Yes, that's right. My most popular post "Confessions of an all girls' private school" (with 426 views!) has a part two.
I have just taken a break from my packing for my second year at University and decided to watch 'Harrow: A very British school' - some people I'm at Uni with went there, so I was very intrigued. Many things I saw reminded me of Ockbrook, minus the 90% less school fees, the very small in comparison to Harrow's 200 acre grounds, no boys (until now) and I'm pretty sure I wasn't called a 'Shell' in year 7 - 'A shell waiting to be filled with knowledge' - I came up with that myself.
Anyway, there were some things that were similar, but lets be honest, every private school is different and Ockbrook was, lets say a private school that tried so desperately hard to be an "all girls private and very posh" posh school. But unfortunately the odd girl just kept letting it down (or the whole year, or the whole school), so rebellious, yet so amazing.
You had to stand up when the headmistress walked into assembly, then sit down after she sat down, then stand up 4 seconds later to sing "be still", which you tried to remember the words to, as everyone looked two rows ahead or four people to the side to the hymn books of the teachers' pets who always remembered their hymn book, whether they were falling apart or not, everyone HAD to have one other wise you would receive the cane, or just a sly glare from your head of year.
Showers were mandatory after P.E. (thats physical education darling), sorry, I meant it was mandatory for the teachers to tell us to have a shower then us to wet out feet and walk round the changing room looking like we'd all had a shower - ahh how we fooled our P.E. teachers...
P.E. now that was a fine lesson. I will always remember my first summer P.E. session of Year 7 (as a shell), we were placed on the slightly undulating 300m grass track (which was potentially more about 278m - but who's counting?) and told to run 800m - now as we all know (yawn) I did x-country in year 5 and 6 (which I hated), but that grass track put a rocket up my year 7 skort and gave me the second fastest time in the year! (the first knows who she is! - and I was 30 seconds slower then her - the difference between gold and 57th place in the Olympics, but who's counting?). Now as every school knows there are your sporty kids aaaand your not so sporty kids (the sporfy kids as I like to call them, the kind that even by the time year 11 swimming came along still hadn't heard of a tampon, you know what I'm talking about) so the Sporfy kids were shouted at - they pretended to have an asthma attack whilst the teachers ran along side them (and I was on my second 800m) - I'm such a show off.
Ok, something I was terrible at but every other girl seemed incredible at - Hockey. My worst nightmare, coming back from Summer holidays and it was Hockey season, I wouldn't have made the school C team - there weren't enough girls to make a C team - exactly my point. I was petrified my insured fingers would get smacked and I'd never be able to play the piano again - tragic and really upsetting. We had to have gum guards, shin pads, football boots, embroidered track pants, track top, skort, P.E. shirt and kit bag, and goggles and shoes and socks and we practically had to embroider ourselves - the pain. High jump, I was SHOCKING at that, the annual Pentathlon seemed a good idea at the time - Ockbrook always won the girls' section but Friesland always won the boys' section - but we'll obviously let them off for that because who was judging their sport anyway? - slight tangent Ruth - I have scars on my poor shins from that stupid bar, could I fosbury flop over that thing at 10cm? NO! I was awful.
Moving away from P.E. - we had a pet, a peahen to be exact, where it came from we don't know. But then it died, it was really sad, no really it was really sad. Our first assembly back after summer and to be broken with that news was horrifying - especially when the head teacher actually told us where she and the head of science found it dead - poor year 7's. But, nevertheless we got about 5 in its place - boy peahens and girl peahens... something like that. And it was like the witch of the senior staff department (fill in with name of most disliked teacher) had re-incarnated the peahen and it had gone badly wrong...
Windows were propped open with 5 copies of "Of Mice of Men" - many broke from the weight - we like to think that was why Lenny crushed things - lovely. People were hit on the head with the book after it would "accidentally" fall from the window and fall 3 stories - it was never me. I swear on my 90 denier tights. We had 3 maths rooms - the sliding door one was obvs the best, then one became the IT room (suite!) which no one was allowed to use because the computers were brand new - sorry whats the point then? - this was the new headmistress by this point, she changed our school holidays to match with Loughborough's private schools because thats where her children went...
Creative arts... creative arts... what to say about creative arts. This was the evening every year I dreaded. The actual evening itself included every year in the sports hall (minus the sixth formers, they got the dance studio) with group dances to Soulja Boy and lots of Haribo and lemonade - so we were all obviously so drunk by the time we were called to perform it was hilarious. Ok that was one time. So creative arts was the night where every year and the dance groups from every year performed dance and drama - my two most hated subjects ever. I attempted to do the year 10 Spanish dance but I was basically told in a very nice, roundabout way, I was more suited to running and athletics - basically I was too muscly and fast for the dance - whatever! - I'll go and twist my ankle on the pot-holed track! Ok so there was a time when in art - we as hormonal year 9 students had to dance under a dragon - yes a real one - well made of papier-mâche and a mad concoction of paint - it was a chinese theme - der - and we all stood underneath this "work of art" and danced - whilst we ripped off the newspaper inside and left it on the stage, teehee. Other creative arts years included a dance to the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme tune, a dance with a pearly squash ball and finalés that involved crying P.E. teachers, flowers and "don't stop believing" - dear, oh dear.
The black door and the white door - The black door is for students and the white door is for parents (and students) - I once took my mum through the black door and was almost expelled on the spot when our Deputy Head saw. No"Hello Mrs Smith" it was more like "Ruth Hannah Smith what are you doing bringing a parent through the black door!?" - erm, soz miss.
OH THE HORROR - "MISS" wow, when pupils came from schools that weren't, well lets just say, Ockbrook, - the words "MISS" and "SIR"came out, well, that, 4 years before, would have been worthy of 5 strikes with the cane, but luckily only 1 nowadays. It was so shocking it was worse than the first surprise head lice check. 3 years later at a different sixth form there I am calling my teachers "miss" and "sir" ah Ruth, so common, poor thing - I had so much potential. At Ockbrook you'd get ignored by the teacher until some Ockbrook-ian would correct the non Ockbrook-ian.
I remember when I went to pick up my GCSE certificates - through the white door I went, greeted very nicely by the P.A. to the head and not very nicely by the Deputy Head who glanced at me whilst I checked all my certificates were there and asked that as I was no longer a pupil that I don't enter the school to say hello to anyone and that I quickly leave - like I was some embarrassment - well I never. How rude.
So yes I, in the words of our sister, Dory, "ES-CAP-ADE" to a.n.other sixth form and left behind a very odd but memorable place that was potentially the most trying of poshest places ever.
I will never forget the day the OED fell from my head during 'graceful walking' lessons.
Stay clever!
RHS x
No comments:
Post a Comment