Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

PasturesNew

Years ago my parents had an old fashioned coffee maker, from the 1950s. About 1-2x a year this thing would go on, it was two glass bowls, top one had a glass tube that went into the bottom part (I think) and you lit a wick, powered by paraffin (purple it was) .... and about 1.5 hours later the water from the bottom would go up the tube and mix with the coffee, then come down again and it could be drunk. F***in horrible stuff it was.

Anyway ... my parents moved nearly 20 years ago and it's no longer in the house and neither of them could remember what happened to it. I hate it when things that you remember from your childhood simply disappear and nobody else seems to think it important enough to even really remember it.

PasturesNew

purch wrote: »

Make sure all the bits n bobs are hot.

That tip's on my man pulling sheet

Generali

I use a stove top. It's very excellent, especially if I splash out on decent coffee.

The weather over here is driving me mad. It's going to be cold all week up to Thursday (19C!) and then get really hot and muggy and rain. It's 12C out there right now. Inhuman I call it.

Went out in the kayak on Sunday morning on the harbour. It was beautiful out there at 7am. Hardly any other boats and just the odd fisherman and jogger out.

neverdespairgirl

lostinrates wrote: »

I think sharing is underated. I wouldn't hve thought that as a teen though. In retrospect learning to hare space is a good lifeskill.

I shared a room with Eleanor from when she was about 6 months old (I'm just under 2 years older than her) until I was 13 and she was 11. We then moved into a room which had once been two small rooms, and therefore had 2 doors. We had double-sided bookcases across the divide, but could still chat, because there was a gap at the top.

18 months later, my other sister and brother moved into the above room, and Eleanor and I had our own. Then, when I was nearly 16, we moved house, and all had our own rooms.

In the Kent house, Eleanor, Lily and I all shared a large attic room with bunk beds, whcih was fun, until I was 13 or so. My parents then bought the tiny house next door and knocked them together, and we had our own rooms.

Edited to say - I was at boarding school from 11 to 13, so in term time, shared a much larger dorm with a varying number of other girls, depending on which room it was. It's amazing how much money you pay to attend a boarding school when the accommodation is really very basic indeed. There were no showers, for example. Only baths.

PasturesNew

I don't think I've ever met a person in real life that went to boarding school. Knew a few that went to Borstal, but that's not really the same is it.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't think I've ever met a person in real life that went to boarding school. Knew a few that went to Borstal, but that's not really the same is it.

thankfully hen you leave you can remove the old school tie and no one need ever know.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

thankfully hen you leave you can remove the old school tie and no one need ever know.

Maybe I've just never met (certainly never mixed with) wealthier people than me; our paths have never crossed. It's only this new-fangled Internet thingy that crosses boundaries and enables people to meet on a more equal playing field, to chat about common interests.

While ex boarders are probably in nice places quaffing nice drinks, I'm in the back bar of a boozer nursing a half.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

Maybe I've just never met (certainly never mixed with) wealthier people than me; our paths have never crossed. It's only this new-fangled Internet thingy that crosses boundaries and enables people to meet on a more equal playing field, to chat about common interests.

While ex boarders are probably in nice places quaffing nice drinks, I'm in the back bar of a boozer nursing a half.

you've worked in offices....there is every chance someone you have mixed ith in a similar rle/junior role/boss has been to a boarding school. But, as I say...not marked out so unless you read their personnel files you might never know e.g. a friend of mine for school left at 16 anded up by 21 as a single mum of three in a social housig flat....on paper (and in fact to spend time with) I don't suppose most people would have sussed her as someone ho went to a boarding school.

neverdespairgirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't think I've ever met a person in real life that went to boarding school. Knew a few that went to Borstal, but that's not really the same is it.

I think LIR was a boarder, too?

My bruv went to a boarding school that allowed some day pupils. So it was a longer school day than most, and had school on saturday mornings, as most boarding schools do. He stayed there some nights, too, if he was doing late night things. He went to Westminster.

Similar conditions, I think. Except you get out of Borstal faster, and the conditions are better. Evelyn Waugh said:

Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.

Malcolm.

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't think I've ever met a person in real life that went to boarding school. Knew a few that went to Borstal, but that's not really the same is it.

My friends which went to bording school hated it. I think BS can probably get a bit cliquey, an environment of teenage girls at boarding school gets a little b1tchy at times (boys have disputes too, but there's are usually out in the open and settled).

This may of course be the exception rather than the rule, and is second hand information. I've not been myself; I grew up in one room with two siblings. 'I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth'.