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Dubbin Days

9/4/2014

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Today many sportsmen and women would not have heard of a product called dubbin.  We on the other hand were all too familiar with this waxy substance.  Not to be confused of course with "dobbing in",which was and still is a phrase used to describe telling tales about others (usually to exonerate oneself!).

There is nothing particularly edifying about dubbin and I suspect in our current era of high performance and branded sporting footwear, it is largely unknown.

In the Sixties however we were still wearing solid, leather football boots crafted to withstand the rigours of the rugby game.

So what is dubbin and how and why did we use it?

The stuff has been around since medieval times and the name 'dubbin' is a contraction of the gerund dubbing, describing the action of applying the wax to leather.  It is different of boot and show polish which were used to impart a shine to your sporting footwear.  Our boots at NPBHS were checked to ensure that they were clean and shone before we left the House for a game.

Dubbin's primary purpose in life is to protect the life of leather.  It is composed of tallow (which coming from Waitara with its freezing works at the centre of town was a product I was all too familiar with), oil and natural wax.  The oil used in dubbin was often of the cod-liver variety; the same stuff my English mother used give me on a spoon to ward off winter chills as a child.  It probably explains why the smell of dubbin was not that pleasant and I can still remember its off-putting odour in the Pridham locker room. 

But use it we did regardless of the 'pong', after cleaning and polishing our boots post-match in preparation for the next encounter on the paddock.

Dubbin still has its uses for horse saddles and harness, but thankfully both replacing metal studs and weather-proofing chunky leather rugby boots are not longer part of a schoolboy's weekly drudgery.
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Winter Blues

12/20/2011

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A combination of potatoes and rugby served us well.
In the winter the school uniform changed from the light grey to a thicker dark blue serge.  Not that it made all that much difference as the length of our shorts was exactly the same, whatever the season.

A school scarf was  handy accessory as were the long grey trousers and blazers we wore on Sundays.  All of these items had name tags sewn in and from memory a number.  I seem to recall mine was '294' but this might be a flight of fancy as the memory of such trivial detail dims. 

If you walk downhill from the school Coronation Avenue becomes Elliot Street and eventually intersects with the main 'drag', Devon Street.  A favourite pastime was to frequent the fish and chip shop which used to be situated as one turned left from Elliot into Devon street.  Long before 'wedges' became the fashionable potato norm, these tubers were served just one way - the ubiquitous 'chip'.   

Our shop however also turned out potato fritters which were large roundels of potato, coated in batter and deep fried.  I can feel my arteries hardening at the very thought of them but they were great stomach warmers (they weren't labled 'greasies' for nothing) in the depths of a Taranaki winter.  Not that such visits were sanctioned; come to think of it most of the really pleasurable activities that teenage boys enjoyed, weren't!

The section where this shop once stood now sports another called "Everlasting Monumentalists", a manufacturer of grave stones.  One suspects that given the consumption of fatty foods in the 1960's this newer endeavour is doing a roaring business.

Replete from our ingestion of potatoes and fat we faced the long trudge up hill.  Most of this accumulated stodge was burned off during rugby practice on the racecourse which is opposite the school.  

When there was a good snowfall on Mt Egmont and the wind was whipping in from the South it was truly a numbing ordeal.  No doubt this contributed to my desire to play in the front row and be buried deep in the scrum, or as many rucks as possible, during the course of a game.
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    Roger Smith

    Pridham House Boarder - 1962 to 1966

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