New bod

[liv]

Oh look chaps, there's a new bod in the Remove. Who's game to go and rag him?

Comments

[darcydodo]

I may just completely ignore that post, as it may not have contained a single grammatical construct that I understood.

(Well, actually it was just 'the Remove' that got me. I did really understand the rest, it was just strange.)

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, cultural references.

A

[wychwood]

If you go to a sufficiently posh school, there may be a form called The Remove. I believe there's one in Tom Brown's Schooldays...

It took me two readings to understand that; really bizarre!

[liv]

I can understand your objecting to my playing with register in French, but in English, which is supposed to be your native language?! Did you never read those 'Jane saves the day' type school stories? And no Mallory Towers, no Billy Bunter, no Trebizon, no Jennings, no Chalet School, no Angela Brazil? (Can't remember which of those specifically has a form (always a form, not a year or a class) called the Remove, but anyway, I can't believe you've never come across it before.)

[darcydodo]

Errr... I read Enid Blyton. I think her Naughtiest Girl books haven't got anything called the Remove, or if they have, I completely missed it then or have since forgotten it.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Should I be scared that I not only understood that but didn't think it was odd at all?

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Livredor: English Public School
You: English Public School
Me: English Public School
Darcy: M****n

Remove form: English public school system. Is it any wonder as to who the person who didn't understand it was?

[liv]

Remove form: English public school system
... of 70+ years ago, yes. The style of language I was using has nothing to do with the style of language typical at the school I went to (which, incidentally, barely counts as a 'public school'), and everything to do with a sub-genre of school stories that I read as a kid.

And asterisks only work to fool bots; your comment is still just as offensive to human beings with some of the letters blocked out.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

And asterisks only work to fool bots; your comment is still just as offensive to human beings with some of the letters blocked out.

More offensive- there is the overt acknowledgement that it is offensive in there. OTOH Darcy can look after herself and if I thought she seriously objected I wouldn't tease her like that (plus revenge can be sweet)

[liv]

You know darcydodo considers that term offensive. Using my journal to insult her out of revenge (presumably for her deleting a similar comment from hers) because you know I'm less likely to censor it counts, in my book, as ungentlemanly.

Yes, Darcy can of course look after herself. I am trying to look after my journal though; there's starting to be interesting discussion going on here and I don't want people to feel uncomfortable reading it because they're going to encounter that kind of thing.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

I don't understand - what were the *s blocking out?

And I'm with livredor on the Perse not being much of a public school - a provincial private school essentially.

[wychwood]

The word is, I suspect, "Merkin". Used for American, though it also has some other bizarre and probably insulting meaning. It originated in alt.fan.pratchett circles, as I understand it.

[ajollypyruvate]

No, but it may frighten you to know that someone who has never been off the North American continent understood it perfectly on the first read.

[liv]

Which indeed demonstrates my point that it's not about what school you went to, but what books you read at an impressionable age.

And welcome to my corner of Livejournal, by the way.

It's true!

[ajollypyruvate]

Many of my favourite authors are dead Brits. I blame my mother. ;)

Thanks! I had been wondering how you happened on my journal but I'm happy to be here.

[liv]

I had been wondering how you happened on my journal
Oh, I was, um, procrastinating by doing random searches on interests. I spotted you first because you've listed Karen Armstrong as an interest, and then your handle amused me. That was just about my luckiest 'stick a virtual pin in livejournal' exercise.

Why, thank you!

[ajollypyruvate]

Two of the people on my friends list are there as a result of my avoiding p-chem homework. It's, uh, important for us geek types to have, um, outside interests and, er, meet new people. Yeah, that's right.

Whenever I play the "random user" game I get Russians. Every time! I think they're stalking me. ;)

Gaah?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Having been to a scary run-down comprehensive in North East England, I'm afraid I didn't get that at all.

We did have forms, though. I was in form G. As were about 30 other people, at least two of whom have since spent time at Her Majesty's pleasure for armed robbery. Another died from the effects of glue sniffing one fine summer's afternoon.

Ragging wasn't a term that was used. The people responsible for equivalent (though perhaps significantly more brutal) actions didn't really use terms like 'rag'. It would require a whole syllable, you see, when simply hitting someone wouldn't even require that much effort.

I don't know the significance of the 'Remove' form. I'd assume it means the class made up from the dodgy leftovers who aren't allowed in with the normal sane school body? If so, my school didn't do that kind of thing. Apart from their 1970s socialist ideals getting in the way of anything so non-egalitarian, they would probably have found it easier to create a Remove comprising the tiny percentage of functional individuals. Ok, maybe that's a jaded view. A lot of people I never thought would get anywhere did make it to university, and did go on to relatively interesting careers. As far as I know I'm the only one who made it to Oxbridge (albeit somewhat through the back door, twice) -- such an outcome would have frankly been beyond the imagining of my teachers.

My school did do some things well. It had amazingly good science and engineering facilities, having been heavily subsidised by the local chemical works at its construction. In Billingham, you didn't grow up to be a lawyer, doctor, astronaut, international tennis player or porn star. You grew up to be a Huxleyesque gamma or delta, destined to toil away making chemicals for a living. 'Imperial Chemical Industries'. As a child, this sounded amazing -- redolent of the Empire. Where gunboats might occasionally fail to subdue the fuzzywuzzies, we could always send our local produce and just DISSOLVE THE BASTARDS!

Most of the plant just made fertiliser, which isn't quite so impressive sounding. A bit of it made plastics, though. One day in 1977, during the hot summer that allowed me to be sent to the headmaster for kneading all the classroom's crayons into a single misshapen colourful ball, I had excused myself from class and was sitting on the loo. There was an enormous bang (not, I might add, of my own making), followed by an extended roar. Later I discovered that Olefin 8, a substantially large conglomeration of pipework and reactor vessels, had ruptured a hydrogen pipeline, exploded and razed itself to the ground.

House prices went down a bit, as I remember.

Some time later, during Mrs T's tenure as Dictator-in-Chief of our great country, government policy dictated that all that nasty radioactive stuff that was being produced on the opposite coast at Windscale needed a longer term home. About 400 feet directly below my house. Property prices literally hit zero, if not negative figures.

I found an old photograph at the weekend of Richard Mason, one of my school friends. His mother (I'm afraid I don't remember her name) was big in Billingham Against Nuclear Dumping. BAND. Lots of press happened. Our obscure north east chemical town was suddenly national news. Greenpeace supported us!

Protest movements historically have little power, and rarely result in direct change. I doubt our experience would have differed from the norm, was it not for ICI (no doubt worried that it's beta/gamma/delta feedstock would become a depleted) refused permission for its anhydrite mine to be appropriated by Nyrex.

We won.

At first available opportunity, I left.

Re: Gaah?

[liv]

Let me just make this absolutely clear. My post was in no possible way intended to be a class statement. I apologize unreservedly to anyone I accidentally confused.

I have never used language remotely like that. Nor did anyone at school. Any more than we went around saying 'Fie on thee, jackanapes, for thou hast done a most grievous wrong.'

I think I'll just go away and hide in a corner now.

Re: Gaah?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

No apology required. I didn't understand the reference, but certainly wasn't offended by it.

It's OK. You can come out now!

Re: Gaah?

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Awww, don't do that. *hugs* I understood - it was just a retro comment. In the same way as one might quote/allude to 80s childrens' TV you were alluding to the kind of literature that many of us read.

[liv]

the significance of the 'Remove' form
AIUI, the Remove existed in a system where your progress through the school was only partly tied to your age. It was used to mop up not just dodgy leftovers, but people who were way too bright to be with their own age, but too young to be with people of their own academic level. Or people who had had their schooling disrupted for whatever reason, but were too old to be held back as far as they needed to make up.

Hence lots of school stories tend to be set in the Remove, because you've got plenty of excuses for interesting character background and dynamics. It's quite possible that in real life the Remove was actually full of people who were just too stupid to progress properly through the academic system, but that's not how it's usually portrayed.

[liv]

By the way, thanks for this piece; you do cynical extremely well. And it's not the kind of situation that gets written about a great deal, so also very interesting.