(check here for this pic)

Okay, this was long before the times of 9DR, but... Mark has unearthed a real treasure: the long ago recordings of a few details of Monsieur Père's and Auntie Olive's youth as they were pupils at Southgate county School. There used to be a school Magazine, and this website has copies starting in 1910, and which ran until 1968 (it was then called "Spectrum):

This is an extract, in French and English, of the first issue:

I honestly wonder why they wanted to "mettre les impôts aux chats"...

There were also a section called "Original contributions", and I can't refrain from the pleasure of reprinting this one:

ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS.

We have much pleasure in reprinting from our first issue of the School Magazine of 1910 these two original contributions.[I quote only the first]

TOOTHACHE!

(With apologies to Shakespeare)

To have it out, or not: that is the questions

Whether 'tis nobler in the end to suffer

The shoots and anguish of an aching molar.

Or to take arms against this painful toothache.

And by extraction end it? To pulls to shriek;

No more, and by a pull to say we end

The toothache and the thousand natural shocks

The mouth is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. Or to have gas|

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay there's the rub;

For in that gaseous sleep what dreams may come

When we have shuffled to unconsciousness,

Must make us shudder: there's the respect

That makes calamity of such extraction;

For who would bear the shoots and starts of pain,

This awful agony, the swift swelling face,

When with a powerful wrench and with a pull

That patient man can ease the hideous ache

And with yet one more tug quietus give

For half-a-crown? Who would toothache bear,

To grunt and grumble with a fearful tooth,

But that the dread of suffering at the dentist's,

That grim and awful chamber from whose bourn

No patient whole returns, weakens the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we would not know?

Thus toothache does make cowards of us all;

And thus the nat'ral man of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of fear,

Determination made by valorous men

With this regard their strong wills turn awry

And teeth escape extraction.

(A.F. Sheffield, 6.A.)

Now, if one reads through, one can find allusions to Cecil and Olive:

Any idea what "drill colours" would have been? Mark thinks they were for sports, but I'm not sure.

On Saturday, June 19th, 1915, there was an Athletic Sports day:

And here is part of a list of the winners for the long jump!

I see this victory as a prophecy of Auntie Olive's long jump over the long expanse of the XXth century! In 1917, Olive gets a mention for her garden cultivation:

"All will be well"!! Those who doubt (are there any?) the impact of such programmes on Auntie Olive's formation can have a look at what she liked talking about so much here!

Did Auntie Olive go to Cambridge?? Never heard of that! See below (lifted from the issue of 1920):

Year 1921 has a mention of C. Hughes' success at his BSc Intermediate examination ("presumably this was Queen Mary College, Uni of London", says Mark who is better informed than I am):

In 1926, Cecil Hughes resigned his position (treasurer maybe - suggests Mark) in the Old Boys' club due to other duties, and we have a kind of indirect criticism of his departure in the lines that follow...

There! that's all for now! Interesting isn't it? And if some of you have family or friends who have been at this school, the magazine is a mine of information.