{"id":13952,"date":"2014-03-15T09:25:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T08:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=13952"},"modified":"2014-05-10T17:49:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-10T16:49:58","slug":"the-strange-language-of-harrow-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=13952","title":{"rendered":"The strange language of Harrow School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the past 30 years, I have lived at the foot of Harrow-on-the-Hill in north-west London . We drive over the hill constantly. When I go for a walk, it is usually up the hill. Our favourite cafe, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dollshouseonthehill.co.uk\">&#8220;The Doll&#8217;s House&#8221;<\/a>, and our favourite restaurant. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.incanto.co.uk\">&#8220;Incanto&#8221;<\/a>, are on the hill.<\/p>\n<p>Inevitably, therefore, we are always seeing the buildings and boys of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harrowschool.org.uk\">Harrow School<\/a>, the public school founded in 1572\u00a0which dominates the hill (it has 300 acres). This is a boarding school for boys which is like going back in time with the boys wearing straw boaters and the masters wearing mortar boards and cloaks.<\/p>\n<p>Previous students include seven British Prime Ministers and 20% of leavers go to Oxford or Cambridge Universities. Fees for Harrow are \u00a311,095\u00a0per term (\u00a333,285 per annum). This\u00a0is a life which entrenches privilege that stands in opposition to all my political beliefs on \u00a0equality and fairness.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I cannot help being fascinated by the institution and some months ago rather enjoyed a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sky.com\/tv\/show\/harrow-a-very-british-school\/article\/about\">Sky television series<\/a> on the school. The eight-week series is about to be repeated, starting today.<\/p>\n<p>One of the weirdest features of the place is the strange languages used by students and staff.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Beak \u2013 A master or teacher.<\/li>\n<li>Bill or Call-over\u00a0&#8211; Compulsory roll call held in each House three times a day.<\/li>\n<li>Bill Book- Small blue book that provides essential information about the School and the term&#8217;s calendar.<\/li>\n<li>Bluer &#8211; Dark blue uniform jacket.<\/li>\n<li>Capping \u2013 Boys and masters &#8220;saluting&#8221; each other.<\/li>\n<li>Copy &#8211; Awarded for 12 send ups or to the top boy in each subject every term. Boys with eight copies win a prize.<\/li>\n<li>Custos &#8211; The staff member to whom a boy has to report early each morning as a punishment\u00a0for being late or untidily dressed.<\/li>\n<li>Double \u2013 A punishment for boys. Basically writing lines. Takes an inexperienced boy around 90 minutes to do 60.<\/li>\n<li>Ducker \u2013 The school swimming pool.<\/li>\n<li>Eccer \u2013 Exercise or any form of games.<\/li>\n<li>Flannels &#8211; School colours for sport. A boy awarded his Flannels for Cricket, Rugby, Football, Harrow Football or for minor sports may wear a grey waistcoat with his tails.<\/li>\n<li>Footer &#8211; Harrow football.<\/li>\n<li>Greyers &#8211; Grey uniform trousers.<\/li>\n<li>The Guild &#8211; Specially-elected group of senior boys who have shown artistic or cultural excellence. They have a distinctive maroon tie and may wear a maroon waistcoat with their tails.<\/li>\n<li>House &#8211; One of the 12 units housing around 70 boys. Each House has its own sporting colours.<\/li>\n<li>Jerks \u2013 A house punishment regime normally run at 05:30 each Friday.<\/li>\n<li>Locking Up &#8211; Deadline; time after which boys must sign out if they wish to leave their House.<\/li>\n<li>Matron &#8211; Each of the 12 Houses has a female member of staff.<\/li>\n<li>Monitor (School) &#8211; School prefect.<\/li>\n<li>Monitor (House) &#8211; House prefect, sometimes called priv.<\/li>\n<li>Philathletic Club or The Phil &#8211; The best athletes who are allowed to wear a black bow-tie.<\/li>\n<li>Queue &#8211; Times each day when boys may meet with their House Master to withdraw money, to report send ups and skews, and for other matters of business or concern.<\/li>\n<li>Remove &#8211; The name given to year 10s in the school<\/li>\n<li>Send Up \u2013 A &#8216;special mention&#8217; for a good piece of work that is acknowledged by the housemaster (the opposite of a Skew).<\/li>\n<li>Shells\u2014The name for the new boys of the school (year 9s).<\/li>\n<li>Shepherd &#8211; Remove boy who looks after Shell boys for the first two weeks.<\/li>\n<li>Skew \u2013 A &#8216;black mark&#8217; given for a poor piece of work that a boy must redo and give to his housemaster to sign.<\/li>\n<li>Speech Room \u2013 Place where the weekly gathering as well as some events take place.<\/li>\n<li>Sunday dress &#8211; Tail coat and striped trousers worn on Sundays and other major occasions.<\/li>\n<li>Tolley up &#8211; Permission to work after lights out.<\/li>\n<li>Torpids &#8211; Under 16 House sports team.<\/li>\n<li>Tosh- Bath or shower.<\/li>\n<li>Trials &#8211; Internal School examinations.<\/li>\n<li>Yarder \u2013 The exercise yard (normally an enclosed quadrangle) in each boarding house where adapted versions of sports are played (for example &#8216;Yarder Cricket&#8217;).<\/li>\n<li>Yearlings &#8211; Shell teams or groups.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past 30 years, I have lived at the foot of Harrow-on-the-Hill in north-west London . We drive over the hill constantly. When I go for a walk, it is usually up the hill. Our favourite cafe, &#8220;The Doll&#8217;s House&#8221;, and our favourite restaurant. &#8220;Incanto&#8221;, are on the hill. Inevitably, therefore, we are always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13952"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14576,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13952\/revisions\/14576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}