Singing Competition

[Angela Woodford]

I wish I could remember the context of "if there aren't any balls in the pavilion, it's because they've all been lost" ( x 2 or sometimes x 3). Whyever we we looking for balls?? I can't remember playing ball games for fun. Must have been a lesson.

Cricket balls, tennis balls... they'd often get thwacked into the shrubbery by those hard-hitting strong sporty people - or those that quite enjoyed killing 5 mins or so hunting for lost balls. Consequently, Nellie's most famous saying "If there aren't any balls.." Even my father would gleefully do this impression

housework is good exercise

How I would love to be a Domestic Goddess. But my CH experience has created in me a capability to do only one task at a time. All the bluebells, all the baths or basins (Gumption), all the polishing of tables with shoe polish? Incidentally, Barbara has related elsewhere that Fanny would get late-night-talkers-in-the -dorm up to do table polishing. Childline, too late for us!

Love

Munch
Love

[Alexandra Thrift]

Hi Mary...there you are at last !....and a Happy New Year to the AngelMary,Liz,Munch ,Katharine, Caroline and all who post here!!

I'm sorry that I haven't had a lot of time lately to post and reply to others....No disrespect intended.

Thanks Caroline for the little koala gift from downunder which I've hung up in my living room,in fact he is suspended above my computer, and to Liz for the card.

How amazing that the two most illustrious Sixes mathematicians ( Mary McDonagh and Katharine Hills ) are both posting on this thread ! Awesome !

Mary Mc. ..... Some of my description of you earlier in the thread may have been a little inaccurate ( but not much) as I find the more I post here the more my memory returns and my earlier posts were less precise."Gonks" Mary.....do you remember how you and I mass produced "Gonks" for the sale of work .....everyones forgotten about "Gonks" but they were a huge sixties craze.

Also Mary Mc,re sport or avoidance of it, do you remember "Hockey Marbles" ....that was conniving to be Goal Keeper and Defence on the "winning" side and while they were all occupied up the other end of the pitch,scoring goals ......... we would play a kind of "golf" with a spare ball and the hole that the corner flag was in.

When our side rallied and rampant girls with sticks came charging towards us ,we would have to quickly get into position and make some attempt at guarding the goal. We used to joke that we would hook them round the neck with the stick if things were looking hopeless.

Mary ,Liz and me ....all we need is Siobhan Kierans and Susan Knight and we can reform the "Yoga Club". How ahead of its time was that !!

I will private message you Mary in the next couple of days so watch out.......

Munch, I will email you and others when I get my act more together.

Sue Atkinson (Boggett 1s) phoned me today as I had told her about DR's passing in my Xmas card.She was sad but felt that for her it was the end of an era and a kind of closure.

[englishangel]

Was the Yoga Club well known, I seem to remember you talking about that?

I am sure Siobhan must be around somewhere, I seem to remember that a few yerars ago she was quite 'in' the OB community.

I frequently bless that girl when I come across someone called Siobhan and I spell the name correctly, though I did meet a Shivaun once.

[MKM]

Was anyone else in DR's bridge club? I was specially keen to join because attendance was a valid excuse (perhaps the only valid excuse) for missing hockey. I don't remember much of what DR taught us, except that "there are many men today walking the embankment because they forgot to draw trumps". Good advice, but I carried on playing after I left school, and now I think setting up a cross-ruff is more fun.

PS to Alex: I'm enjoying the flattery, so don't stop, but I found when I got to Cambridge that I was only an ordinary mathematician.

[Liz Jay]

I don't remember much of what DR taught us, except that "there are many men today walking the embankment because they forgot to draw trumps".

Hi Mary

Good advice indeed and I now know where to look if I ever need a failure of a man, quick whizz up to the embankment and there should be lots to choose from, and all pretty grateful for the reprieve.

Re bridge. I think I had about five second-hand lessons, but continued to bluff my way along for years, though my various partners found my tactics (or lack of) strange and confusing!!! It's a game for mathematicians, and those of logical bent, with keen memories and an ability to conceal the emotions. I fail on all four counts, so not the game for me really.

Re the Yoga Club. My knees give me hell sometimes, could it be a result of the hours spent in the Lotus position in my youth???

Alex I had forgotten all about the Shoe Man until you reminded me! Thank you for that!

Does anyone else remember some very strange music lessons which involved chanting: "Sunday Globe! Sunday Globe! Reporter! Reporter! Daily Standard! Daily Standard! World! World! We always believe what the newspapers say/And tuppence or thruppence is little to pay/For a Good Read, A Good Read " etc etc, rambled on a bit longer. I've never ever been able to get the wretched thing out of my head and it haunts me whenever I buy a paper!!!!!!

I can't even remember what it was meant to teach us, maybe something about rhythms?

More later

Love

[englishangel]

If you have read back Mary you will find that Katharine found the same thing as a mathematician at Oxford.

The only thing I ended up excelling at was drinking beer.

I was the female half of the mixed doubles champions at the University I went to and was never beaten against any others.

I was also a member of the chemical engineering boat race team (second only to medical students as drinkers), and I wasn't even a chemical engineer.

[Euterpe13]

I learnt bridge ( though with Miss Wilson ) for DE ( yes, I know it's a bit strange ...) , became obsessed with the game to the point that a group of us used to quickly play a hand between lessons, left CH and have never played it since !! So I won't be joining the fraitfully select bridge circles if I do eventually move to Leigh-on-Sea.....

Play a good poker hand though -

B

[englishangel]

I remember DR coming into 2's one Sunday evening in Lent and we were playing pontoon. She asked what we were playing and someone told her (possibly me) and Barbara quickly added bridge. Pontoon Bridge Ha.

DR was very shocked by me particularly as I was a Baptist and she had a very weird idea of what regular Baptists could and couldn't do (her knowledge came from Strict Baptist, no makeup, alcohol, cards etc,)

Litle did she know that my grandfather had taught me to play poker and to this day is the best player I have ever come across, not that I have met very many. He had the original poker face.

[MKM]

Does anyone else remember some very strange music lessons which involved chanting: "Sunday Globe! Sunday Globe! Reporter! Reporter! Daily Standard! Daily Standard! World! World! We always believe what the newspapers say/And tuppence or thruppence is little to pay/For a Good Read, A Good Read " etc etc, rambled on a bit longer. I've never ever been able to get the wretched thing out of my head and it haunts me whenever I buy a paper!!!!!!

I can't even remember what it was meant to teach us, maybe something about rhythms?

Yes I remember the chants. We did the newspaper one as a round.

There was another one:
"I don't want to go to the dentist,
'cos I'll have to ask him if he'll drill,
for I have a hole or two or three in my molars,
which will need enlarging with a high speed drill."

I thought the chants were a good idea, as well as teaching us rhythms, they were meant to be a way of getting non-singers (like me) to join in. Was it a radio program or recordings?

[MKM]

I remember DR coming into 2's one Sunday evening in Lent and we were playing pontoon. She asked what we were playing and someone told her (possibly me) and Barbara quickly added bridge. Pontoon Bridge Ha.

DR was very shocked by me particularly as I was a Baptist and she had a very weird idea of what regular Baptists could and couldn't do (her knowledge came from Strict Baptist, no makeup, alcohol, cards etc,)

Litle did she know that my grandfather had taught me to play poker and to this day is the best player I have ever come across, not that I have met very many. He had the original poker face.

I remember DR visiting Long Ward in the infirmary one Sunday evening and playing cards with us. (From what you say, Mary, this wouldn't have happened in Lent). She asked, before we started, whether we were allowed to play cards on Sundays at home. I assume that, if we'd have said no, she wouldn't have let us play.

Bizarrely, years later, as I settled down to a game of cards one Sunday with my two children and the local vicar's daughter, I found myself making the same enquiry. It must have lodged in my brain somehow.

[englishangel]

I don't remember the chanting in singing lessons. Are you sure it wasn't another of those strange things 6's did at Midsummer?

[Katharine]

I don't remember the chanting in singing lessons.

Neither do I Mary!

Are you sure it wasn't another of those strange things 6's did at Midsummer?

We didn't do anything strange at Midsummer, it was just that others, not lucky enough to be in 6s, thought us a bit strange.

[englishangel]

Understood

[Angela Woodford]

Was the Yoga Club well known, I seem to remember you talking about that?

The passion for yoga began when Alex got hold of a very exciting book. It was extremely advanced and for serious devotees; pictures of emaciated gurus in body-and-mind exalting knots. Naturally, it was a challenge to commence practice - in the cloakroom, on the Field, in the Dorm...

I remember studying carefully the body-cleansing methods. There was a photograph of a yogi swallowing a vast ribbon of gauze which I found rather fascinating. I had a surreptitious go at Nostril Cleansing with the recommended saline. I don't think the process exalted my conciousness as much as I'd hoped.

The actual Club members achieved rather a high standard of Postures, but the shrieks of laughter reached a decibel level perhaps not anticipated by the author. I remember finding Siobhan triumphantly holding an upside-down lotus posture. And Liz, you were very good at it!

(I've subsequently been to several yoga classes - when expecting my third baby, with a 50" waistline. The men in the class would look at me with sheer terror in their eyes.)

Does anyone know the Yoga craze recounted by E F Benson in the Lucia books?

Om!

Munch

[Angela Woodford]

can't even remember what it was meant to teach us, maybe something about rhythms?

Yes I remember the chants. We did the newspaper one as a round.

I thought the chants were a good idea, as well as teaching us rhythms, they were meant to be a way of getting non-singers (like me) to join in. Was it a radio program or recordings?

Mary, I've just remembered! We did the chants in an Aural Training class with poor dear Miss Cordery.

Munch