1. Food and mealtimes
Human nature being what it is, many people grow misty-eyed at the recollection of Miss Hill’s cooking who, in their formative years, could describe it only with unrepeatable epithets. Perhaps subsequent attempts to cater for themselves or their families has led them to discover that you can expend considerable efforts on cooking for a small family group without matching what Miss Hill did for a hundred of us. Even at the time, a comparison with the midday meals provided by Ashford Grammar School (and presumably the other secondary schools), which conformed only too well to the image of the “school dinner”, might have alerted them to the fact that Caldecott meals were a cut above the norm for such things.
I am not the best person to judge them, however. My mother waited until delivering me to Caldecott at the beginning of my first term before dropping a minor bombshell: “he’s a vegetarian”. She also demanded that I be given brown bread. These were things that, even before I began to study music, tended to set me apart. It was fortunate that the long-serving and greatly-respected Miss E was also a vegetarian, which made it seem a little less daft, as well as lessening the blow for the kitchen staff, who had been making separate provision for Miss E since time immemorial. And I must say that, while sometimes they remembered at the last moment and sent up a slab of Cheddar cheese, more often they took the trouble to cook something attractive. This led to ribaldry about “Little Special-Special”, not to speak of jealousy when the food provided for the others was judged unappealing. The table at which I sat had my two reserved slices of brown bread, with the result that children who would have protested vigorously if brown bread had been given to all, suddenly did not see why I should have it when they did not. Additionally, it was convenient to blame my poor sporting performances on my vegetarianism, despite the fact that there were meat-eaters who did no better.
All this is a premise to saying that I am not the ideal person to judge Miss Hill’s catering overall, since I never tried her bangers and mash or her shepherd’s pie, just to name two. The following memories are partial, therefore.
Firstly breakfasts. During Miss Hill’s time, if you had forgotten what day of the week it was, you had only to look at the breakfast table. Everybody remembers this, but not everybody remembers it the same way. Tony Inwood, my virtual contemporary, has described the breakfast menu elsewhere on this site. If we ever meet again, we will have to do a rewrite of the old song performed in “Gigi” by Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier.
TI: We had eggs on Wednesdays,
CH: We had grapefruit and Ryvita on Wednesdays,
Both: I remember it well.
TI: We had porridge on Thursdays,
CH: We had boiled eggs on Thursdays,
Both: I remember it well.
Hardly worth a quarrel, but I remember it like this:
On Mondays, porridge in winter, muesli in summer. Muesli was not exactly what would pass for such in the Alpine pastures of Switzerland. It was more like cold porridge laced with the leftovers of fruit from the previous week. Once you got over the appearance, it was rather nice.
On Tuesdays, Tony says ham, but somewhere along the line there was bacon (egg for me) and a little square of fried bread. Maybe it was bacon in winter and ham in summer.
On Wednesdays, tinned grapefruit and Ryvita (not in the same dish, obviously, and with Primula cheese to spread on it). I did not like the sour taste of grapefruit at first, but the member of staff at my table (I forget her name) told me it made you strong. I took this on trust, but did not seem any stronger for it.
On Thursdays, a boiled egg. Here I remember – but towards the end of my time at Caldecott – Ruby Driver scolding me for opening the egg upside down. According to her, the fatter part of the egg should be downwards. It seemed all the same to me, but whenever I eat a boiled egg today – not often – I think of Ruby and open it the right way up.
On Fridays, Tony says cereal, and this is probably correct, but here I begin to get confused. One thing is sure: there was no meat. Back then, Catholics were strictly forbidden to eat meat on Fridays. There were not many at Caldecott, but enough to make it more convenient to serve fish, egg or cheese at all meals on Fridays rather than make special provisions for them.
For Saturdays and Sundays, Tony says kipper or haddock, but surely not on both days? I remember this as Sundays, so what about Saturdays? I also remember cereal twice a week, once Corn Flakes or something similar, with sugar on the side if you wanted it, and once Sugar Puffs or something else that did not need extra sugar. But not on consecutive days, so something is wrong. It is easy enough to juggle the menus to make a likely sequence, but that is not the same as remembering that it was so*.
With all this, there was toast with butter and marmalade – and scrunch. Toast, and bread at teatime, was strictly rationed, but when your share had finished, the fun part began. Scrunch was just the leftover bread from previous days baked on an oven tray till it became golden brown and crunchy. It was delicious, especially if a fresh batch had just come up from the kitchen and was still hot. It was in a tin to the left of the serving hatch. There were no actual limits to what you could consume, though if the tin was empty towards the end of breakfast, Miss Hill’s sharp tones might be heard saying she was not going to bring up any more. Even after the butter and marmalade was finished, it was nice by itself. Scrunch seems such an obvious and attractive way of using up leftover bread that I cannot understand why no one outside Caldecott seems willing to contemplate it except as dog food.
Only the staff had tea at breakfast. For the rest of us, there was an urn of Camp Coffee, replaced by instant coffee after Miss Hill left and Miss Audrey Watson took over. Camp Coffee had been a popular surrogate during the war since it consists mainly of chicory essence, which was available when coffee beans were practically impossible to import. I used to imagine Caldecott was the last bastion of Camp Coffee drinkers and wondered how the company managed to survive, but people tell me it is still used in cakes where a liquid is needed and powder would ruin the texture.
Moving on to dinners, high teas and suppers, the menu was not based on strict rotation though a degree of repetition was obviously involved. I do recall that ice cream was served at high tea on Thursdays. It was always a wrapped portion of Walls vanilla ice cream, to be placed between two wafers. Some staff allowed you to lick round the edge, most required you to eat it in dainty little bites. Oh for the days when our fillings were few and small!
My memories of the first courses, for which I usually had a vegetarian substitute, would not be very useful. I can say that a fair amount of our vegetables, some of our fruit and also our eggs, came from our own kitchen garden and chicken run, produced under Major Clark’s watchful eye. The primary goal was probably cost cutting, but coincidentally our diet must have had a high ecological and health content at a time when these matters were less considered.
Of the puddings, I particularly remember banana (“nanny”) custard. It was simply cold custard with pieces of banana in it, but it was as refreshing as it was simple. Fruit salad and trifle were more an excuse to use up the week’s leftovers, but did so very pleasantly. Things like semolina pudding and rice pudding might be judged neutrally. I have since found meringue to be pleasant. At the time, I thought it tasted like cardboard. I cannot say if my tastes have changed or whether Caldecott meringue did taste like that. Summer pudding was fortunately rare. This is another that I have since discovered can be delicious. Back then it seemed, and probably was, a way of using up old bread by soaking it in Ribena with a few blackcurrants. And there were prunes and junket … These led to one of my first encounters with Miss Leila. The strict rule was that you had to have a little of everything, and leave nothing on the plate. This was a culture shock when I arrived at Caldecott, since my mother had been indulgent over food I did not like. With prunes and junket, the limit was reached and it was time to make a stand. I flatly refused to eat them. I was forced to remain at the table while everyone else filed out. Only Miss Leila remained. I was summoned to the great table and ordered to bring my prunes. Very solemnly, like a holy ritual, she spoon-fed me my prunes, one by one. At the end, she said with a wise twinkle, “You see, you like your prunes”. I did not and do not, though thanks to Caldecott training I will eat them with a polite smile if they are put in front of me. As for junket, I have never seen the stuff since my Caldecott days. Do people still eat it?
On weekdays, dinner was only for juniors, since the seniors were out at school. The second meal of the day for juniors was high tea, while the seniors had supper slightly later. Supper was like a minor dinner, on the assumption that the midday meal provided by the Ashford schools had not amounted to much. High tea began with something like baked beans or macaroni cheese, then some sort of cake and fruit. This was very nice, except when the fruit was raisins. These led to another of my attempted protests. This time my antagonist was Mr. Marshall. I was sitting opposite him at the end of the table and I hit on a beautiful way of solving my raisin problem. Very delicately, with a smile of pleasure on my face, I raised the vile things to my lips in ones and twos then, instead of putting them in my mouth, let them drop into my lap. Mr. Marshall seemed unaware, and I got such a nice feeling out of “diddling” him that I asked for a second helping. I disposed of this the same way. Mr. Marshall was not quite as blind as I supposed. He made me put them back on my plate, warm and squidgy from between my legs, and eat the lot. I still do not like raisins.
If Ruby Driver taught me how to eat a boiled egg, it was a Junior Study girl, Xanthe Styles, who tried to influence my banana eating. Oddly enough, the staff, or at least the one at my table, raised no objection if we peeled the banana half down, then held the bottom while we started eating from the top, but Xanthe thought otherwise. “That’s how monkeys eat bananas!” she shrilled every time.
There was a certain ritual attached to meals. They were heralded by a loud bell placed in the front alleyway. First bell meant that, wherever you were, you had to come in and get ready. This involved tidying yourself up, putting on decent clothes and cleaning your shoes if necessary. The member of staff looking after your group would inspect you and send you back if you were not presentable.
“Decent clothes” calls for some explanation. On weekdays, this meant uniforms. On Saturday evenings, seniors could show off their latest purchases, within reason (each senior had a clothing allowance, which we could spend as we wished, again within reason). The question was, whose reason? Ivan Bloom, one of the older West Wing boys, bought a smart dinner jacket and tried to wear it at Saturday supper. Miss Travers ordered him to take it off. To be fair, when she saw that most of the Colt House boys were wearing dinner jackets, she apologized afterwards. “If I’d known the other boys would be wearing dinner jackets, I’d have let you wear it. But to tell the truth, I thought you looked much nicer in your jumper. I mean, you look very nice in your pyjamas, but not at supper”. Speaking of pyjamas, a couple of years later, shirts with fancy patterns became the rage, and it occurred to us that they did not look very different from pyjama jackets. Accordingly, Holden Blackford dressed himself up neatly with pyjama jacket, tie and dinner jacket. Holden was sitting at Miss Leila’s table that term. Mr. Griffiths evidently appreciated the opportunity to make a fool of Miss Leila and let him wear it. Miss Leila remained inscrutable. I was sitting at Miss Elizabeth’s table and tried to get a rise out of her. “What do you think of Holden’s new shirt?” I asked. She remained non-committal. “It almost looks like a pyjama jacket”, I ventured to suggest, treacherously. Again, she kept her counsel. Probably she suspected the truth and preferred not be drawn. Emboldened, the next Saturday Holden arrived at pre-supper inspection wearing the pyjama trousers as well, but Mr. Griffiths vetoed that one.
Second bell, rung fifteen minutes later, was the signal to converge on the dining room. Running in the hall was not permitted. Places were allotted at the tables on a termly basis. Considerable thought went into this, since mealtimes were the one occasion when different age groups and genders mixed and got to know members of staff who looked after different departments. When you got to your place, you stood behind your chair. Grace would be said by Miss Leila if she had arrived. If she had not, it was necessary for someone to see whether she was in sight. Not even Miss Dave would dare to say grace if Miss Leila was within any plausible distance of arriving to say it herself. Grace was preceded by the tinkling of a small bell on Miss Leila’s table. The bell meant silence. It was likely to be rung at other times during the meal if Miss Leila had news to impart or saw something that displeased her. After the bell had been rung, the door was closed during grace. Anyone entering after grace was late and would be obliged to stand behind their chair as a punishment. Standing while others ate was also the most common punishment for those who misbehaved at table. As the meal neared its end, the bell would ring again and Miss Leila would announce, “Tables may clear”. The member of staff at each table would have worked out some sort of rotation in order to decide who was to carry the plates back to the long table in front of the serving hatch that day or week. After another bell, we were dismissed, not table by table but group by group. “Miss Murdin and the little boys may go … Miss Ruhl and the little girls may go …” And, one day of the week, “The choir (Miss Dave always pronounced it ‘qua’) may go”.
Apart from Miss Hill, the kitchen and pantry were mainly operated by ladies who came in daily from the village. There was a thin, slightly acid Mrs. Goodban and a fatter, more friendly one whose name I do not recall. Of the various household chores we had to do, helping in the kitchen was probably the one I liked best. In my last years at Caldecott, I grew to enjoy the gentle chat – call it gossip if you like – that went on there. I also came to see what a nuisance it was for them to have to cater separately for a vegetarian. When I went on to Edinburgh University and student lodgings, I said nothing about special culinary requirements. It was rather fun to eat what was in front of me without having the slightest idea what it was, and try to look as though I had been eating it all my life.
The kitchen was off-limits unless you had a specific errand that took you there. Anyone trying to cadge extra food was shooed off and maybe got a clip round the ear into the bargain. The kitchen had a sliding door that was usually locked after the staff had gone home, but even if you found it open, there was not much joy. Anything remotely appetizing was beyond a further locked door that led to the larder and walk-in fridge. Returning from a concert in Folkestone one evening I went in there with Peta Farnell and at least one other person. No food, but I killed a dozen cockroaches on the stone floor and left them for the kitchen staff to find in the morning. Meanwhile, Peta had found a bottle of vinegar and swigged about half of it neat.
* The (probably) definitive breakfast rota as provided by Gerald Moran is porridge/muesli (according to the season) on Mondays, ham on Tuesdays, fried bread and bacon/grapefruit with Ryvita and Primula cheese (according to the season) on Wednesdays, boiled eggs on Thursdays, cereal on Fridays, kippers or haddock on Saturdays, cereal again on Sundays. On one of the cereal days, there were bananas to slice into it.