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Authors: S. T. Haymon
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circumstance in fact housed nothing much but cloakrooms and office with, above, the labs positioned strategically where their bad smells could waft away on the breeze to the houses on the other side of the road, without distress to the sensitive nostrils of the budding young academics below. Out of sight behind this somewhat meretricious facade, the classrooms arranged around two quadrangles divided by the Assembly Hall were bungaloid and open-air, the brain-children of an architect who must either have hated little girls or could never in his own youth have attended a school constructed on such principles.
Admittedly, in summer the long narow rooms, tall windows taking up one long side, folding doors the other, had a lot going for them. Thistledown and the occasional butterfly drifted through: house-sparrows, surreptitiously encouraged by trails of crumbs, popped in and out to relieve the tedium apparently inseparable from getting an education. In winter, on the other hand (to say nothing of the other foot), the school raised the finest crop of chilblains in East Anglia, if not the entire British Isles. In the proclaimed cause of reducing the incidence of piles contracted by sitting on radiators with nothing between young bums and their sizzling convolutions except school bloomers, underfloor heating had been installed, the pipes unfortunately at a depth which, whilst they may have contributed to keeping the magma beneath the earthâs crust pleasantly warm, on the surface had to be taken on trust, of which there was not a lot about.
Keep both feet firmly on the floor at all times was the standing, not to say sitting, order, and youâll be all right, glowing with health . Certainly, the mercury dropping like lead, the ink thickening in the inkwells, our noses glowed as we strove unavailingly to discourage down-dropping mucus from its ambition to form a stalactite, and our chilblained toes grew itchy to the point where pain became an exquisite torture, almost enjoyable. âAre your feet firmly on the floor, girls?â sounded despairingly from mistresses themselves prowling to and fro like caged animals in the space between blackboard and desks in the interest of keeping their own circulation from calling it a day.
The school rule was that when the temperature, as registered on the thermometer attached to the frame of the folding doors, showed something sub-arctic â fifty degrees Fahrenheit is the number which intrudes itself on my recollection (though I may be mistaken: it could have been 273° Absolute) â windows were permitted to be shut, doors unfolded to form a fourth wall against the encroaching ice. As a result of this dispensation, in cold-getting-colder weather very little work got done, the mistressesâ little promenades bringing them on transparently disguised ploys to check the thermometer, the pupulsâ energies concentrated in a fierce communal act of willing the temperature down.
âDonât breathe on it!â Maria Veronese, whose genes were tuned to a warmer clime, would plead when Miss Adams, our form-mistress, who was short-sighted, put her face close to the glass when taking a reading. âYouâll warm it up!â
What busy bees we were once the crucial number was passed, running for the long hooked poles that slammed the windows shut, hauling the doors along their metal trackway like sailors in HMS Pinafore . The quadrangles were alive with activity. We could have murdered Alice Boulter, the form half-wit, for screaming out as if it were good news: âItâs going up, Miss! The temperatureâs going up!â
Back at school in mid-summer, I could afford to be nostalgic about the joys of winter. Rightly or wrongly, and even though in my absence my desk in the front row had been given to Peggy Coates because she had begun to wear glasses whilst I was not there to defend it, I sensed a welcome in the place. About my schoolfellows, my erstwhile best
Admittedly, in summer the long narow rooms, tall windows taking up one long side, folding doors the other, had a lot going for them. Thistledown and the occasional butterfly drifted through: house-sparrows, surreptitiously encouraged by trails of crumbs, popped in and out to relieve the tedium apparently inseparable from getting an education. In winter, on the other hand (to say nothing of the other foot), the school raised the finest crop of chilblains in East Anglia, if not the entire British Isles. In the proclaimed cause of reducing the incidence of piles contracted by sitting on radiators with nothing between young bums and their sizzling convolutions except school bloomers, underfloor heating had been installed, the pipes unfortunately at a depth which, whilst they may have contributed to keeping the magma beneath the earthâs crust pleasantly warm, on the surface had to be taken on trust, of which there was not a lot about.
Keep both feet firmly on the floor at all times was the standing, not to say sitting, order, and youâll be all right, glowing with health . Certainly, the mercury dropping like lead, the ink thickening in the inkwells, our noses glowed as we strove unavailingly to discourage down-dropping mucus from its ambition to form a stalactite, and our chilblained toes grew itchy to the point where pain became an exquisite torture, almost enjoyable. âAre your feet firmly on the floor, girls?â sounded despairingly from mistresses themselves prowling to and fro like caged animals in the space between blackboard and desks in the interest of keeping their own circulation from calling it a day.
The school rule was that when the temperature, as registered on the thermometer attached to the frame of the folding doors, showed something sub-arctic â fifty degrees Fahrenheit is the number which intrudes itself on my recollection (though I may be mistaken: it could have been 273° Absolute) â windows were permitted to be shut, doors unfolded to form a fourth wall against the encroaching ice. As a result of this dispensation, in cold-getting-colder weather very little work got done, the mistressesâ little promenades bringing them on transparently disguised ploys to check the thermometer, the pupulsâ energies concentrated in a fierce communal act of willing the temperature down.
âDonât breathe on it!â Maria Veronese, whose genes were tuned to a warmer clime, would plead when Miss Adams, our form-mistress, who was short-sighted, put her face close to the glass when taking a reading. âYouâll warm it up!â
What busy bees we were once the crucial number was passed, running for the long hooked poles that slammed the windows shut, hauling the doors along their metal trackway like sailors in HMS Pinafore . The quadrangles were alive with activity. We could have murdered Alice Boulter, the form half-wit, for screaming out as if it were good news: âItâs going up, Miss! The temperatureâs going up!â
Back at school in mid-summer, I could afford to be nostalgic about the joys of winter. Rightly or wrongly, and even though in my absence my desk in the front row had been given to Peggy Coates because she had begun to wear glasses whilst I was not there to defend it, I sensed a welcome in the place. About my schoolfellows, my erstwhile best
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