Dance with the Watford Grammar School for Boys
The news buzzing around the college was Phaedra, that’s Phaedra Gascoigne, won a beauty pageant. It was an event staged during the ‘Save the Children’ fundraiser and was squeezed in I think between the Datsun Classic Car Club Concours D’elegance and the Dog Obedience Class at the Rickmansworth Showgrounds.
This type of extra-curricular activity was not actively encouraged by the college but seeing the drive was to raise funds for people ‘less fortunate than we’ it was permitted by Miss Sefton. I knew Tamsin was not going to let this news pass without a catty comment, and I was not about to be disappointed when out of the hearing of Phaedra she reasoned ‘The opposition could not have been all that strong then’.
It was not just a beauty competition but rather a competition for poise, personality and something else, perhaps breeding, although I thought the word I am searching for started with a Pee, can’t think what it was, doesn’t matter. Hang on, no it was personality, poise, and posture.
Anyhow Phaedra won a cup; I thought money would have been much more appreciative. Prize bulls, dogs and racehorses win cups as do racing pigeons.
I think I failed to mention I was made dormitory monitor of Boadicea Dorm after Patience left college.
You see on Parents Day Miss Sefton, the headmistress, told mother in confidence it was a close decision between myself and Phaedra for the position of the monitor in the Boadicea Dorm. I suggested we share the position six months about as it is our last year and a half in school for both of us. That was agreed upon by Miss Sefton. Next month I would have just passed 15 but a little older than Tamsin and I feel positively ancient.
One of the duties of the dorm monitor is making sure all the girls of Boadicea Dorm have returned to college by curfew time. A 15 minute panic time is allowed before ringing Miss Frenzi who then quizzes the girls as to whom she was with when she went missing during the evening. The rule then is the missing person, if not found, would have been late by half an hour and the police would be notified. No Denham Hall girls have been lost yet.
Curfew time is taken very seriously. You can imagine how awful it would be for Miss Sefton to ring a girl’s parents to inform them the college had lost their daughter.
It was Saturday and I was staying at college for the weekend, which was just as well as in the evening the college dance was being held with boys invited from the Watford Grammar School.
Miss Pringle told us dances were for the purpose of improving our social skills, and looking at some of the girls they badly needed it - that is an improvement in their social skills.
You may remember I told you about the disgusting and malicious rumours circulating around the college that we were to be amalgamated with these creatures of the opposing species.
It ranked as vicious and chilling a rumour as turning Denham Hall College into a Comprehensive School, but the news allowing ‘boys’ into Denham Hall was not only ludicrous and tasteless but rumour-mongering of the worst kind.
That revolting, disgusting speculation was quashed quick smart before it took hold by our headmistress Miss Sefton. I have to apologize as originally my suspicions rested on Chloe Higgins of the fourth that triggered this distressing rumour but it wasn’t. It was another troublemaker Madeline Brown; nevertheless I would not have been surprised if it had been Chloe Higgins.
The dance was held in Denham Hall’s huge concert hall. Dances were very popular. As I remember my first approach for a dance was by a Marcus……er somebody or other, who was a bit spotty and I told him I had a festering, weeping open sore on my ankle …….and it was beginning to smell….. and I had trouble dancing …….and I would prefer to sit this one out if he didn’t mind.
Tamsin was corralled by a height-challenged dwarf named ‘chalky’ White; a boy better left alone. She told him her dance card was full up……..like for the whole of the evening. Things were not looking good until a senior boy, Lance I think it was who was free of spots and things, asked me to dance.
Tamsin faired even better, she was asked to dance by Jason…….er thingy. He was wearing an eye patch like a pirate. He looked quite dashing and mysterious. It appears he got into a fistfight in his school’s playground with a Daphne Phillips person ………and apparently lost.
I saw Mr Crisis our science teacher and Miss Pringle the assistant headmistress dancing together which was lovely. Perhaps when he leaves college and returns home he might take her with him to Epsilon Boötis, a planet in the star system of the Southern Constellation of Reticulum - a fact which I assume you all know.
For those of you that might be interested the live band for the evening was the Rickmansworth Swing Band. They usually hosted the ‘Olde Tyme’ dances at the Autumn Leaves Retirement Home ….er for the aged and engagement parties and things in the events room in the Rickmansworth Public Library. As a rule they are usually free for bookings.
It was suggested to the band that they stick to the more traditional English ballroom type dances like waltzes, quicksteps, and foxtrots. Foreign dancing like hip hop or jitterbugging was to be avoided. I guess they did not want the boys or girls trying to spin on their heads and stuff, particularly the girls.
It was Miss Frenzi that said for young ladies it was unbecoming and unladylike.
Oh, and hokey pokies or whatever and chicken dances were also out. All in all, it was a lovely evening. New Facebook friends found, well just the one and new friendships forged.
Denham Hall was an Anglican establishment and on Sundays, Briggs would drive our Anglican girls in the college bus into town to the St Johns Mary’s Church. In the meantime, I suspect Briggs spent the next hour or so in the Dolphin Hostelry.
The other boarders that did not return home for the weekend were required to attend services in the school chapel which meant sometimes there was only a handful of us. Pastor Dickie usually officiated, so to speak. Occasionally there was a small collection for people ‘less fortunate than we’ so small change was always handy.
In the evening mother rang to inquire how the dance went. She also asked if we had met any ‘nice’ boys, whatever that means. She usually asks the questions and answers them as well. I was careful not to commit myself in any way.
I told her I would be returning home to Inveraray Castle with Tamsin the following weekend. Father meanwhile was still in Brazil. Mother also informed me Mrs Dalrymple had booked to do an online hypnotist course.
I was not quite sure how this was going to work. I hoped mother was not going to do this course also. The very thought of both of them hypnotizing each other for practice is fraught with danger with the chance of accidentally putting each other in a hypnotic trance. As it is they have yet to master the knack of summoning the dead or our ‘dear departed’ as they are referred to.
I turned to Tamsin who was standing next to me, shook my head and rolled my eyes.
I must remember to ask mother to get the piano tuned.
