Odds and ends
As the memory of my time at Caldecott recedes into the remote past, and I wonder occasionally whether I really do remember this or that, there are small, unconnected, incidents that are never forgotten. For instance:
Miss Hill, wanting some milk at the breakfast table, asking someone to pass ‘the cow’.
Ian Uden, at a meal including salad, asking someone to pass the ‘lettuce with a gladsome mind’.
Vivian Benjafield [‘Benjy’], in the dormitory after lights out, having a barking contest with Tess, who was on the front steps [I think it was a draw]. He left us soon after this, for an unconnected reason.
My ambition, aged about twelve, to be a little gentleman when I saw an older girl, Pam Hervey, apparently struggling to carry a suitcase down the main stairs; it was heavy, and I struggled more than she had.
Rodney Redgrave, a boy who was accustomed to throwing his weight around among the other boys, very bravely freeing a sheep which had got caught up in some barbed wire in the field behind the West Wing, and sustaining many grazes on his legs in the process.
Barry Callaghan, who had an eccentric sense of humour not unlike that of Spike Milligan [he was a fan of the Goon Show], explaining that he was carrying an umbrella on a sunny day because it kept the elephants away. When his questioner pointed out that there were no elephants there, he replied “No; effective, isn’t it?”
Every few weeks, we went into Ashford after school for a haircut. When he had finished, he would always show us the result in a mirror and ask if there was anything else we wanted done. On one occasion Barry replied “A little bit longer at the back, please.”
Marion Kidd, who looked after some of the girls, had a great sense of humour. She once told me about her holiday in Bavaria with Barbara Watt. In most of Germany the phrase for ‘Good Day’ is ‘Guten Tag’ but in the South the usual greeting is ‘Gruss Gott’. When greeted in this way, she and Barbara would reply “Great Scott”.
On one occasion, I think after I had left Caldecott but had returned for a weekend, I went to Hythe with Marion and some of her girls. As I was bending over to get something out of the car, Marion shouted from the other side of the road [behind me] “Where have I seen that face before?” My reply of course included the word ‘mirror’.
Members of the senior girls would often go shopping on a Saturday afternoon, and there was sometimes a spate of shoplifting. I remember Elizabeth Lloyd once remarking wearily in November “Only thirty more stealing days to Christmas.”
The meat that we ate contained quite a bit of fat, and Miss Dave had a running battle with me to encourage me to eat my fat, saying that it was good for me. She would eventually say that if I ate some of it I could leave the rest [and I did]. Years later, I was pleased to discover that I had been right all along.
Miss Leila once commented to me that George Orwell ‘had a diseased mind’. I said nothing, but I could not have disagreed more; I found his works very inspiring.