School Food
Food was the most important thing at boarding school because you didn’t get enough of it. Well, you did if you were passionate about stodge. After every measly portion of congealed meat and veg at mealtimes, there would be a dish of stodge to fill you up. ‘Stodge, glorious stodge,’ we used to sing tunelessly when it was dished up time and time again. Today, I would surely gobble up similar deserts that my school dished out on a regular basis, but in those days I didn’t appreciate the relentless steam puddings that the cook made with her own hands. But, at least stodge was edible compared to the tadpole muck which the school habitually dished out after the slimy fish on Fridays, for your sins!
At the start of each term, Mum used to lovingly pack my trunk with loads of sweets, commonly known as ‘tuck’. But, as soon as I arrived at school, my housemistress would confiscate my goodies, dishing out my sticky sweets to me once a week, usually on Sundays. There wasn’t any opportunity to munch in-between meals.
I used to beg Mum to make me a gooey cake on my birthdays. In those days there was a scrumptious “Fuller’s” walnut cake, which had a thick layer of ski slope white icing. Mum was a very good cake maker when she wasn’t experimenting with her Cordon Bleu yuck, and at my request, always tried to recreate this famous cake for me. It was yummy, but it was not quite as perfect as the real thing. However, when Mum posted me my birthday cake, which usually arrived in crumbs, my friends and I were allowed to devour it on the spot. If there was some of it left over, we used to have a midnight feast in my dormitory and if one of us had managed to steal some cold sausages from the larder, we were laughing.
On rare occasions, we were allowed to go for a supervised walk into town on a Saturday. I used to spend all my rationed pocket money on a slab of Edam cheese and was compelled to devour it before I got back to school, even though my teachers considered it a crime to eat food in the street. It was a shame I was unable to resist guzzling my newly bought cheese on the spot. It would have jazzed up the stale, sliced white bread which was dished up for tea every day. In winter, we played games straight after lunch, and in summer, we played games after tea, but whatever the season, all we could think about was food. But, we all tried to starve ourselves when the fashion suddenly dictated that teenage girls should be ultra thin. Quite a few pupils developed bulimia, especially the stupid girls who would stick their fingers down their throats and vomit up the sticky buns which were doled out at elevenses. One girl, who was so fanatical about not eating anything fattening – she even refused to eat the pastry on her pork pies - lost so much weight, she expired in her sleep. After that, the teachers tried to force-feed us at meal times. At kindergarten, I ingeniously stuffed the detested orange swede up my nostrils in order to avoid eating it, but at boarding school, it was difficult to avoid food at mealtimes. I was permanently starving, but resisted filling up with stodge, as I craved to be skinny. Once, I even threw my bowl of tinned fruit-salad at the girl opposite me, after I discovered the cook had put sugar in it. But, even though I tried to avoid fattening fodder like the plague, I still wasn’t as thin as Twiggy when I left school. That’s probably because I could never resist gobbling up my tuck when it was doled out at weekends.
Copyright: Frances Lynn, 2006
At the start of each term, Mum used to lovingly pack my trunk with loads of sweets, commonly known as ‘tuck’. But, as soon as I arrived at school, my housemistress would confiscate my goodies, dishing out my sticky sweets to me once a week, usually on Sundays. There wasn’t any opportunity to munch in-between meals.
I used to beg Mum to make me a gooey cake on my birthdays. In those days there was a scrumptious “Fuller’s” walnut cake, which had a thick layer of ski slope white icing. Mum was a very good cake maker when she wasn’t experimenting with her Cordon Bleu yuck, and at my request, always tried to recreate this famous cake for me. It was yummy, but it was not quite as perfect as the real thing. However, when Mum posted me my birthday cake, which usually arrived in crumbs, my friends and I were allowed to devour it on the spot. If there was some of it left over, we used to have a midnight feast in my dormitory and if one of us had managed to steal some cold sausages from the larder, we were laughing.
On rare occasions, we were allowed to go for a supervised walk into town on a Saturday. I used to spend all my rationed pocket money on a slab of Edam cheese and was compelled to devour it before I got back to school, even though my teachers considered it a crime to eat food in the street. It was a shame I was unable to resist guzzling my newly bought cheese on the spot. It would have jazzed up the stale, sliced white bread which was dished up for tea every day. In winter, we played games straight after lunch, and in summer, we played games after tea, but whatever the season, all we could think about was food. But, we all tried to starve ourselves when the fashion suddenly dictated that teenage girls should be ultra thin. Quite a few pupils developed bulimia, especially the stupid girls who would stick their fingers down their throats and vomit up the sticky buns which were doled out at elevenses. One girl, who was so fanatical about not eating anything fattening – she even refused to eat the pastry on her pork pies - lost so much weight, she expired in her sleep. After that, the teachers tried to force-feed us at meal times. At kindergarten, I ingeniously stuffed the detested orange swede up my nostrils in order to avoid eating it, but at boarding school, it was difficult to avoid food at mealtimes. I was permanently starving, but resisted filling up with stodge, as I craved to be skinny. Once, I even threw my bowl of tinned fruit-salad at the girl opposite me, after I discovered the cook had put sugar in it. But, even though I tried to avoid fattening fodder like the plague, I still wasn’t as thin as Twiggy when I left school. That’s probably because I could never resist gobbling up my tuck when it was doled out at weekends.
Copyright: Frances Lynn, 2006
posted by Frances Lynn @ 2:51 AM
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