and took forever to learn how to tie her shoelaces (both difficulties which are mentioned in Billy Connolly's biography).

Love

Caroline
Foureyes
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WORDS, WORDS

Post by Foureyes »

Liz Jay wrote:...any suggestion of Maths makes me come over all unnecessary
What a wonderful expression - I haven't heard it for years! The words themselves make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but the meaning is crsystal clear. Great, or, as my Nanna used to say: "Well, I'll go to the bottom of our stairs"
:shock:
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englishangel
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Re: WORDS, WORDS

Post by englishangel »

Foureyes wrote:
Liz Jay wrote:...any suggestion of Maths makes me come over all unnecessary
What a wonderful expression - I haven't heard it for years! The words themselves make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but the meaning is crsystal clear. Great, or, as my Nanna used to say: "Well, I'll go to the bottom of our stairs"
:shock:
so did Les Dawson (RIP what a loss.)


Although I did Physics A Level (and failed along with everyone else except Mary Mc who got an A) it now holds no fears for me, I even understand moments although I would have to do a bit of revision to work them out.

Human biology is/was my preferred subject (did anyone besides me know what an omphalos was on the Lottery show last night?) and chemistry still gives me nightmares although my younger son wallows in it.

Maths also holds no fears and I am helping No 1 son do his GCSE as he was ill for most of his teens, he is on for an A or A* and I at least match him.

English now, I scraped a C in both Lang and Lit and I still break out in a cold sweat, me who took 84 books out of the library last year. Daughter got A*for GCSE and is on for an A at A Level.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
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J.R.
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Re: WORDS, WORDS

Post by J.R. »

englishangel wrote:
Foureyes wrote:
Liz Jay wrote:...any suggestion of Maths makes me come over all unnecessary
What a wonderful expression - I haven't heard it for years! The words themselves make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but the meaning is crsystal clear. Great, or, as my Nanna used to say: "Well, I'll go to the bottom of our stairs"
:shock:
so did Les Dawson (RIP what a loss.)


Although I did Physics A Level (and failed along with everyone else except Mary Mc who got an A) it now holds no fears for me, I even understand moments although I would have to do a bit of revision to work them out.

Human biology is/was my preferred subject (did anyone besides me know what an omphalos was on the Lottery show last night?) and chemistry still gives me nightmares although my younger son wallows in it.

Maths also holds no fears and I am helping No 1 son do his GCSE as he was ill for most of his teens, he is on for an A or A* and I at least match him.

English now, I scraped a C in both Lang and Lit and I still break out in a cold sweat, me who took 84 books out of the library last year. Daughter got A*for GCSE and is on for an A at A Level.
What a sad loss indeed. I was fortunate enough to bump into him in 'The Castle' public house, London N.W.10, one lunchtime a few years before his death. He was rehearing at the Park Royal rehearsal rooms for a BBC TV show. A lovely man but not at all like he appeared on the box. Very serious and intelligent who didn't suffer 'fools gladly'. We had a very pleasant hour and a half lunch time session with some of his TV production crew.
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
Angela Woodford
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Re: Monty aka Mr Mulholland

Post by Angela Woodford »

Alexandra Thrift wrote:He died two or three years ago Gillieg.I read about it in one of the school magazines.

He taught me and Liz Jay (Plummer). We two went down to the "alpha" stream for maths.He was a kind man

Even his untiring efforts were insufficient for me to understand what on earth "calculus" or sines, cosines and tangents were (lots of columns of little unrelated figures )

Years later I used all my arithmetic on a daily basis (and in french!) when clearing trades and making deliveries on the commodity and financial futures markets in London and then Paris. I even found algebra quite useful ! I was always very quick at figures

I've never understood how I could be so quick with arithmetic

I'm a dab hand at cards and backgammon though or working out the odds
on the roulette wheel or at the turf accountant :lol:
Dear old Monty! He really did seem such a sweet man. Doesn't it seem strange though - we never had a Powerful maths teacher! First in III', a dear lady called Mrs Povey-Richards. When she began to talk about logarithms, I glazed over. She could have as well been teaching Serbo-Croat. Then was young breezy Miss Holmes. Then nice Mrs Thomas. None of them realised that I didn't comprehend a word of mathematics. I really boggle that I was ever allowed to attempt O level. A waste of everyone's time!

I've always been totally in awe of Alex's subsequent achievements in her Parisian financial career. Don't think there's much you can't do, Alex! What's this about Roulette, though?? Or the bookies??

Caroline! In no way could I repeat a sequence of numbers - let alone in reverse, Jess must be a very very clever girl!

Love, Munch
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gillieg
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Post by gillieg »

:D OH I had forgotten those eyebrows and spectacles (definately spectacles not glasses- were they half moon?) and his bashful shy laugh ( a quiet -shoulder -up -and -down laugh). I have ended up like you Alexandra using maths lots in my job although it is statistics for me and much less fun than the stock market -although I did temp as a telephonist for Brewin and Dolphin once. And I am married to a maths teacher. So sines cosines and tangents are topics of everyday conversation.

Did anyone out there remember having a Mrs Smith for maths at Hertford? Another very nice teacher but not exactly powerful.
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icomefromalanddownunder
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Re: WORDS, WORDS

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

englishangel wrote:Although I did Physics A Level (and failed along with everyone else except Mary Mc who got an A) it now holds no fears for me,

Human biology is/was my preferred subject (did anyone besides me know what an omphalos was on the Lottery show last night?) and chemistry still gives me nightmares although my younger son wallows in it.
I managed to scrape an E for A Level Physics (at St Martin's), but I think that they only gave me that because I got an A for the practical.

Know what an omphalos is, but I think that may be a result of reading Lawrence Durrell, which I was led to after reading and adoring Gerald Durrell's books. Hmmmmm, bit of a shock that was.

Chemistry? Love it - for which I blame Chemi T and her eccentricities. The lessons were never boring to me, and I still look upon time in the lab as being playtime :) .

Love

Caroline
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englishangel
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Post by englishangel »

Chemistry I went on to do at University (as a subsidiary to Biology of Man) but I never enjoyed it.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
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Post by Euterpe13 »

I was B stream for maths, but had to switch to A stream ( Mr. Mulholland) so that I could learn calculus as I needed it for my physics O level ( flash to me trying to explain to daughter was a slide-rule was and giving up after 10 minutes of said daughter's incredulity...) - I don't know whether because Mr. M was a good teacher or what, but I actually enjoyed calculus, and got an A for physics ( completely gobsmacked my Ma by getting 98 % in the mocks...) - however , have always loathed maths in general, which is ironic since nearly every job which I have occupied has required a large amount of maths....chemi T had me thrown out of A level chemistry because I couldn't calculate valency fast enough for her !
Hertford - 5s/2s - 63-70
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Post by Katharine »

Can't remember the name of the new teacher we had in our O level year for Maths. I think she was straight out of Teacher Training and could not cope with a group as bright and quick as we were. I was completely flummoxed by her attempts to teach us calculus and vowed never ever to do any more calculus!!! How I thought I would achieve A level Maths without it I don't know!!! It was Joy Holmes in the VI form who taught me its beauty (YES!!) which I have tried to pass on over the years.
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Alexandra Thrift
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calculus

Post by Alexandra Thrift »

I would love to partake of the joy of calculus Katharine but I fear it is only beauteous if you can understand it. I never could. I know mathematics is beautiful as I have heard it described as the "science of patterns " and I feel a little sad that I could never dive into it's mysteries ! I shall remain grateful for my ability with mental arithmetic. I was good at discovering errors in the computer systems that cleared the futures markets in London and Paris.

Once , when working for a well known American Investment Bank ,all the figures that the computer threw out were completely erroneous and everyone was panicking and trying to understand what had gone wrong ( this kind of problem happened quite frequently but normally was easily resolved....but the enormously wrong figure this time had stumped everyone ). I spent all day doing calculations deliberately inncorrectly to try to equal the computer figure.......I knew I would find the answer.....I went to bed still worrying about it ( I was the manager at that time) and the answer came to me as I slept ,in a strange contorted dream! I went to work and checked my "dream" calculation with the erroneous computer calculation and it was spot on......once we knew the error obviously we could inform the programmers how to fix it. I was good at problem solving and troubleshooting but I would still say that I was no good at REAL maths/physics or anything like that......it's a shame 'cos I would have loved to have been. I think a whole part of my brain must be missing :lol:

English,on the other hand, and writing reasonably coherently comes quite naturally which is great because that's what I teach!
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