Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Well, frankly I think it'd be a spanking, spiffing idea if Old Blues could go back to the old dump for an entire weekend once a year, don Housey, sleep in the Houses, eat in the Dining Hall (or maybe the Court Room), etc., etc.

Oh what fun it'd be, especially seeing elderly men with long white beards pottering about in Houseycoats. I should imagine it'd also be a useful moneyspinner for CH, since I've no doubt OBs would be happy to fork out a few hundred nicker for a fun weekend like that.

But uh-oh, the wardrobe surely wouldn't be able to provide enough Houseycoats, shirts, breeches etcetera, least of all in mansize (unless there's an enormous stash of frayed and tatty uniforms salted away in an underground bunker somewhere).

I still think it'd be a neat idea, though. Maybe if the wardrobe staff started stockpiling old uniforms now, it'd be feasible to start the weekends five years from now.

Bring your own black shoes, obviously.

Watch This Space ???????

OY!
This is quite a good idea but at the moment is rather sexist. What about former Hertford people, who never wore Houseycoats to start with (though on Sundays some of us, for several years, wore an approximation.....)

Kerren - I deleted my first reply to this - I thought it might be censored! Are you thinking of our coatfrocks by any chance? They were the best bit of our uniform, with the possible exception of the Harris Tweed coats.

Of course. The coatfrock was supposed (I guess) to be a sort of female approximation to the Houseycoat but while the boys wear/wore theirs all the time, ours was reserved for Sundays. I didn't include the marvellous Harris Tweed coats in my thinking, because the boys never had anything like that.....

for some odd reason I liked wearing my "grey" - it was one of the most comfy things I've ever worn! and I saw something similar in a shop just a few days ago...I was sorely tempted.....

I did like wearing the housey coats, too - they were warm and comfy but they tore bigs holes in your tights - around the ankles!

mvgrogan wrote:for some odd reason I liked wearing my "grey" - it was one of the most comfy things I've ever worn! and I saw something similar in a shop just a few days ago...I was sorely tempted.....

NO WAY!

mvgrogan wrote:I did like wearing the housey coats, too - they were warm and comfy but they tore bigs holes in your tights - around the ankles!

Did they? I don't remember that happening to me

No sexism was intended by the author of this thread, okay?

There were fewer girls at CH Hertford than there were boys at CH Horsham in the old days, so I didn't see that there'd be any greater lack of uniform-availability for girls at CH's wardrobe today than there might've been at Hertford in the past. But the availabity of boys' uniforms must surely have been halved since the early 80s.

As for my use of the term 'Houseycoat', I was using it to denote both male and female coats. Are you telling me (horrors!) that the term isn't applied to girls' coats? Egad.

I suspect that the 'OBs in Houseycoats' weekend would only work well if it were allowed to function as a complete social leveller. No participants should be allowed to allude either to what they do for a living or to how much they earn, so as to ensure a level social playingfield and kill any chance of company directors teaming up and talking business all weekend.

I think it'd be a pretty cracking idea, as long as we didn't all immediately revert to a mental age of 13 and start calling our peers by their long-buried, deeply insulting nicknames.

Maybe someone could even arrange some bogus lessons for us....and an Arts Centre full of pole-dancers....plus a Daniel O'Donnell concert for the mentally-decayed....and an enormous beer tent for JR and Richard Ruck.

mvgrogan wrote:for some odd reason I liked wearing my "grey" - it was one of the most comfy things I've ever worn! and I saw something similar in a shop just a few days ago...I was sorely tempted.....

Pray tell me what your grey was Maria? It can't have been the grey dresses we wore after the coatfrocks went, as they didn't last long.

Yes they did, they were the Sunday uniform for about 8 years, then they became the everyday uniform until the merger.

I think I will pass on Daniel O'Donnell (whoever he is?)and join JR and RR in the beer tent.

englishangel wrote:Yes they did, they were the Sunday uniform for about 8 years, then they became the everyday uniform until the merger

I don't think I knew that, Mary. Does that mean that house ties in different colours went?

I can't remember my tights, laddering, ---- but then, as has been pointed out, some OBs (Male only of course !) are of fading memories (Now who's being sexist ?)

Katharine wrote:

englishangel wrote:Yes they did, they were the Sunday uniform for about 8 years, then they became the everyday uniform until the merger

I don't think I knew that, Mary. Does that mean that house ties in different colours went?

I didn't know that either. You couldn't wear a tie with a grey Even the V1 form?

Just Sunday in a grey and those weird black buckle-y shoes was enough.

At some point during my time at Hertford the navy blue tunics became gym tunics only, and the greys started to be used for every day - with the same blouses and house ties already in everyday use. That was when the royal blue sacks and cherry red blazers <spit> were introduced for Sundays.

The sixth form uniform remained the same except that the skirts changed from all round pleated to box pleats at the front. But otherwise it was unchanged and the sixth form didn't wear house ties.