Welcome to the unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum - for discussing everything CH/Old Blue related. All pupils, parents, families, staff, Old Blues and anyone else related to CH are welcome to browse the boards, register and contribute.
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....
As a madly economical thing, a DIY Restore programme has been attempted. Followed by hours with BT Internet + weepings + wailings + strong tea + tentatively being back, virus-free, to onlineness. Triumph... I think... I hope...
I have a faint memory of being offered a slurp at a pomegranate in 6's cloakroom. I thought it would be far more delicious, and rapidly ejected a mouthful of horrid sour pips into one of the basins . But I do remember that DR banned pomegranates on the grounds that they may cause appendicitis - I have a feeling that there might have been several appendicitis cases at some other girls' school somewhere?
But I don't remember one of the typed DRW-initialled notices anywhere.
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
I think the initial ban on pomegranates was before your time, Angela. If I remember correctly, it was before I was in the VI form. DR definitely believed that the pomegranates caused appendicitis, In Half to Remember, page 77 she writes:
We had most diseases during those thirty years with many operations, mainly for appendicitis, especially after a craze for eating pomegranate fruit which the shops in Hertford sold over a short period.
It doesn't say she banned them, but ever since I've had the memory of the pomegranates not being allowed to enter the school gates.
I always associate pomegranites with appendicitis. I can't remember DR actually saying it - the word must have been passed up thru the school . Several years ago I was telling a friend (no connection with CH), about this and before I said the word 'appendicitis', she came out with it and said she had been told the same thing as a child - so it wasn't only DR!!
I have a feeling that there was a similar concern about figs - which in my head is tied up with the suggestion that if one sat on a hot radiator, one would suffer from 'floating kidneys'. From where on earth did that come?!
kerrensimmonds wrote:I have a feeling that there was a similar concern about figs - which in my head is tied up with the suggestion that if one sat on a hot radiator, one would suffer from 'floating kidneys'. From where on earth did that come?!
lololol
The Pot used to tell us that we would get floating liver and piles from sitting on cold concrete, and also, I think, but this may be a case of confused memories, from sitting on the radiators.
I'm sure that if we had known about the pomegranate ban we would have been desperately cultivating them along the boundary fence and eating the seeds (despite the fact that they really don't taste very nice) just to cheese DR off.
This was my understanding too. My Dad always said that swallowing cherry pits gave you appendicitis (I believe something similar was found in his appendix) so I suppose pomegranates just had so many they were worse.
"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
Many people maintain to this day that swallowing pips increases the likelihood of appendicitis but I have never heard that pomegranetes were more dangerous than other fruit.
What on earth are "floating kidneys?" I can't even begin to imagine what the symptoms are!
