Yet Another Cycling Forum

Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 10:13:03 am

Title: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 10:13:03 am
Treacle pudding is something entirely different (and eaten on different occasions)! Although it is a bit skool dinnerz.

No idea what they serve these days, you'll need to enlighten me, but treacle pudding was the best. A big pile of thickly ooglish gloop, the sort of sugary, starchy blanket that many a schoolchild of my era spent the afternoon slumbering under. Wake up, Smith! He's in a treacle coma, miss.

Manchester tart was the most disappointing, basically a cheap jammy dodger derivative decorated with a dandruff of coconut. We all used to be terrified of custard skin. Dinner ladies (fearsome) used to enjoy draping it over your dessert like they'd peeled off the face of the last child to displease them.

Spam fritters, awesome. You'd stick your fork in and a little geyser of molten oil would spurt out. Anything in bright nuclear orange* breadcrumbs was essentially good. Anything else, to be avoided. All meals were basically something in breadcrumbs, fried, and served with chips or lumpy martian mash. They made you have a spoonful of peas in an effort to appease the minimal nutrition standards of the time. I never saw a salad until I went to university. I probably tried to microwave it. Boiled potatoes were avoided as they were too easy to weaponize.

Then there was the ceremony of the sittings. You didn't want to be first in the sitting (dry mash and custard skin) but you didn't want to be last (floor scrapings). Second sitting was horrid, the hunger would gnaw at you started to pray to St Bob to send Live Aid. As one of the two kids in my class to get free school meals (top set, mega-swot), we both had to do the walk of shame in Monday morning registration to collect our tickets from the form teacher, making sure no one forgot we were the poor kids. They could have just sewed something onto our blazers, I suppose.

*any 80s childhood was basically too orangey for crows.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 08 January, 2020, 10:18:13 am
Treacle pudding is something entirely different (and eaten on different occasions)! Although it is a bit skool dinnerz.

No idea what they serve these days, you'll need to enlighten me,
Someone else will need to enlighten me first, Cudzo Jnr rejected them at least four years ago. He prefers to eat nothing at school nowadays and this seems to be the general preference among his friends. But I'll ask him later.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 10:38:42 am
There were two options at my school (the local comp) – school dinner or packed lunch. As only infinitely shunnable special needs weirdoes brought their own food, the bushes outside the school gate tended to feature a variety of steadily maturing sandwiches. There was a brief spell when the regime foolhardily decided to let us off the property at lunchtime. Very brief as we recreated the Viking era. Cue hoards of schoolkid beserkers high on chocolate cake and Woolies pick n mix looting every newsagent they could find. We were soon back to being confined to camp (now with extra razor wire).
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 08 January, 2020, 11:11:53 am
Time moves on. They don't even let kids into shops after school now:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/takeaway-owner-calls-police-cotham-3593489

This made national news too...
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: tatanab on 08 January, 2020, 11:47:13 am
Mid-late 1960s grammar school.  School dinners were filling and nutritious.  Perhaps once every 6 months chips would be served, but never anything like a spam fritter.  The kind dinner ladies would find you something else if you flat refused the meat on offer; in my case liver --- yuk!  I don't recall salad items on the set menu, but that was it - a set menu.

Free meals were taken by about 20% of my top level class.  I had free meals for several years.  I was also the dinner monitor so collected the dinner money and knew who had free meals.  There was no social stigma at all, and some of the recipients sold their meal tickets onwards. 

Freedom to roam - only sixth formers were allowed off the premises at lunch time.  Days before sixth formers went to a separate school.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 12:23:17 pm
Time moves on. They don't even let kids into shops after school now:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/takeaway-owner-calls-police-cotham-3593489

This made national news too...

Blimey, they still have pro-active teachers (that would seem newsworthy). I thought we'd killed them off. Our local school's teachers hide until the kids have dispersed before emerging and scrambling into their cars.

We had alternatives on the school dinner menu. Chips or mash. We didn't really have vegetarians back then, but I assume that if you were ahead of the curve, you got only got chips and mash and probably a double helping of peas. I'm not sure how they handle modern-day food finickitism. I think they might once have tried chicken kiev, the unanticipated exoticism of which turned us into a sitting of vampires. The garlic!

I'm from the era of Thatcher, so social stigma of free school dinners was guaranteed. Actually, it was probably more a fact that we were in the top set (of 9) which was primarily reserved for the sons and daughters of the school governors. In the lower sets, I expect the walk of shame was less shameful and took a lot more time.

I'd like to say I enjoyed my school years, but as a short bookish nerdler with glasses, a boz-eye and a speech impediment, it was precisely as much fun as you'd expect. I did like the spam fritters though.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Kim on 08 January, 2020, 12:38:47 pm
Time moves on. They don't even let kids into shops after school now:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/takeaway-owner-calls-police-cotham-3593489

This made national news too...

Blimey, they still have pro-active teachers (that would seem newsworthy). I thought we'd killed them off. Our local school's teachers hide until the kids have dispersed before emerging and scrambling into their cars.

I expect the teachers in question are either  a) authoritarian types with a bee in their bonnet about crowd control / road safety / healthy eating / uniform / etc.  who delight in the opportunity for some petty rule-enforcement  or  b) long-suffering underlings of the above who aren't getting paid.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 01:27:49 pm
We used to be supervised by teachers at home time (in the mornings we were too sleepy to cause much mayhem). It was no bad thing, the sudden emergence of several hundred children (we had a staggered release system across two sites) had the potential, on any given day, to be apocalyptic.

I thought that was normal, though I've (honestly, officer) not paid much attention to schools in recent years, though it doesn't seem the case with the local school. But the headteacher is a halfwit, so who knows.

I suspect that story contains a fair degree of BS, but I'm the sort of fascist who'd happily see it made a lot harder to sell junk food to kids.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Kim on 08 January, 2020, 01:37:16 pm
Our school went for the retrospective approach:  Occasionally mugshots[1] would be shown to shop owners / coach drivers / long-suffering station staff / little old ladies / etc. in order to identify the perpetrators ("Yeah, it was some year 10ish boys in $school's uniform with gay quiffs[2], acne, Big White Trainers™ and Head™ bags"), and half the school would be rounded up after assembly and issued a nonspecific bollocking.  Much less effort for all involved.

But the general unspoken agreement was that public mayhem would be kept to a minimum, and nobody would get too upset about the consumption of junk food, rolling-up of skirts or wearing of contraband footwear.


[1] The real reason for school photos.
[2] As were briefly fashionable in mainstream culture in the mid 90s.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Jaded on 08 January, 2020, 01:56:37 pm
"Lamb a la grand-mère" - Mutton, arranged as brown shoelaces lined up in fascia layers. Only ever seen anything like it in the Anatomy Room.

"Liver" - this was grey and very crumbly.

Caterpillars - yes, my mate found one in something green. He was forced to eat it.

ian had an aversion to custard skin. Our skin was on chocolate sauce. Could have been put on top of a 4 year old tin of brown emulsion and no decorator would have noticed the difference.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 08 January, 2020, 01:58:51 pm
That report, despite being lokal nooz, is pretty accurate. The school head is the authoritarian A type Kim identifies. Some time in the 2018-19 academic year, the school instituted a rule forbidding kids going into those shops, which are a few hundred metres from the school. This was due to junk food concerns coupled with the normal petty theft (or pathetic attempts at). The shops themselves have had "no more than 2 school children at a time" notices since forever, not that they're enforced. From autumn term 2019, the school put staff on the crossing and outside those shops. Kids stopped going to the shops (which include a Chinese takeaway, Chilli Bellies), traders lost a lot of revenue and asked the school to let the kids back in. School refused. When the school stationed staff in hi-viz outside the door of one shop, preventing even adults entering it, the shopkeeper called the police, who moved the staff on. The owner of Chilli Bellies has threatened to sue the school for loss of income, which I believe he estimated at £30 a day, though I don't know if he's carried that out.

Edit: Most of the problem is lack of communication, as it so often is. The school didn't talk to or even tell the shopkeepers about their scheme, just stationed the "bouncers" there.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Mr Larrington on 08 January, 2020, 02:36:58 pm
Fridays, natch, were reserved for the piece of cod which passeth all understanding.  Some kind of backdoor Popery, if you ask me.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 08 January, 2020, 02:44:34 pm
The serving-women would try to deal your lunch onto one half of the plate and the one at the end would always dollop the mashed spud on your thumb.

The Vice Principal used to prowl between the tables in his gown like a disappointed vulture, enjoining us to eat everything on our plates. Another cubic inch of potato is not going to kill you, boy!

When the food was too revolting you would call for a squash, inviting some voracious bugger with the appetite of a Labrador to flatten your lunch under his empty plate in the hope that it wouldn't be noticed in the pile during table-clearing.

OTOH the bangers were always bloody good and the steamed pud was wondrous.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 03:06:09 pm
We always had fish (was always rumoured to be fresh from the canal) on Fridays. Had I not exempted myself from RE, I'd have been wise to this popish plot.

I'm sure I've mentioned that time I was hospitalized by pilchards.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 08 January, 2020, 04:58:59 pm
Fridays, natch, were reserved for the piece of cod which passeth all understanding.  Some kind of backdoor Popery, if you ask me.

Even the Jewish primary school I attended served fish on Fridays!!! ???

Surrogate/proxy Popery...
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: FifeingEejit on 08 January, 2020, 05:28:09 pm
Fridays, natch, were reserved for the piece of cod which passeth all understanding.  Some kind of backdoor Popery, if you ask me.

Even the Jewish primary school I attended served fish on Fridays!!! ???

Surrogate/proxy Popery...

Well it's that classic weegie question "Are you a proddy athiest* or a caflik ain?"
:hand:

* Any non-Western Christian religious position can be placed here.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 08 January, 2020, 08:33:21 pm
I thought that was an Irish question...

[My late grate mentor Revd (later Rabbi) Moshe Baddiel (from Cork) always retold this...]

Moshe might have been David's uncle; they were certainly related.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: perpetual dan on 08 January, 2020, 08:55:29 pm
There was a brief spell when the regime foolhardily decided to let us off the property at lunchtime.

Ours did that in the 6th form.
I once had a block of marzipan. Mostly though it was chips with cheese and beans from the place by the station.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 08 January, 2020, 09:02:16 pm
In sixth-form we went to the pub at lunch, as was proper. The Old Wine Vaults, which was neither especially old, didn't serve much wine, and had no vaults, but did have a lenient policy on underage drinking.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 08 January, 2020, 09:02:18 pm
I don't think we left school grounds at lunchtime until the 6th form.

Sometimes those who could drive chauffeured us to The Battle Axes, where we indulged in underage drinking, whilst watching the hairy planes at Elstree Aerodrome.

Life were tough in them days...
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 08 January, 2020, 09:26:00 pm
I didn't like the fact there was only water on offer and the sausages were grey and came in a long string.
And I missed my mum. So I started going home for lunch instead.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Feanor on 08 January, 2020, 09:32:27 pm
In sixth-form we went to the pub at lunch, as was proper. The Old Wine Vaults, which was neither especially old, didn't serve much wine, and had no vaults, but did have a lenient policy on underage drinking.

Ah, yes.

There was a pub down the road from the school which had a similarly lenient policy.
And of a lunch time or free period, there might also be some of the teachers there.
Oddly enough, we never seemed to see each other.

On one occasion, our senior year group returned to the 'common room', just off the library, somewhat the worse for wear.
The librarian sent for the head, who duly appeared and came into the common room.
We all held our breath and sat staring studiously at our books, but the place must have smelt like a brewery.
He peered around and noticing that the entire sixth year seemed to be implicated, decided there was nothing to be done here and turned on his heels and retreated, as we all exhaled furiously.


Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 08 January, 2020, 09:47:18 pm
I see ian's post was two seconds before mine...
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: barakta on 08 January, 2020, 10:32:23 pm
Infant school involved traipsing to the juniors for school dinners so I don't think I did it much - couldn't carry a tray and they didn't like making an effort for baby cripples who they felt should be in special schools damnit

I had periods of school dinnering at juniors, I quite liked most of the food which was prepared on-site. They didn't feed us nasty shit like liver, but I can't remember what else they served except very thin sliced cabbage which I did like. There were usually a range of choices you could have and if you were lucky you might get 2nd desert. Some were OK, but some were sticky and too hard and risked breaking your teeth.

Secondary dinners was variable but more like a canteen where you picked and chose your food. It wasn't especially terrible although the pizza had a weird sweet tasting base which was quite nice in a strange kind of way.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 08 January, 2020, 11:54:02 pm
I had school dinners only around a third of my 13 years of schooling. Having strictly Orthodox Jewish parents meant little was Kosher enough. I think I went home for lunch at infant school and had packed lunch for the first few years at Junior School, after which we moved to London and went to a Jewish Primary for four terms.
At the Junior High, we were bussed to a local synagogue for Kosher dinners.
At the Senior High, Mum expected me to make my own sandwiches, which I seldom did, buying some supplies en route or going without, diving to the sweet shop on the homeward journey.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 09 January, 2020, 08:51:19 am
At juniors (of primary) we went to the local rugby club. I think there just wasn't anywhere on site for us to eat. It was a minute or two walk and no, we weren't served by burly rugby players, we had proper skool dinner ladies in white coats (or once white) serving us slop from big aluminium trays shipped in from somewhere.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 09 January, 2020, 09:25:43 am
Picking and choosing food. We got A/B, mash/chips and dessert/no dessert. There may have been experiments in pasta, but like the great chicken kiev debacle, rarely repeated. The East Midlands in the mid-80s wasn't quite ready for pasta and pizza. Or herbs and spices. And being whiter than whiter, there was none of that kosher or halal nonsense. Is this pie halal, miss? No, it's meat. Best not to ask what kind of meat, DNA profiling wasn't yet readily available, and even now, it's rarely made available to dinner ladies (I suppose it's all outsourced catering companies, or Pizza Hut or Ginsters, and fearsome, meaty armed dinner ladies are a quaint symptom of the past).

As a junior, I used to go home for lunch (to my grandparents) but that was mostly to watch Pipkins.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: MikeFromLFE on 09 January, 2020, 10:55:15 am
My abiding memory is the blackboard describing the delights on offer. Of course it was at boy height. If you were towards the end of the session you never really knew what you were getting (and couldn't tell from what it looked or tasted like) Dicks & Bastard anyone?
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: rafletcher on 09 January, 2020, 12:27:30 pm
Thankfully I have few memories of school dinners.  There are some though; lumpy mashed potato, sago and tapioca desserts, usually with a lurid red "jam" as an addition. Baked beans - the one thing I never ate, to the point (in primary school) of being the only one left sitting up when everyone else had their head on their arms "resting" at the end of lunch. OTOH the "meat" pies - large tray bakes with a chewy shortcrust on top - were pretty tasty.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 09 January, 2020, 12:54:53 pm
We, of course, had Irish stew. We also had curry, which was Irish stew with curry-powder and raisins.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 09 January, 2020, 01:18:53 pm
I don't think we ever had anything as exciting as even the vaguest facsimile of curry. It's possible lasagne existed. There was a stuff-in-a-tray continuum spanning the pie spectrum (meat with pastry crust on top, potato on top, more potato on top, cheese on top). One scoop, pray for actual filling rather than topping in its own incontinent puddle of lukewarm gravy.

To continue the orange theme, there were lots of potato croquettes. A good day featured potato waffles and baked beans and sausage (in the singular, it was a brave pupil who asked for two, a possible skinning offence).
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 09 January, 2020, 02:25:30 pm
The only orange things we ever saw were carrots. On a bad day you could see them twice.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 09 January, 2020, 03:45:00 pm
Weren't you served LURID 'syrup' with your puddings?
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 09 January, 2020, 03:55:09 pm
Custard, custard über alles including your hand.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 09 January, 2020, 04:22:17 pm
Wow, so many posts on school dinners and no-one has mentioned the delights of chocolate toothpaste.


When we left school, our dinner ladies even gave their seekrit recipe for it to us... haven't actually ever made it naturally, despite a deep desire for it still abides within me.  The stuff was awesome.  Basically a sweet chocolate goo inside a pastry casing.  Mmmm.  :thumbsup:


And no-one has mentioned murdered cabbage either.  I had to find out as a fairly senior adult that cabbage could be nice in fact.


One little amusing memory I have was that I don't like (think REALLY don't like) that 'tongoo' stuff....  I was six, I had yet to parse that what you spoke with equated to 'tongue' and that's how you pronounced it.  :sick:


I also recall that when Thatcher got into power and free school milk was once again off the menu - that I was thoroughly delighted with this.   Now I understand that it contains lots of calcium, is good for a growing child and that there were many people that it made a big difference too back in the day.....  but ...... really - room temperature milk of iffy quality is what the reality was.  My memory of free school milk was that it was a form of torture inflicted on us to be force-fed it - and it was force fed.  They would stand over you and make sure you drank it all.  Pretty sure I was sick on more than once occasion as a result.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 09 January, 2020, 04:40:37 pm
I think we've covered free milk before, but if there's a subject that requires a revisit, it's such a source of trauma. That's ultimately why so many of my generation voted for her, not the dread suck of the 70s on the country's soul or the Up The Argies bongoism.

An entire cohort of children who regarded her as the one who freed them from the afternoon terror of sucking congealed lukewarm milk through a straw.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 09 January, 2020, 04:47:00 pm
I nearly put in that perhaps 'chocolate toothpaste' was a regional thing.  But looking at google, it was very specifically a Bedfordshire thing.


http://www.friendsofbedfordshire.org.uk/chocolate-toothpaste-tart/


Aww, the rest of you sooo, missed out.


You can rest easy that you were most likely much further away from Milton Keynes and Luton in your childhood than I.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 09 January, 2020, 05:07:24 pm
I LOVED my school milk. We had ours just before the mid-morning break in each of the four primary schools I attended. It was never expected to last till the afternoon.

My sister HATED her milk. Same parents, same schools, just different individuals.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 09 January, 2020, 05:16:31 pm
We had milk morning and afternoon, in those ⅓ pint bottles with a foil cap.  This was back before anyone had invented a reliable method of getting the tops off, so every day there was at least one geyser & mop incident.  I used to use my teeth.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 09 January, 2020, 05:20:07 pm
School milk came in two forms: rancid and frozen.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 09 January, 2020, 05:34:41 pm
It was the afternoon milk, it would sit there in the corner of the classroom. Patiently waiting. Getting claggier and claggier until it was less a case of drinking it, more like fracking cheese. Morning milk was indeed typically frigid to account for the day sans refrigeration and each sip would painfully thrust an ice cube into your sinuses.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Jaded on 09 January, 2020, 06:17:37 pm
We'd keep back bottles and put them in a safe place to see see how high the tumescent growth would go.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: SteveC on 09 January, 2020, 06:27:08 pm
I hated school milk. When it was generally stopped, when I was about 10, you could go to the kitchen and be given a drink of milk, at morning playtime. My mother said we were to go, I think I went once. I didn't drink milk again until my first year at university and it was very rare even then. I like milk now, but it does have to be cold.

As for school dinners, I loved them. There was a period in the late '60s when merely having enough children in the family entitled you to free school meals (so at a Catholic school there was no stigma attached to that!) and I went for a couple of years.
At secondary school I thought they were pretty good (did include spam fritters which were, as Ian says, wonderful). My brother, who was in the first year when I was in the upper sixth, tried them for his first half term (the minimum allowed), hated them, and took sandwiches for the remainder of his time there.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 09 January, 2020, 10:55:32 pm
I have described the post-Thatcher snatch (go on, think it, you can't unthink it) situation where the school stumbled on the wheeze of extorting cash out of parents for orange (see, it's that colour again) sugar water in tetrahedroid cartons that not only squirted enthusiastically as you tried to insert your straw (preparation for adulthood, boys, don't worry she'll understand, though the Thatcher thing maybe not) indelibly staining many a school uniform, but contained vast, vast quantities of the orange food colouring later found to send children wild (previously used to defoliate entire countries). We'd shoot down the corridor like a pin-ball and the bounce through all the classrooms racking up ever higher scores. Sometimes you popped out of the window, like the time Darren W did when he demonstrated his breakdancing skillz.

I figure all my schools were all part of some MK-Ultra offshoot.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: hellymedic on 09 January, 2020, 11:53:49 pm
I remember reading of 'yellow peril' tartrazine in 'Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin' as a PSO...
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 10 January, 2020, 11:22:14 am
Ah yes, the orange squash that was a genius of a drink.  It's the only drink I've ever encountered that could physically make you thirstier than before you drank it  :-D
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 10 January, 2020, 01:00:33 pm
Beer always did that to me. Didn't stop me drinking it, though.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 10 January, 2020, 01:20:04 pm
Ah yes, the orange squash that was a genius of a drink.  It's the only drink I've ever encountered that could physically make you thirstier than before you drank it  :-D

It was weird stuff certainly, more so in the fact that it didn't taste of orange and was in the weirdly shaped carton (still in use I see, but for frozen 'drinks') that made it difficult to hold and insert the straw without inspiring sartorial calamity. I'm unclear the decision chain that led to someone thinking it was necessary for the entire school to be fed large quantities of synthetic food colouring other than it being some sort of drug testing. Well, Professor Collins, I'll say it really does cause some kind of hyperactivity disorder, look – that one went straight through the window!

To clarify, this was junior school, the Darren W's incident was at comprehensive so we can't blame orange. For reasons, he decided he was a breakdancer, the East Midlands being a crucible of black culture akin to the Bronx of course, and to demonstrate his newly minted skillz he was going to spin on his head on a classroom desk while we assembled to watch the show. A desk by the window. A single-glazed window. On the first floor.  He only broke the one leg. The rest of us were unfairly banished to the corridor for the rest of the term. Again. The first time was when Mad Bill decided to charge the wall with his head (he wasn't the sort of child to need a reason). His cranium managed to burst through the plasterboard but was less successful with the underlying breezeblock. He was rejected from the army for being too mental but then he probably signed his application form with 'Mad Bill.' He's also managed to shoot himself twice with his own crossbow. Yes, he used to wander around with a crossbow.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 10 January, 2020, 04:43:16 pm
Beer always did that to me. Didn't stop me drinking it, though.


Well yes, but I was talking of a more immediate effect than the next morning ;)
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 10 January, 2020, 04:45:45 pm
Ah yes, the orange squash that was a genius of a drink.  It's the only drink I've ever encountered that could physically make you thirstier than before you drank it  :-D

It was weird stuff certainly, more so in the fact that it didn't taste of orange and was in the weirdly shaped carton (still in use I see, but for frozen 'drinks') that made it difficult to hold and insert the straw without inspiring sartorial calamity. I'm unclear the decision chain that led to someone thinking it was necessary for the entire school to be fed large quantities of synthetic food colouring other than it being some sort of drug testing. Well, Professor Collins, I'll say it really does cause some kind of hyperactivity disorder, look – that one went straight through the window!

To clarify, this was junior school, the Darren W's incident was at comprehensive so we can't blame orange. For reasons, he decided he was a breakdancer, the East Midlands being a crucible of black culture akin to the Bronx of course, and to demonstrate his newly minted skillz he was going to spin on his head on a classroom desk while we assembled to watch the show. A desk by the window. A single-glazed window. On the first floor.  He only broke the one leg. The rest of us were unfairly banished to the corridor for the rest of the term. Again. The first time was when Mad Bill decided to charge the wall with his head (he wasn't the sort of child to need a reason). His cranium managed to burst through the plasterboard but was less successful with the underlying breezeblock. He was rejected from the army for being too mental but then he probably signed his application form with 'Mad Bill.' He's also managed to shoot himself twice with his own crossbow. Yes, he used to wander around with a crossbow.


You weren't a my school were you?  This all sounds remarkably familiar  :-D

Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 10 January, 2020, 04:56:48 pm
There was something deeply hilarious, I'm sure, about a class of 80s East Midlands white boys who thought they could breakdance and body-pop, having learned it all from a segment on John Craven's Newsround. We were in the da Bronx. Well, Coro Park anyway.

The school had to hush up the Darren W. incident on the grounds the window didn't actually break, the glass pane fell out whole.

Mad Bill's actual name was Michael. No idea. I'd like to say he was dangerous, but it was mostly to himself. He once fired a catapult directly into his own face.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Efrogwr on 10 January, 2020, 07:12:59 pm


Mad Bill's actual name was Michael. No idea. I'd like to say he was dangerous, but it was mostly to himself. He once fired a catapult directly into his own face.

How? Did he draw it back to front, or did he let go of the wrong end?
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 10 January, 2020, 07:44:28 pm
He basically put a large ball bearing in it, held it in front of his face and stretched the elastic back and fired it at point-blank range into that face. Earned himself two black eyes and a golf ball-sized lump on his forehead.

Don't ask me why, he was called Mad Bill for a reason. This was a kid who shot himself twice with his own crossbow and not accidentally. He took self-harm to a whole new level. No one argued, it was better he was harming himself than us.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Efrogwr on 11 January, 2020, 04:39:21 pm
He basically put a large ball bearing in it, held it in front of his face and stretched the elastic back and fired it at point-blank range into that face. Earned himself two black eyes and a golf ball-sized lump on his forehead.

Don't ask me why, he was called Mad Bill for a reason. This was a kid who shot himself twice with his own crossbow and not accidentally. He took self-harm to a whole new level. No one argued, it was better he was harming himself than us.


That's worse than I guessed. I assumed carelessness or clumsyness.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 14 January, 2020, 04:46:35 pm
There was something deeply hilarious, I'm sure, about a class of 80s East Midlands white boys who thought they could breakdance and body-pop, having learned it all from a segment on John Craven's Newsround. We were in the da Bronx. Well, Coro Park anyway.



Well in my School's case we had a community of far more genuine contenders for the street-dance  leading the way.  Though some of us honkies got dragged into the slipstream also  :-[   I do recall that my older brother and his mates used to laugh at us 'break dancing 3rd years'  :-D   Seems it was narrowly focussed on just a couple of years of school kids back in 1984ish.

Now if you think you were not quite street enough - I was astonished to find out a few years back that we had a PhD student in our research group who was leading a 'dance class' of mostly female students in break-dance at lunchtimes.  I wonder if the street-gangs of New-York at the time who pioneered this stuff ever thought that this craze could end up with middle-class ladies at university doing it as a dance class during playtime :-)
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 14 January, 2020, 05:01:02 pm
I'm sure that there was a moral panic at the time that it would destroy your joints or somesuch and all your limbs would fall off. Don't do it Kevin, your arms, YOUR ARMS!

I think we all thought we had a few good moves. Seeing the actual thing in Corona Park one summer a decade removed, we really, really, really didn't have any moves. Maybe 'white people can't dance' is a mere racist stereotype, but in my experience, they can't and should only attempt to do so under controlled conditions and preferably somewhere dark and secluded.

And to be honest, basing our entire knowledge of US black street culture on John Craven's Newsround was possibly not the best plan. But given it was the East Midlands in the 1980s, we'd only ever seen black people on TV. They had them down Nottingham, of course. They had all sorts down Nottingham, they did.

My grandad once helpfully advised for no reason at all that if I wanted a 'proper fight' I should get myself on a bus down Nottingham. I was thirteen, speccy, and not at all in need of any kind of fight. But thanks, granddad. He also advised me on the eve of my departure to university to 'watch out for Arabs.' I was going to Liverpool not Damascus.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 15 January, 2020, 07:53:05 am
I'm sure that there was a moral panic at the time that it would destroy your joints or somesuch and all your limbs would fall off. Don't do it Kevin, your arms, YOUR ARMS!



As I recall there was vocal concern over twisted testicles from the 'windmill move' and the neck from attempted headspins.  :-)


Maybe the former thing is why it's now apparently more popular amongst ladies.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 15 January, 2020, 09:50:50 am
It was banned at my school, understandably after the Darren W incident (though banning Darren would have been a better long term plan, he was part boy, part monkey, and the latter was the far bigger part).

That said, keeping track of whatever the school might be banned because it had been in the news at any given point in time was a considerable demand on our young minds.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 15 January, 2020, 10:16:10 am
I remember they banned screwdrivers in pockets at my school along with shoes with VW and Mercedes badges tied into the shoelaces.  That was hip-hop thing too.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Jaded on 15 January, 2020, 10:35:00 am
They banned running on the gravel at my school.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 15 January, 2020, 10:37:00 am
Crikey, you lot lived in a police state.  I wore a sheath-knife to school for a couple of years and nobody batted an eyelid.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 15 January, 2020, 11:02:46 am
They banned the entire activity of running at my junior school. It was the only time I got the cane, for the crime of running.

A grave injustice too, I wasn't running, I was just standing there when some other kids ran past but I was collected up in the sweep and summarily punished. There was no court of appeal.

After that headmaster retired, we got the Jesus one. I think they'd banned caning at the point, but he was a firm believer in something infinitely worse and involved an acoustic guitar. Just hit me, sir.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Hot Flatus on 15 January, 2020, 11:22:16 am
They banned running on the gravel at my school.

They wanted you unblemished.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Redlight on 15 January, 2020, 11:48:55 am
At my school, the girls were banned from wearing shiny leather shoes for fear that the reflections would excite the boys  ::-)
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 15 January, 2020, 11:59:50 am
Presumably, the danger was seeing up their skirts. That would require very shiny shoes and some stationary persistence.

Probably easier to borrow a copy of Knave, the classiest of the playground-traded gentlemen's magazines.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Pingu on 15 January, 2020, 12:42:45 pm
Snowballing was banned at my school. It was pronounced something like 'snibbling' over the tannoy by the rector. Yes, we had a rector not a headmaster.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Kim on 15 January, 2020, 12:44:14 pm
I remember they banned screwdrivers in pockets at my school

I sustained a nasty injury from a screwdriver in a pocket once.  Could have been a lot nastier.


My primary school famously banned footballs.  The boys immediately invented the sport of foot-netball.  The rule quietly evaporated soon after.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 15 January, 2020, 02:12:12 pm
Yeah they banned bulldog in mine, so we played a game that involved running across the playground whilst rugby tackling people while the dinner-ladies weren't watching - that was nothing like Bulldog at all, oh no.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Mr Larrington on 15 January, 2020, 02:19:37 pm
at leest  after janry 31rd ,,, well  be aloud too  call it BRITTISH buldog agen,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, BLOODY EU!!!!!2!!eleven! ~ J Random Quitler, yesterday
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: T42 on 15 January, 2020, 02:34:23 pm
Churchy.  Half a doz blokes forming a chain, the one in front bent over and braced against a wall, the others bent over in a line behind him, each braced against the one in front. Then the first bloke on the other team would yell "churchy number one over", take a run-up and leap as far forward  as he could over the line of backs, landing as brutally as possible and staying there.  Thereafter the other team members would follow one by one, assuming the whole shebang didn't collapse half-way, which of course was the aim.

That was banned, of course. Lining the blokes up like that must have reminded the staff a bit too much of church.
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 15 January, 2020, 03:42:49 pm
Breakdancing:
"How was school today?"
"In French I did the exercise Miss set, then the one she set for after that and then the extra one as well. So then I just sat there and played Electric Boogaloo 2 in my head."
"Electric Boogaloo?"
So we've just explored a line leading back from breakdancing through Electric Boogaloo (which I think was a name he just plucked from the air) via Grease back to West Side Story. And if we wanted, we could have traced it back to ballet. But not morris dancing!
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: ian on 15 January, 2020, 04:23:23 pm
We played 'up and down' which went up and down the playground and 'red rover' which went across (allowing for two simultaneous games). Sometimes both would merge, so you had kids playing 'up-and-down' and other kids playing 'red rover' leading to a sort of playground Brownian motion, bloodied children ricocheting everywhere.

I don't recall often playing 'British bulldog' though to be honest in all the games, the rules where essentially mutable and engendered the same sort of demand for band-aids and occasional visits to the school nurse (a firm believer in broken bones being left to straighten themselves out).
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: caerau on 15 January, 2020, 04:39:21 pm
We didn't call it 'British' at our place, it was just bulldog.  Again, this is a very very hazy memory as it's far too long ago - but I seem to recall it being the same thing as red rover...?
Title: Re: skool dinnerz
Post by: nicknack on 15 January, 2020, 05:25:38 pm
Snowballing was banned at my school. It was pronounced something like 'snibbling' over the tannoy by the rector. Yes, we had a rector not a headmaster.
They did that at my junior school too. Throwing a snowball at a tree led to my only caning.