New Girl

[Angela Woodford]

Somewhere - possibly in that crammed territory under the stairs - lies the documentation which arrived before I arrived at Hertford 19 August 1964!

My evangelical mother began announcing at Ladies Prayer Meetings that Number One on the list of things to bring to CH was "The Holy Bible"! What a wonderful school!

A hymn book too - Songs of Praise.

Two pots of jam were specified - home-made. We followed this instruction exactly. When I'd arrived, I found that the popular "jams" were peanut butter, Fry's Chocolate Spread and Marmite. My mother's blackberry and apple began to ferment in the warm tuck cupboard, alas.

Black swimming costume, white swimming cap. An attache case. After the age of 12, a suspender belt and hockey boots. And emphatically - no deodorants allowed!

Writing paper and envelopes. (We wrote home on a Sunday afternoon in unsealed envelopes so Millie "could glance through to check our spelling")

I might check out that list - I know there was more!

My sister gave me a little bottle of Goya Black Rose cologne - harmless enough you'd think? After two days, Millie had confiscated it, and rather cruelly, displayed it on the Wardrobe Room window sill for four weeks. She didn't say a word. I didn't say a word. On Long Sat, she shoved it into my hand. "Give this rubbish back to your mother to take home" she said.

I was disconcerted on arrival to be ushered up to Wardrobe Room and presented with old, scruffy uniform which hung on me. I'd worn a very pretty dress, and felt a bit of a pang as it was taken away - but then, I'd read "The Nun's Story" in Readers' Digest Condensed Books - same thing really.

I'd got a schoolma! Judith Pook slept next to me in Upper Dorm, and explained that you had to put on your vest and linings under your nightie - never being exposed in an undressed state! We were woken ahead of the 0700 rising bell by Millie walking into the dorm. I discovered that any girl who didn't leap out of bed on Millie's entrance got shaken and thumped. Anxious to be prompt my first morning, I took my place at a dayroom table, and once we'd prayed, stood up and passed out. I'd never fainted before, and came round with Millie holding my head down. Not that nice...

Within a day, I'd got a little gang of friends - Imogen and Helen Sylvester, and Elaine Woods, who'd got the same birthday as me. Pook , of course. I'd also seen the most beautiful senior girl (well, in a Junior House, a girl in the L1V). Sabina Stewart, she of the long chestnut hair, sculpted cheekbones and vivid blue eyes. I was greatly in awe of her.

We new girls settled in reasonably well, despite the rigours of our new life. I don't remember anyone being especially homesick - there simply wasn't time. And having been a virtual only child, I liked the novelty of being with so many girls my own age!

Munch

[Katharine]

What memories Munch. It must have been very different being new in a Junior House rather than the only new girl in a Senior House.

I well remember the home-made jam, we never had anything else in our house so that wasn't a problem. The list also specified the size of the case - so we went to buy one and, horror of horrors, the one that was the exact size was the most expensive in the shop. My parents couldn't really afford it, but they wanted everything to be right for me. I can remember the salesman saying I would be able to take it on my honeymoon. I did too!

We had a medical in the infirmary and I remember being laughed at for saying I was in Ward 6 and not saying Sixes. (How would a new girl know?)

A few days after I arrived it was St Matthew's Day, the Mons came back and reported greetings from various brothers including my elder one. I did get a bit of status having a Housey brother.

I did break down in tears my first night, it was a month to the day since my other brother had died and I suddenly realised that my parents were really alone that night. It must have been so hard on them.

[englishangel]

How sad Katharine, and thinking of your parents rather than yourself.

I too took home-made jam which was alcoholic by half-term.

Both my large and small suitcases were cardboard and although I didn'ttake them on my honeymoon they certainly came to university with me. (My parents bought us suitcases for a wedding present and I do still have them in the loft with all the newspapers from the day the children were born)

we were also supposed to have a pair of brown leather 'house' shoes. My parents bought me a pair of proper lace-up shoes, which as I had size 7's at the age of 11 (and still do) were adults shoes and quite expensive. When I got there everyone else had little cheap light indoor shoes.

[Angela Woodford]

Oh Katharine. How terrible to leave home just a month after your brother had died. What a wrench for you and your parents.

I think it was the first winter term that Millie decided which of us should have malt? She decided that I was "bonny" enough already. After breakfast a jostling queue would form in the cloakroom, where there was a long locked cupboard fixed to the wall. Within was a huge brown bottle containing a sticky toffee-looking substance - "Malt with Cod Liver Oil"! It looked perfectly delicious, as Millie wielded long handled spoons to scoop and twirl the malt for each lucky recipient. Everyone that wasn't bonny seemed to love it!

Another cloakroom ritual was after morning school and before lunch. We'd have to wash hands, brush hair, then queue up to be inspected by Millie, each speaking the incantation

"Please will you pass me, Miss Miles?"

My hands were never really clean; being after several days begrimed by dipped pen ink and Bluebell.

Within a couple of days, I'd learned about The Cloakroom Test. The challenge was to make one's way around the cloakroom without touching the floor. This was OK when it was the benches around the perimeter, but swinging on the door, one foot on the handle, fingers perilously about to be squashed on the top - tricky! - also mountaineering on the windowsills over the basins. Champion of the Cloakroom Test was Janet Bell!

Most rooms in 1s had a Test!

I was sent to DR - my first crime - doing the Bathroom Test. Millie found me on top of a between-the baths-partition. Her face set into a rictus of fury! To my amazement, DR wasn't cross at all, and now that I've read HTR and her account of climbing down the outside of her staircase as a young Headmistress, I realise she must rather have enjoyed this sort of jolly jape.

Munch

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Both my large and small suitcases were cardboard and although I didn'ttake them on my honeymoon they certainly came to university with me. (My parents bought us suitcases for a wedding present and I do still have them in the loft with all the newspapers from the day the children were born)

I had forgotten the attache case, and have no idea what we did with them, or where mine went, but my suitcase is alive and well on the top shelf of my built in wardrobe. I remember going to a shop at Clapham Junction to purchase it, and the Salesman demonstrating it's robustness by jumping on the lid. Robust it is, having survived a sea voyage to NZ, then on to Oz, but user friendly it is not: weighs a ton. Well, more than its fair share of a 20kg limit. I'm afraid that my current travelling companion is a black fabric number with inline skate wheels which follows me faithfully across airport concourses without inflicting too much strain on my shoulders.[/color][/color]

Munch, do you remember when Pot or The Study, or all of them in league, confiscated our incoming mail? Can't remember why, but I'm sure that there was some illegality in their action. Treason, perhaps, because they had kidnapped something bearing Lizzie's head?

Hmmm, time for a lie down: bad memories and some anger are surfacing. Interesting thought: how would I have behaved if I had stayed on until Upper VIth? I guess there is a good possibility that I would have been the first Sixth Former in history to have remained garbed in a blue pinny, or would I have turned traitor, kept my BA for more than half a day, ascended to the dizzying heights of wearing a GA, and treated the Juniors as I had been treated? I sincerely hope not, and truly can't imagine that I would ever have developed the kind of relationship with DR where I would have wanted to sneak off and report on supposed misdeeds to her.

Please give Alex a hug from me on Sunday. I look forward to reading all about it, particularly the shooting. I have, once, been let loose on a firing range with a hand gun. I was pretty good, although I do say so myself: lots less holes in the target than I had fired bullets. This being, of course, because my aim is so good, that I was hitting precisely the same spot on multiple occasions

Love

Caroline

[icomefromalanddownunder]

I think it was the first winter term that Millie decided which of us should have malt? She decided that I was "bonny" enough already. After breakfast a jostling queue would form in the cloakroom, where there was a long locked cupboard fixed to the wall. Within was a huge brown bottle containing a sticky toffee-looking substance - "Malt with Cod Liver Oil"! It looked perfectly delicious, as Millie wielded long handled spoons to scoop and twirl the malt for each lucky recipient. Everyone that wasn't bonny seemed to love it!


Munch

Woo hoo - online at the same time as others, although I'm off home shortly.

Mrs Blunt and Pot must have been a lot less discriminating when dolling out the malt, 'cos bonny old me used to get a serve. Actually, I blame malt for my ongoing weight problems. Hard as it may be to believe for anyone who remembers me, when I was about, um, three or so, it was decided that I was underweight, and so the feeding of malt began. I've never looked back

Cod liver oil

Delrosa, and the pasteurised orange concentrate that came from the health clinic (one good thing about having two much younger siblings), not to mention Heinz Baby Chocolate Custard - oh yum

[cj]

I did break down in tears my first night, it was a month to the day since my other brother had died and I suddenly realised that my parents were really alone that night. It must have been so hard on them.

Katharine, that is so hard to read without welling up. Did you ever tell your parents how you felt that first night?

[Katharine]

I don't remember ever telling my parents how I felt that night - not the easiest of subjects to broach.

Within the last few years I have had a conversation with my mother saying I thought it was very brave of them to send me then. Her reply was that they really had little choice - my brother had been just 13 months older than me and as I was precocious I had been in the same class at school as him. They felt it would have been more cruel to send me back to that class. As it was already mid-August when he died, from an accident, by the time they got to around to thinking about my future it was quite late to find somewhere else.

I don't know if it made a difference that we were a CH family and I had grown up hoping to go there. I'm sure they let DR and the Hag know - whether it got passed onto anyone else I don't know.

[Angela Woodford]

I'm sure they let DR and the Hag know - whether it got passed onto anyone else I don't know.

It makes me think how little we all knew about each others' circumstances. I think you were very brave to come away to school when newly bereaved, Katharine. Dreadful.

Having remembered the bane of your life, The Hag; when I was a new girl in 6s, this weird fierce little woman never spoke to the youngest members. But I've suddenly recalled that she invited some of us juniors into her sitting room to watch Captain Pugwash and that (starved of television) we accepted. Did she find something sadistically appealing in that world of piracy, cutlasses and walking the plank?

Whilst still in 1's, several of us new girls who had read up on Fun and Frolics at Malory Towers decided that we must have a midnight feast. The experience was given an un-dressed rehearsal by raiding the malt cupboard at midnight - half terror-stricken by every creak of the landing stairs. It had been noticed that Millie sometines left the key on top of the cupboard. Sticky success!

Next, a select little group of us raided the tuck cupboard - that key lived on a hook in her grim lair. But best of all somebody had got some lemon jelly in a large plastic bag, secreted on a window sill. We crammed ourselves under a bed, lit a candle, and carefully tipped the lemon jelly into our tooth mugs. Never had lemon jelly tasted so totally fabulous! We began to giggle helplessly at our own daring; shh! giggle - shh!

The candle began to smoulder a bit and - oh no! a scorch mark appeared in the mattress above our heads! The horsehair mattress exuded a faint whiff of smoke! We were about to set fire to the mattress which would burn merrily and cremate everyone, possibly burning down the school!

The lemon jelly had to be sacrificed. It had turned pretty liquid in the tooth mugs, and, panicking, we turned the mattress upside down and poured the lemon jelly onto the burning patch. The smell was repulsive! So, so lucky nobody else in the dorm woke up. Creaking up a few sash windows here and there, we replaced the bed, and concealed the unhappy ruins of our Feast.

And Millie never found out! It seemed extraordinary that the damaged mattress was never investigated!

Munch

[midget]

I have the list of essentials in front of me now.
To 'A suspender belt' had been added in ink (narrow)
A pair od brown Strap Shoes
A pair of Plimsolls
Each girl must bring with her the entire new set of Clothing Coupons.

And the fee for my first year was £24! ( The maximum fee for that year was £40)

Maggie

[Mid A 15]

Some evocative and moving posts here.

I feel for you Katharine it must have been an incredibly difficult time for you all.

Munch, as I've said previously I love reading your memories. I'm sure there is a word for what I want to say but it eludes me at the moment.

What I'm trying to say is that you have an uncanny ability to bring the sixties back to life and one can almost feel one was there with you.

It's an amazing gift

[icomefromalanddownunder]

I'm sure they let DR and the Hag know - whether it got passed onto anyone else I don't know.

Having remembered the bane of your life, The Hag; when I was a new girl in 6s, this weird fierce little woman never spoke to the youngest members. But I've suddenly recalled that she invited some of us juniors into her sitting room to watch Captain Pugwash and that (starved of television) we accepted. Did she find something sadistically appealing in that world of piracy, cutlasses and walking the plank?


Munch

Seaman Staines, Roger The Cabin Boy - what a programme to choose to let you watch

The replica of The Bounty, built in Whangarei (Whangarei Heads double as Cape Horn at the beginning of the film) for the remake of Mutiny On The Bounty, and later (still?) resident in Auckland was known by the crew as The Black Pig.

A favourite chat up line was 'Would you like to come and see Mel Gibson's bunk?'.

[Katharine]

Munch, as I've said previously I love reading your memories. I'm sure there is a word for what I want to say but it eludes me at the moment.

What I'm trying to say is that you have an uncanny ability to bring the sixties back to life and one can almost feel one was there with you.

It's an amazing gift

Yes, I think we should encourge her to write them up for a wider audience.

One of the things that does come out on this Forum that CH was different for each of us, we each have our memories. I hope we all have at least some good ones as well as others. Today I'll try to concentrate on the good ones!!!

[J.R.]

I'm sure they let DR and the Hag know - whether it got passed onto anyone else I don't know.

Having remembered the bane of your life, The Hag; when I was a new girl in 6s, this weird fierce little woman never spoke to the youngest members. But I've suddenly recalled that she invited some of us juniors into her sitting room to watch Captain Pugwash and that (starved of television) we accepted. Did she find something sadistically appealing in that world of piracy, cutlasses and walking the plank?


Munch

Seaman Staines, Roger The Cabin Boy - what a programme to choose to let you watch

The replica of The Bounty, built in Whangarei (Whangarei Heads double as Cape Horn at the beginning of the film) for the remake of Mutiny On The Bounty, and later (still?) resident in Auckland was known by the crew as The Black Pig.

A favourite chat up line was 'Would you like to come and see Mel Gibson's bunk?'.

You forgot good old Master Bates. God Bless Captain Pugwash !!

[loringa]

Seaman Staines, Roger The Cabin Boy - what a programme to choose to let you watch

Entirely apocryphal of course, it was actually Tom the Cabin Boy and none of the other members of Pugwash's crew were given names. There was 'the Mate' (who had been well brought up before he went off to sea and cleaned his teeth and washed his face before turning in) but the rest were not similarly identified. Great stories: my daughter loves my old Pugwash books from the 1960's.