Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
Boarding life includes a lot of planned and unplanned events besides classes and the activities program. A lot has to do with learning how to live with each other. Here boarding can play an important role beyond the academic benefits. Then there are storms and flu outbreaks. Getting to the telephone used to be a problem at some schools, but that was before eMails and cell phones.
I lay awake in the dormitory, listening to the wind howlingand the window-panes rattling. The past day had been one of continuous foul weather: rainy, blowing and cold, so I guessed that it would not be good tonight. Just then a flash of lightning zig-zagged across the blustery sky. I jumped. I certainly did not think we would have a thunderstorm.
I could hear my dormitory prefect, Tim Porter, snoring. It's all right for him, I thought. I looked across the room at everybody: Charles Matheson, Simon Griffin ... yes, they were all asleep. I was the only person awake, so I turned by head over and tried to get to sleep.
The storm did not cease. It rolled about, but, try as I might I coyld not fall asleep. Crash! went the thunder. Rattle! wnt the window-panes. It was as if they were talking to each under. Again the lightening flashed across the sky. Suddenly, Bang! There was loud crack and the sound of a falling tree. I tiptoed across the wooden floorboards and toward the window. I peered out and saw the great cooperbeech lying fallen on the ground. I debated with myself whether to tell someone, but then I sa shadowy silhouettes of people bustling around the tree.
I quickly hopped back into bed and lay down, thinking of my prents and my brother at home. Lighting and thunder racketed about the sky as I cowered under my duvet, rolled up like a doormouse, and closed my eyes The curtains blew to and fro about the windows giving draughts about the dormitory.
Outside I could hear the faint murmur of voices. Then, from the distance, and gradually coming nearer, I could hear a siren buzzing.
Somebody began to talk in his sleep, moving wakefully as he spoke. The rain was drumming at the windows and on the roofs of the few cars outside the school front porch. I could almost feel the rain trickling down my back. I look at the luminous hands of my new watch: eleven thirty. Perhaps my watchhad stopped, because it certainly seemed like three o'clock in the morning. Curled up, I decided, would be the most comfortable way to sleep, so curl up I did. Soon I was asleep and snoring.
Next morning I woke up and found the storm had stopped. I walked over to the window and looked at the poor old copper-beech lying there. Soon I forgot about the night's happenings and now, in the place of the cooper beech we have a small, young oak tree!.
Andrew Ridland, Fanfare (Mount House School), Autumn 1988
I am sorry that some parents have had occassional difficukty getting through to boarders in the evening this term but I must make it clear that the problem is very largely beyond our control. Certainly we are responsible for laying down times when such calls may be made (6 p.m-7:30 p.m.) as we must be reasonably sure that the children are within the main building, and thus close to the telephone, when the call comes through. It is just not possible for busy Matrons or Staff on duty with evening activities to drop what they are doing and go searching around the estate. Children go into their evening meal at 6.00 p.m. which lasts until 6.30 p.m., and at this time they are very accessible. After the meal comes Third Pre., Music Practice and Reading for the youngest ones. Here, too, calls can fairly readily be received. When Third Prep. is over about at about 7.00 p.m. they are still moderately accessible for a time, but as the evening advances they become less so with the development of evening activities. In light evenings children my be widely dispersed by 7.45 p.m., and even in the winter may be over in the Labs or up in the Loft. Calls at 8.30-9.00 p.m. are highly unpopular: by 9:00 p.m. only Matrons are on duty, and they may be bathing the children, washing children's hair, dressing wounds, reading bedtime stories, sorting out tomorrow's clothes, doing all those jobs which make bedtime the busiest part of a matron's duty day. So we are left with 6.00-7.30, an hour-and-a-half. This should be long enough provided nobody hogs the phone! If somebody does so, there is really nothing much we can do about it. The application of common sense and awareness that there may be others waiting would solve the whole problem.
In real emergency children may be reached between 12.30 and 1.15 p.m., but in emergency only. The School Office should not, please, be used to contact children, and my home number is likely to prove even more fruiless. Neither can we transfer calls.
"Harecroft Hall Newsletter," December 1988.
Two weeks before the Chrustmas holidays Iain Swinton got flu and that was how it started. He went home sfter three days in bed, then two day pupils did not turn up the following day. Then a couple of boaders fell under Matron's power because they too had been struck by flu. Soon most matches with other schools were cancelled. Even some of the staff were away, although that was good because it meant that some of our lessons were not proper ones. On the last Monday of term I got flu. By this time so many boarders had it that my dormitory was taken up with sick people. There was a hoorible smell of anti-septic in the room and I do not think there was one second without someone coughing or sneezing. Four days before the end of termI went home, which was brilliant!
Robert Browning, Junior Wyvern (Queen's College Junior School), 1989-90.
On Nonday 6th of March 'flu hit Brancite school; peoplw went down with it by the dozen, and it spread like wildfire. Sick bay was filled up to capacity and people were put in dorms. That evening Chatsworth dorm was turned into an extra sick-bay and Brackenbury was put into isolation because he was so bad ...
Adam Bush, 11.4 The Bramcote Magazine, Autumn 1978
For a retiring staff member, "All the abroads were so lucky to have someone like Mrs Scott looking after them."
Plang Lot, Great Walstead Magazine 1987.
Friday was my best day of term. IIIa went with Mr Bowles on a mystery tour in Derbyshire. Some of the senior boys went to Chatsworth and we did have a very good view of Chatworth House, it was great fun. On Sunday it was the leavers service and the training choir went upwith the main choir to sing the anthem "Let Their Celestial Concerts All Unite". On Monday Mountbatten played the softball final against Drake. Mountbatten won -- it was a good match. On Tuesday Mr Vercoe organised another "It's a Knockout". Therewere twelve teams altogether. One of the contests was that one team had to get from one end of a bench to the other with a tennis ball and place the ball in a bucket, whilst another team were throwing wet sponges at them. Another team had a bun eating contest, you had to have your hands tied behind your back and all the buns were dangling from pieces of string. On Wesnesday morning Mr Welham won the tennis final and on Thurday there was a cricket match when the boys played against the staff, the boys won. Before that there was the judo grading.
Richard Mosley, 10.9, The Bramcote Magazine, Autumn 1978
