Off by heart

Scenes from Boarding School Life - 4

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet in form as palpable
As this which now I draw

At school we had a system of black-marks (called ‘untidies’) which were meted out by senior girls who inspected common-rooms and cloakrooms daily just before tea. At the end of tea a senior would read out the list of miscreants - and their misdemeanours: a scarf left on the cloakroom floor, a writing-case left on the common-room table, a hockey-boot - not put away in a cloakroom locker.

These were to be reported to Group-leaders next lunchtime. (we had Groups rather than Houses - they had the embarrassingly twee names, Balmoral, Buckingham, Sandringham and Windsor.)

I usually managed two or three Untidies each term.

Oh dear, yet another. I mounted the stairs to the mezzanine where the mysterious pine-clad prefects’ study was, to report to a Buckingham Group Leader - we weren’t allowed to ask for specific people; one took pot luck This time I got the severest prefect, Carol M.

‘I’ve come to report an Untidy’ . I stood on the steps, trying to catch a glimpse of the inner sanctum.

‘Again? Which Shakespeare play are you studying in class? Macbeth? Right, bring your book to me after games..

Later I returned with ‘Macbeth’

She leafed through the book.

‘Right. I want you to learn this short passage off by heart. From ‘Is this a dagger…’ to ‘…this which now I draw’. By Wednesday.’

On Wednesday I made my way to the Study. …art thou not fatal vision.. bounded up the stairs ..or art thou but a dagger of the mind…and knocked on the door…the heat-oppressed brain..

I confronted Carol M. and handed her the book, opened at the marked page.
I took a deep breath:

‘IsthisadaggerwhichIseebeforemethehandletowardsmyhandcomeletmeclutchtheeIhavetheenotandyetIseetheestill.’

I closed my eyes to block out any distractions , and carried on, heady with my own success. I could see the end in sight:

‘…orartthoubutadaggerofthemindafalsecreationproceedingfromtheheat-oppressedbrain…proceedingfromtheheat-oppressedbrain….theheat-oppressed brain..’

But nothing more proceeded from my heat-oppressed brain. Nothing. Time seemed to stand still. I hardly knew where I was any more.

‘You may have another day - come back tomorrow.’

My brain melted with gratitude. I almost liked Carol M. now; after all, if she had chosen to she could have given me a completely new passage to learn.

I started down the stairs.

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain. I see thee yet in form as palpable as that which now I….I'd got it. I'd got it.

I turned to go back, but the Study door was firmly closed. But I knew that tomorrow I would be OK.

I remember those words 50 years later. And the many other poems and prose passages that I learnt ‘off by heart’ . I enjoy letting those words swim around in my head.

And I am grateful for that civilised ‘punishment’.

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.

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.

'The Best Days of your Life?'

‘And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.’
Shakespeare - ‘Seven ages of man’

Scenes from Boarding School Life -1



I didn’t have far to ‘creep’ as I was at a girls’ boarding school on a fairly bleak stretch of the Cumberland coast.

I hurried down the stairs on my first morning in this strange new place, to find my trunk and start my unpacking. (For our first night we brought just an overnight case).


I was accosted by girl with a pinched eager face, and a sleek dark Richard the Third haircut. ‘Ah,’ she said, giving me a searching look, ‘a new girl, eh? What’s your name’. I told her.



. ‘Mmmmm’, she considered, her head on one side.

Then she nodded decisively. ‘We’ll call you ‘Pug’’. I shrank . ‘Because you look like one’.

She turned and joined her group of fellow dog-spotters.

I had never really thought about my looks, and it had certainly never occurred to me that I might look like a rather ugly dog.


Thus I was both welcomed and excluded - all in one go.

Who? Me?

School Expressions:

Antediluvian adjective before the Biblical flood, so - ancient, out-of-date

from the Latin: ante- before; deluvium deluge

This word was very much in vogue at my school during the late 1950s; ideas were 'antediluvian', clothes were 'antedeluvian' . "Did you see old Cookie's hairstyle - its sooo antediloooooovian!"