Termtime Transgressions by Sue Bavey
I grew up in the British city of Lincoln, originally named Lindum Colonia by its Roman founders. From 1981 to 1986, I attended a traditional English secondary school called Lincoln Christ’s Hospital School. Built in 1907, it was an attractive building in the older part of the city, near Lincoln Cathedral, and boasted arched cloisters, narrow hallways and wood panelling in the Assembly Hall. Portraits of past headmasters gazed down at us imposingly as we assembled to sing the school song and hear the week’s news and upcoming events.
Our school uniform consisted of a navy blue skirt, a light blue or white button-down shirt, the school tie and knee-length navy blue socks or nylons with sensible black or brown shoes. We could wear a navy blue blazer with the school emblem on the pocket, or a navy blue cardigan.
Of course, as we became older teenagers, we began to hate this conformity and tried to push the boundaries as much as possible, wanting to express our individuality. Girls began wearing more adult-looking ‘court’ shoes instead of socks and lace-ups, and even stilettoes for some of the braver ones. Some girls tried to wear trousers in the winter, but were quickly brought before the Administration.
The Headmaster, Mr Behenna, was thin and tall of stature, grey-haired with a hooked nose, and he always wore a grey suit. He was never seen smiling, and being summoned to his office could strike the fear of death into you. His voice was often heard ringing through the halls as he shouted at students to obey the one-way systems in the corridors. Luckily, his deputy, a much more approachable Welsh woman named Mrs Smith, was usually called in to deal with uniform transgressions. I discovered this when, at the age of fifteen, I tried to add a little individuality to my school attire.
In the ’80s, collarless shirts were all the rage in England. I had a blue-striped one, which I decided to wear, but of course, this meant no school tie could be properly worn and therefore broke the rules. I persuaded my mother to buy me a grey pleated skirt and a black slit skirt, and started alternating those instead of the boring navy blue regulation skirts. Grey and black seemed interesting colours to wear after three years of navy blue, a colour I find it difficult to wear to this day.
One morning, Mrs Smith called me into her office after making me wait anxiously outside for what felt like an eternity, and gave me a stern talking-to. The next day, I sheepishly reverted to the hated skirt for a few weeks. At sixteen, however, the rules became more relaxed, and I was able to wear the illegal attire with only a stern glance and a wagged finger, rather than a return visit to the office.
Wearing a black slit skirt, plenty of make-up and being taller than the average sixteen-year-old schoolgirl made me a natural choice among my friends to order drinks in the local pub on the last day of school before Christmas. My friends agreed that I looked eighteen, which is the legal drinking age in England. The bar workers certainly didn’t have a problem serving drinks for us when I went up to the bar. In the '80s, no one carried ID and bar staff could only ask you how old you were and then decide whether or not to believe you.
We had spent the morning in Lincoln’s cathedral, singing Christmas carols and freezing, while our bottoms became numb from sitting on hard church pews, belting out ‘Silent Night’. As soon as the carol service ended and we were released, there was a steady stream of underage students making their way to local pubs for a festive glass of Baileys, before heading home for the winter break. Sometimes teachers would also be in the same pub, but they would turn a blind eye to us or raise a glass and shout a hearty ‘Cheers!’. It was Christmas after all, who cared if a bunch of drunken teens was set loose on the town centre in the middle of the afternoon.
These forays into pubs developed into nights out at the local nightclub, ‘Cinderellas, Rockerfellas’ for student night. The bouncers were unable to tell if we were students from the art college or still school-aged, and if they suspected the latter, they certainly never said anything. Not being an athlete, dancing at student night was my preferred form of weekly exercise, and I loved every minute of it. I couldn't wait to get inside and feel the loud beat of the music reverberating through my bones, beckoning me to the dancefloor! Most of the clientele were art students, and some of their outfits were outlandish. There were plenty of black lace-clad goths and biker jacket-wearing rockabillies with their hair cut in flat top styles. There was a regular girl who always dressed head to toe in purple lace or velvet, with purple backcombed hair, who became known as the purple witch. Cliques devoted to certain music styles were formed, and when favourite records were played by the DJ, the relevant clique of fans would rush out onto the dancefloor, replacing the previous group and dancing in their own style. I liked watching them and trying to copy the various ways in which they danced. At 2:00 am, the lights would come on in the club, and the DJ would play ‘New York, New York’ by Frank Sinatra, telling us all it was time to leave. On those nights, I slept over at my friend’s house and we walked home together, arm in arm, through cobbled streets that were originally laid by the Romans, singing, ‘New York, New York’ at the tops of our voices. Back then, it didn’t cross my mind that I might one day be living within driving distance of the ‘City that never sleeps’!
Christ’s Hospital School, Lincoln, England
By Brian - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3952682
By Brian - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3952682
Photo credit: Robert Bavey
