Customs And Incidents
Many things break the monotony of school life. One day, without warning, all the doors into the house were shut and guarded by prefects, and we all had to file into the washrooms to wash our hands. It turned out that there had been some money stolen, and the housemaster had placed in the locker concerned a coin covered with invisible dye which only showed up with water. No-one was found but there have been no more thefts.
One time I was told to see “Al” (our housemaster Mr Wilson) for talking in prep. He kept me in suspense by waiting until the next morning. It didn’t hurt very much but you never know what to expect.
With the Girls’ High School so near (just across the cemetery) it can be expected that boys of my age will be rather ‘girl-minded’. The ‘boss’ has promised more dances but even so a lot of boys only joined the Festival Choir so that they could go over to the GHS for practices. On one occasion we got hold of someone’s very juicy love-letter, did all the necessary forgery, and sent it to a girl-friend of his at the GHS in his name. One day, to his horror, it arrived back addressed to him with about 20 autographs on the back of the girls who had read it. He is now very famous over there! The dances are great fun for everyone and we also have dancing classes at the GHS in the winter term. Many hours during ‘prep’ are spent writing love sonnets or passing love notes in Latin.
Outside activities enjoyed by boarders or as a school or include weekly church services at St Mary’s Church, evening concert or film, outings to the ‘Festival of the Pines’ in the Bowl of Brooklands, and sporting activities.
With Taranaki holding the ‘Ranfurly Shield’ we usually attend the rugby challenge games, along with most of Taranaki. The record crowd one Saturday was 32.000, impressive considering the population of New Plymouth is little more than 25,000. Three of the games were on Wednesdays, and each time the whole school stopped work to watch it. Every game the traffic becomes more of a problem, with long lines of cars heading through New Plymouth.