Proposed gathering at Hertford Museum - 4/5 April 08

[Angela Woodford]

Hello Gerrie!

May we have a hint as to why you were an expellee? I detect a hint of pride in your signature ! I'm also most impressed that anybody thought to arrange a hoax bomb scare - Alex! didn't know you were blamed for that?

I must be too old for us to have met, but look forward to meeting you if you come to the "mini-bash". I feel quite strange at the thought of seeing the School Grounds again. I shall have supplies of Kleenex in my bag in case... I wonder if anyone has Caroline's temporary mobile number yet?

Does anyone else occasionally dream that they are back there?

Love from Munch

[englishangel]

Hi Gerrie

I was in 2's 65-72 so Jo was 4 (?) years behind me and you must have started just as I left. (I was 2.17)

[judy]

I never realised you got blamed for the bomb scare Alex. It happened in our Senior VI year when you and I had stayed on to take Oxbridge exams.We were all herded into the school hall while the school was searched. The mistresses didn't really know what to do with us in a situation that did not fit into standard routines. My memory was of incipient chaos until you, me and Sue Foakes stepped in and got people singing mildly offensive songs to each other. I even remember Fatty M thanking us at the end. I am astonished that you were even asked about it as I thought we had been unusually effective and supportive for a change!
Looking forward to seeing you all on Saturday. I am just getting organised for travelling to Northumberland tomorrow to deliver a training course and will be going south from there to combine family time and the gathering in Hertford. Should be fun.

[Angela Woodford]

How I've enjoyed hearing about this bomb scare! Do we know who actually was/were the culprit(s)?

However, Judy, I'm leaping to the defence of Miss Morrison here. I don't like to hear her called by that nickname!

She was an admirable woman of a certain size, enormously capable, vastly organised, and with a hugely dry Scottish sense of humour.

I had a "fat" nickname myself after all!

Love from Munch

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Hello Gerrie!


I wonder if anyone has Caroline's temporary mobile number yet?


Love from Munch

Bonjour Possums

Just got used to looking left then right then left again, and here I am, back again. Gave my B-i-L a good laugh at Gatwick this morning, while we were waiting for my Sis to emerge from the baggage hall, when I answered the barista in French.

Anyway, the point of this reply is to tell you that even I don't know what my number is . My nephew has promised to sort me out later.

xxxx from a very, very excited Caroline

[gma]

I have checked through my shrink's notes (joke) and think I did time in House Two from about 70-75, 2:34 still have it on the coat hanger - bizarre memorabilia I know but the infamous Miss M did not give me much time to pack! I believe Miss M's notes said that I'd "left to attend a day school" but I'm guessing it was based on the cumlative effect of my consistent bucking of the system that did it in the end culminating in a small (really it was) fire in the pav. Miss M and I did not see eye to eye, I was never particurlarly responsive to unexplained discipline, happy once requirement was qualified but that was a not Miss M's ethos! Thank God for the running track where I would pound out my frustrations of a summer evening!

Missed Dot West enormously, thought she had a wicked sense of humour but Miss Tucker I mostly remember for the luminous red and even more luminous green shiny macs that she wore to chapel along with the slash of Eizabeth Arden lippy! I do remember English Angel and do go on FU to see the signees - am struck by the difference in the conversations on the Forum between CH and Housey, they seemed to have had a much harder time than us!

Will work hard to drive by this weekend - slightly hesitant to crash such an established group as you all seem to be but haven't been back since the builders were in!

Travel safe to all

[Angela Woodford]

Was Nellie still there, Gerrie? A fire in her Pavilion - I can't imagine what she would have said! Or perhaps I can?

DR though - a wicked sense of humour? Now I am happily sensitive to anyone with a sense of humour.... but DR?

Please give an example! Perhaps I was blind to her funny moment? Or perhaps the fm was in her final year? I long to know.

Love from Munch

[kerrensimmonds]

Oh yes, Munch.. DR did have a sense of humour. Not that I was aware of it as a schoolgirl, but I can testify to it in later life.....Actually sometimes she was almost wicked.
Kerren

[Liz Jay]

Will work hard to drive by this weekend - slightly hesitant to crash such an established group as you all seem to be but haven't been back since the builders were in!

Well I don't know about ESTABLISHED...... I can honestly say that I've never set foot in Hertford for forty years (it must be nearly exactly that that because my first term at BFES King's School was Summer 1968). I wasn't a daring expellee but more of a quietly subversive don't-want-to-play-any-more type. I was hankering to join my family living it up in Germany....

Alex bless her kept me faithfully in touch for many years, so I knew some of what some of you were doing, but in the end CH might as well have been on another planet and many of my memories good or bad have been erased I'm afraid.

I'm quite sure they will be kickstarted by some good quality Visual Aids and in any case I will LOVE the chance to renew old friendships cruelly left dormant as I scooted away over the horizon in search of gentler more flexible regimes.
BTW have decided to bring a dog...Ruby the Bearded Collie will be as good as any lapel badge, and company too if nobody else wants to talk to me!!!!!! so you can always crash our twosome, if you like dogs??

Love

[Angela Woodford]

Per-lease girls! Give an example!

The stories about DR I have heard that were funniest:

Katharine has done exeptionally well in a Maths exam, but doesn't know her mark yet. She meets DR, who doesn't say that K has done well, just "You must have enjoyed doing that exam". Well, it's good-humoured anyway.

Maggie and her friends are sheltering at night in 3's cellar at the end of WW2. DR enters and one girl says "Is the war over Miss West?" (It was, just.) DR says "I'll tell you in the morning". ...maybe?

I read Half To Remember, but didn't actually laugh. Maybe a bit at finding a paralytic airman (WW2 again) at the Porter's Lodge, and sending him on his way. Can you imagine getting legless, coming to and finding DR bending over you? Poor guy.

Gerrie, Kerren, anybody - tell me when DR was, like, wicked, and I will amend my opinion!

(Kerren, we must have a good talk about your garden problem on Saturday.)

Love from Munch

[kerrensimmonds]

And I look forward to meeting Liz and Ruby, but no more than my dog, Willow, does. I've been over to the homeopathic vets in Lewes with her today (OB Sarah O'Reilly nee Visick works there. We had lunch together and yes Sarah is coming to Hertford for the weekend.......). Absolutely everyone who Willow met today fell in love with her instantly. Huge brown eyes and a 'please, please do love me' look. Not an ounce of aggression in her little body. When I had a houseful of OBs here for my big birthday weekend, she distinguished herself by sleeping IN (not even ON) three different beds, every night. Little tart......
I've promised Willow that she will be meeting a whole new group of admirers this weekend - and she is also interested to learn about the Meads and would like to investigate them, even without her crocked up mother....
So yes, Munch, you will have to leave the high heels behind! And I'd be glad of your advice re my grotty muddy back garden.....

[judy]

However, Judy, I'm leaping to the defence of Miss Morrison here. I don't like to hear her called by that nickname!

She was an admirable woman of a certain size, enormously capable, vastly organised, and with a hugely dry Scottish sense of humour.

Quite agree with you and can only request forgiveness because that was how she was known throughout the school at that time! I agree with your assessment of her capability and I also found her very humorous too. The more I think about it the more I realise that the teaching staff we had were on the whole extraordinarily talented. As I have said before I think the main problem was that the many of the house staff were extraordinarily insensitive and untalented and also dealing with an impossible job. The current expected ratio of children to adults in most residential establishments is usually about 1 to 3 on shift at all times and that also has to allow for a 37 hour week, holidays and training. I guess it could be argued that the children at CH were not from damaging backgrounds but I am not sure how accurate that would be. Certainly there were far more kids there from environments that were unhappy and destructive than is the case in most "public" schools even allowing for the vagaries of the British upper class's child rearing methods. I wonder if we would have been better off with teaching staff being responsible for the houses supported by some kind of equivalent of a matron? I guess as a female school we could not have been looked after by the spouse of the teacher in charge of the house though it might have made for some interesting developmental experiences. It would have been qute interesting and radical however if the obvious and enormously strong couple relationships such as Miss Thompson and Miss Mercer or Miss Jukes and Miss Wilson had run a house together! However unusual it would have been it would have been emotionally and culturally a very different experience - at least we would have seen a model of love in action even if it was one nobody dared acknowledge at that point!

[englishangel]

I always got the impression that both DR (who I didn't Like) and Miss Morrison (who I did, but then she never taught me) had something bubbling under the surface. I can imagine Miss Morrison havinf a belly laugh at near the knuckle jokes, whereas I imagine DR's humour was more subtle.

Gerrie, I thought Sheila Thompson was 2.34 from 66-70, she took the number after Stephanie Etches (in the Study with Kerren) then left after O'Levels so you and I must have crossed by just a year. Were you in the same year as Gill Green?

The more I think about it the more I remember.

I have only driven past CH Hertford once in the 36 years since I left, and have never got out of the car.

[Vonny]

and Miss Morrison (who I did, but then she never taught me) had something bubbling under the surface. I can imagine Miss Morrison havinf a belly laugh at near the knuckle jokes,

I agree with that. I was taught by her and was mostly petrified of her! BUT I could see there was definitely a sense of humour hiding under the surface.

[hillary]

Slight change of tack.

It being half term, I thought I'd take my 2 boys (10, 14) over to Hertford tomorrow for a preview - drag them round and bore them with 'this is where we ....' witty and exciting anecdotes. They are now curious though (since they've finally twigged that both Mum and Dad went to boarding schools) so we're planning to visit Horsham in June as an excuse to visit some Uni friends who have recently moved near there.

Has anyone else been to the exhibition yet? I'll ask how it's going tomorrow. Should I comment back here?

Another change of tack. I've really not kept up with anyone since leaving, but I do live about 30 min from Hertford. Is there anyone who lives nearish, or who is down for the Friday evening (and who hasn't already got wildly exciting plans) up for a pre-Saturday drink somewhere on Friday evening? I'm about 30 min from everywhere (Hertford, Stevenage, London, Watford, MK, etc etc etc).

Hillary