No 39 - The College Photo..... and Jabs

      The College photo .....and Jabs

A lady doctor and an aide arrived to administer the HPV vaccinations for the girls of Boadicea and Pankhurst dormitories. Of course the mothers had to agree with any medical procedures, particularly vaccinations. Nurse Mayo the college duty matron was also in attendance to oversee these injections.

As we stood in line there was varied conjecture among the girls as to the purpose of these ‘jabs’.

Phaedra put her head close to Rebecca and whispered “I suspect it’s a secret medical experiment being done on us girls”.

Rebecca replied nervously “You know they used to do this to prisoners during the war to sedate them”.

Rebecca added “well if mother agreed to this and it causes any behavioral changes in me she has only got herself to blame”.

We went into the first aid room in pairs. I went in with Charlotte. I know she is terrified of injections.

When the doctor asked her to pull up her sleeve up she looked up at her and asked sheepishly “Is this going to hurt, miss”? Irritated the doctor replied “Of course not Charlotte. You will just feel like, well a little prick that’s all”.

As the syringe hovered above her arm her eyes opened wide with nervous anticipation. As the injection was being administered she bent over and closed her eyes in pretend pain. I thought she is a better actress than her mother.

“There, there, Charlotte it was not all that bad, was it?” said the nurse as she dabbed a piece of cotton wool on the puncture and topped it off with a circle of plaster.

The nurse called out “Rebecca, Phaedra!”

Leaving the infirmary the girls discussed and compared the severity of their wounds and the size of the bits of cotton wool and plaster stuck on said wounds that helped stem the bloodletting.

Denham Hall was an imposing college. I heard Tamsin tell Nathan in the folk club it was a ‘Posh School’. I suspect it was the exorbitant cost of the college fees that helped keep the student numbers in check, particularly the boarders who numbered about 40, but the bed numbers could be increased to 50 with a few extra girls being accommodated with an extra bed or so in each dorm. Nevertheless 50 would have been the limit.

Having college boarders was much like having two schools in one thus separate catering facilities for the boarders had to be considered. They had their own separate dining area within an area of the main dining hall. Non-boarders brought their own lunches. All meals were provided for the boarders.

This afternoon a photographer was to take the annual photo of all the college students which included all the teachers. A separate photo was also to be taken of the boarders so all students were warned the previous day to be in uniform for the photo.

Although the total numbers of students at Denham Hall were not large, organizing the girls for the school photo was much like a shepherd using his dogs to shepherd his sheep, but the dogs here were the teachers and the photographer the shepherd. The photographer wanted smaller girls sitting in the front and taller girls standing on benches at the back.

Now before I continue let me explain about this ‘bad blood’, that Phaedra described existed between Tamsin and Miss Pringle. I personally think it was just bad behavior on Tamsin’s part that sparked this ‘bad blood’ that I refer to and a photo opportunity like this was a too important event to go to waste on Tamsin’s part. I have to believe it was the very same ‘bad blood’ that existed between Tamsin and Miss Frenzi.

Tamsin had discovered that the photographer was going to do a ten second time exposure so she decided to blacken out her top front teeth with duct tape, place herself on one side of the group and then quickly run around the back and reappear with a smile and blackened out teeth to reappear a second time in the photo, hoping no-one would notice but it would impress her friends.

The photographer had one of those very large cameras which required a cloth to be put over his head and the camera to take the sun off the viewfinder. He called out “Right Girls…. SMILE” and ducked down under the cloth covering. Tamsin smiled, counted five and ran around the back of the group to the opposite side. I don’t know how she got away with it but she did…………or so I thought.

It was not until a week or so later Miss Pringle, the assistant headmistress, pulled Tamsin out in front of the students at the morning assembly and showed her the offending photograph with her appearing twice in the photo on each side of the students with her front teeth apparently missing.

She really tore a strip off Tamsin chiding “Miss Lacey, you might think this is amusing but I don’t. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior”.

Anyways I thought it was rather an odd comment for Miss Pringle to make as she has been tolerating ‘this kind of behavior’ since Tamsin’s arrival at college.

She hung her head low in pretend shame, that’s Tamsin not Miss Pringle. Tamsin is terrible. I was about to make mention of actresses again but I thought ‘what’s the point’, so I won’t bother.

Miss Pringle continued “It is all time and money Miss Lacey. Now we will have to get the photographer back and reassemble the whole school”.

Miss Pringle, to her credit, realized she was treading a fine line between the severities of the reprimand of the daughter of one of the more affluent benefactors of the college and/or having to break the news to the headmistress, Miss Sefton, that the parents of this said daughter would not be tending any more cheques.

Even Tamsin has her limits and did not push her luck by requesting a copy of the offending photograph to show all her friends. It goes without saying, no doubt Mr and Mrs Lacey will be receiving a letter from the college in due course, possibly even a surcharge added to Tamsin’s fees to cover the cost involved in the reshoot. Not that it will make the slightest bit of difference. I sometimes think Tamsin has a suicide wish.

Well, that was most of Friday taken care of.

This weekend I will not be going home to Inveraray Castle. Mother had rung to say the castle manageress lady is organizing a Scottish dancing group from Inveraray village to perform for a large group of Asian tourists the following day. Another nagging and continuing worry for the castle manageress lady is the castle’s tuck shop is still running understaffed.

As we passed Mr Crisis, the science teacher, in the corridor Tamsin inquired of him if he had received any news from Epsilon Boötis …….. But that’s another story.