Hallowe'en

Scenes from Boarding School Life - 3

One day in the Autumn term, some of us rebelled during a hockey practice at the freezing cold Bottom Pitch. . For some reason, after shivering for half an hour doing dull little exercises, practising bullying off in pairs, etc. someone suggested we should protest by marching around the edge of the pitch . We were generally fairly well-behaved, but somehow I was seduced by the excitement of it, and egged on by others, I joined the protest.

We held our hockey-sticks over our shoulders like rifles, and marched round singing ‘When the saints go marching in’. Eventually, the teacher shouted to us loudly enough, and we stopped. I felt rather sheepish at the time.

Later that afternoon we were summoned to the head mistresses’ study (in Victorian fashion we had two headmistresses, known by us as B. & G - the initials of their surnames)

‘Because of your disgraceful behaviour, when the others go up to the Hall tonight, you will remain in your Common-room. You will miss the Hallowe'en Party,’ said B. The party was one of the two highlights of the Autumn term, almost as exciting as the Christmas party. We had made masks to wear (and to be judged) at the party too; I had put a lot of work into mine ; what a waste of effort.

Most of the occupants of the Common-room were heady with excitement on the evening of October 31st. . But for the hockey-pitch miscreants the place was cast in gloom. Then the others all trooped out, masks in hands, twittering like swallows on telephone lines. We few stood around in the huge empty room, making the occasional self pitying and self-justifying remark . No one could settle to anything.

Then after about half-an-hour, the door opened and B & G appeared. Oh no, not another ‘blowing up’
'Now then, girls - we hope that you have realised that your behaviour on the games pitch was totally unacceptable, and that you will never defy a mistress again.' G. said - she was always the more severe of the two.
'But as you have all worked on your masks, you may show them to us,' said B.

Pathetically grateful, we took our masks from our lockers and held them up for inspection. Unaccountably, I now think, I had made my mask in the shape of the school badge, with the words, ‘Trouth & Honour, Fredom and Courtesie’ - a description of the Knight from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. (We, no doubt, would have preferred the Prioress‘s motto, ‘Amor Vincit Omnia‘)

'It is always a pleasure to see the School Motto,' said B. I glowed with pride. (I imagine that they had a laugh about that afterwards.)

Then B. said, 'As you have doubtless learnt your lesson - you may all now go up to the Hall, and join the Party'

With an enormous surge of euphoria, we wended our way from one end of the school to the Hall at other - and to the best Hallowe’en Party ever.

Petty Cash (or 'A Warning to Office Workers')

I came across this risque card among my late father's papers. It is politically incorrect by today's standards, (but that is partly why I like it). It dates from around the 1940s I think. (The money is pounds, shillings and pence.)

To Bin or not to Bin

The Perfect Utility Room - not mine!

I can’t stand the utility room any longer. It is a total mess. So I will forego my trip to town this morning and sort the thing out. I’ll take everything off the two shelves, sort them out radically, chuck masses of stuff out, and have one of those highly organised rooms you see in magazines - all white baskets in neat rows.

I’ve put everything in heaps on the kitchen table with the overflow on the worktops. Mmmm, the shower-room handtowels and bathmats will have to stay; so I refold them into their neat little pile and put them back on the shelf - almost where they were before.

All these candles - goodness, they’ve been there for 3 or 4 years! - that‘s because I never use them. Never. But, wait a minute - never? - I’ll probably use them this Christmas. I flap around them with a duster. And put them back. A little further along the shelf.



And this Hallowe'en pottery lantern? Well, maybe one year when the boys are here..? (They haven't been here at Hallowe'en for going on for 7 years). Shame to throw it out, though. Keep.

All these used padded envelopes. Dozens of them. Just can’t bear to throw them out. I can stick labels over those messy addresses, can’t I, and reuse them? You always need a padded envelope, don’t you. The trouble is, they’re gaining on me. I give up the struggle to rationalize this. Back on the shelf.

Two ancient exercise books. Full of sums in a childish hand. I was helping my son with subtraction. It is irrelevant, now. Into the bin. No, I can’t - it would be like throwing my little boy into the bin, wouldn’t it. (Even though my little boy is now a 25year old Chartered Accountant- so my help must have worked, then?). Mmm - I’m sure that spare paper will come in handy - keep them.

I spend all morning on this, and at the end of it I have one small carrier bag of stuff to go into the bin.

And the utility room looks very much the same as it did in the beginning.

Yes - this is the ‘after’ picture - I didn’t think of taking a ‘before’ version - but take it from me , you wouldn't notice the difference.

I should have gone to town after all

Don't Mention the War!

Change of Blog Title

Dear Readers,

You will see that I am changing my Blog title. I think potential readers might be misled into thinking that 'All Quiet etc.' is something to do with warfare (sorry to disappoint!)

Regards,
anno domini

Rabbit Pie?

I’ve just come across this postcard, which I bought some years ago in the market at La Baule
The caption says she is a ‘Jeune Fille de Quimperle’
But it is the rear of the PC which fascinates me. It was posted in Pont-Croix, Finisterre in Brittany on 25th February 1906

As you can probably make out, it is addressed to Madame Vailhen at 3 place de la Republique, Nantes, and a rough translation is:

Saturday evening.
I’m putting a rabbit on the train to gare d’Orleans. I think you’ll have it by Monday. Ant. [Antoine, Antoinette?] will be able to collect it. It is wrapped length-ways in 2 cloths.
Kind regards to Rue St. Jacques. Kisses [?] to the place de la Republique. L.

I love reading old letters and postcards - trying to get a feel for the past and to envisage the writers and recipients. What were these people’s lives like, and what became of them.

Who was L., I wonder, and was Madame Vailhen pleased with the gift? (and was it fresh when she took delivery of it!)

Did she enjoy her rabbit pie?

Spot the Boffin

Scenes from Boarding School Life - 2




I was reminded by the News that 17th October was the 50th anniversary of the opening of Britain’s first Nuclear Power Station at Calder Hall in Cumbria (or Cumberland as it was then)

I was there!


The whole school attended the event; I believe we actually went in coaches - a rare novelty (is that tautology?) as we would often traipse along the Cinder Track on Sunday walks, from the village almost to the boundary wire of the power station (known to us just as 'Sellafield')

We didn't have as good a view as this!

Opening of Calder Hall 1956

...and our view..

It was the school's misfortune that the power station was built virtually on its doorstep - well, about a mile away further up the coast. This was to have a detrimental effect on school numbers, and a nuclear accident in 1957 hastened the school’s demise.

The village expanded considerably during the late 50s, estates being built to house the ‘Boffins’.

The word Boffin summoned up a picture of a mythical being, something akin to a Hobbit (which is probably why there is a family so named in Tolkien's books)

Presumably these boffins were hard at work in their labs whenever we ventured out to the village to play hockey at Bottom Pitch (which we shared with the local team), and they must have been tucked away in their little boffinish houses when we processed along the road to Church on a Sunday. (Boffins surely would be sceptics, wouldn‘t they?)

Because all the time I was there I don’t think I ever saw one; I was sure that I would recognise one if I did.

No, I never once saw a Boffin.

One Day in History?

The National Trust (together with 'History Matters') has invited us each to write a 'One Day in History' Blog - the idea being to build a picture of an 'ordinary day' for the national record. Have a go here: www.historymatters.org.uk/output/page96.asp

Why does this happen on the most boring day for months? I don't imagine they would want entries that are this ordinary:

Went to town. Had Coffee.

Tried to buy some Christmas gifts (must get them early to catch the ‘last posting date’ for surface mail to the USA). Failed .

Tried to persuade myself to start clearing up the garden ready for winter. Failed .

Intended to screw up my courage to plan menus for impending visit of step-son, wife & 3 children. Failed .

Cleaned our bedroom. Succeeded at that, anyway

Attempted to write a contribution to the ‘One Day in History Blog’. Failed .

Do these people really want to know the embarrassing truth about my day?

Now, if The Day were to be tomorrow, well that could be a different matter all together: I might very well decide to go bungee-jumping, or white-water rafting on the River Kent.

Or perhaps someone will ring my doorbell and tell me that I’ve won the mid-week lottery - in spite of me having no ticket. (Come to think of it, perhaps I should forego the activities mentioned above - I’d hate to be out when he calls)

Tomorrow - anything could happen.

Not Walking in the Lake District - a heretic's tale

I was brought to believe that Walking in the Lake District was the thing to do, it was almost a tenet of faith in and around Carlisle.

Most of the people in our small social circle Walked. The capital letter is deliberate - this was not just a casual stroll to the local post-office, this was a fully kitted out walk involving rucksacks, heavy boots (or stout shoes at least) , waterproofs, animal-wool (to prevent blistered heels) Kendal Mint Cake - to keep the children’s spirits up - sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper and a thermos flask of something or other, and either a Baddeley guidebook or a Bartholomew’s Half Inch Map of the area.

• As young women, my mother and her friends (clad in the tweed skirts that were thought appropriate then) had regularly taken the Fellwalkers’ Bus which operated from Carlisle each Saturday (one week to Seatoller, the next week to Keswick) which would drop off the walkers and pick them up again at say, 6pm.

• A few years on and my parents would go off in the car. Once or twice they climbed Great Gable to attended the Armistice Service at the Memorial to members of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club killed in the Great War. It was quite an experience to be on the summit as small groups of walkers emerged from the November mist just before 11 o’clock for the solemn and touching commemoration.
  ( more here: http://www.frcc.co.uk/rock/history/gablememorial/gablememorial1.htm.

Climbing Catbells c.1950

• My sister and I were taken on smaller challenges, to climb Catbells, to walk along the road to Watendlath - where Vivian, a local eccentric, opened a gate near the car park for a small remuneration. (Vivian had a tame jay which hopped around his feet.) - and to clamber on the Bowder Stone

www.visitcumbria.com/kes/bowder.htm

• Years later when I was living in London, a walking holiday in the Lakes was the most wonderful escape ever! Arriving at Longthwaite Youth Hostel in Borrowdale, with the neat lines of discarded boots in the porch (‘No boots inside the hostel’ a golden rule) was bliss - London was so impossibly remote; I no longer believed it existed.
  
  

But that was then. Now I am back in the North, living on the edge of a quiet little town and it is so easy to get to Windermere, Ambleside and to Keswick, that somehow one doesn’t have the strong drive to go. It is all here on my door-step;I can go any time.

And lovely though the surrounding landscape is, I must confess a heresy: nowadays I prefer town walks and townscapes : the magnificent sweep of Grey Street, Newcastle, dipping down to the Quayside with its breathtaking bridgescape, the endless joys of Georgian Bath, the college courts of Cambridge and winter sunsets over King's Parade, the Minster and the houses and gardens of the Close,seen from the City Walls at York, the views over Kendal from Low Fellside.

I no longer want remoteness. Now I flee to the town.

Sods' Lawn

Because of rain you are unable to mow the lawn . You go away for several days. It rains heavily while you are away, and the grass shoots up.

You get back. The lawn already resembles a young hay field , but you can’t cut it because of course you have several more days of rain The grass ripples like a field of corn.


At last a dry day dawns. You clatter through the garage, down the steps and into the back garden carrying the mower awkwardly and trying not to trip over yourself. You unwind the lead taking several minutes to untangle the mischievous knots which have appeared, even though you wound the thing so carefully last time you put it away.

Same thing with the extension lead. Then you plug the mower lead into the extension lead, and clamber up the steps to thread it through the utility-room window to plug it in, (so that you can close the door on it to keep out next-doors’ cat.) You fiddle around plugging in and testing the circuit-breaker. Right - ready to go.

Nothing. Only a small bang, and a puff of smoke. The mower has mysteriously broken itself while you were away. (It was fine last time you cut the grass).

Back inside, having left a trail of soggy footprints all over the newly-washed kitchen floor, you flip through the Argos catalogue and select the perfect replacement. You dash into town to buy it, hoping to get back and have at least one of the lawns done before that black cloud releases its spite.

Out of stock. (In commercial terms the gardening season has ended, and they need all that space for Christmas stuff) Frustrated and resentful, you downright refuse to buy a much more expensive machine ( which anyway can’t be bought ‘in store’, so will take a week to be delivered.)

Empty-handed, you return home as the rain starts again. You have missed your Window of Opportunity.


O well. Turn on the computer, write your blog and avoid looking at the garden.



A nice word:

This word sounds as though it describes how you feel after the above episode - but it doesn’t.

crepuscular adj 1)a. of twilight, b,dim. 2) zoological - appearing or active in twilight.
From the Latin crepusculum twilight, dusk

Nostalgia

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore: -
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more

(Wordsworth)

nostalgia - noun from the Greek : nostos return [home] + algos pain

so: a longing to return to a place or time

Prompted by a visit from a former boyfriend, (together with his wife and family) I began to consider the nature of nostalgia. (The ‘boyfriend’ of course was no more a boy than I am a girl, it being 30 years since we last saw each other, and I’m afraid I find him as irritating now as I did at the end of our relationship!)

But it brought back many nostalgic feelings from my life in London, where I worked at that time as a Housekeeper at a District Nurses’ Home round the corner from the British Museum. I still look on the Bloomsbury area as ‘my London’.

Surrounded as I was then by all the glories of London, what I loved most were the smaller, almost trivial things:

Not so much the mighty British Museum, but close by the Georgian terrace house bearing a brass plaque saying ‘Registered Office - London Symphony Orchestra’ - that really thrilled me - occasionally one would see a musician going in carrying perhaps a violin or an oddly-shaped French-horn case - wow, the big time!

Then again, a friend and I relishing the huge treat of Hot Chocolate and thickly sliced toast at the small ‘Monaco’ café in Great Russell Street.

I smile at the memory of the aforementioned boyfriend and I competing to play a Scarlatti sonata the fastest, on his rather honky-tonk piano.


Or exploring the City of London alone, looking for Dickensian associations: Cornhill - this was where Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit went down a slide ‘at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve…’

Self (left) and friend at Monument in the City c.1967. Eating again!

My flatmate and I again in a café, Jackson’s in Marchmont Street (now alas altered out of all recognition) having cottage cheese and pineapple open sandwiches - thought to be rather chic at the time! Perched on stools at the window, we look across to the window opposite and see our café’s name reflected - after that our favourite place is ‘Snoskcaj’.

Visits to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall - and waiting at the end for Colin Davis’s autograph - swoon !- (and another time, Jack Brymer’s). The flip side of these trips to Kensington, after I had moved to Belsize Park, was having to get the late-night-pukers bus back, which went through Camden Town just as the pubs were emptying! Rather spoilt the magical atmosphere which still hovered around my head after the concert.

And another adventure which one could rarely afford - visiting the newly opened Pizza Express in Coptic Street (only the second branch to open, I think). It was so novel eating in a white-tiled former dairy, with bare marble-topped tables, and on Tuesdays (or was it Saturdays) a student string-quartet serenading us with Haydn and Mozart.

All those things make me smile, but the sadness I sometimes feel is not a mourning for the places, or even for the people - they all still exist .


But I mourn for my young self. She has gone for ever.

A Visit to Bath

Shopfront in Bath, Somerset

I've been away for 5 days to Somerset, so haven't had time to post my blog,

so here are some photos:




ITV crew filming Jane Austen's 'Persuasion' at the Pump Room:

.

Two views of the Roman Baths

The Royal Crescent