A letter home from boarding school

Warwick, 3 March 1950

My darling Mama and Poppy. This is going to be a real long letter, as I am starting straight after dinner. I have got an awful lot to tell you, so it is just as well I started early.

I have been practising every day, except Sundays, now for about 4 weeks. Until the practise list was properly arranged, I had to keep changing about. The pianos were awful. The keys jumped up and down when I played on the pedals and they were dreadfully out of tune. There are only 3 decent pianos in the whole school (music teachers pianos) and I was lucky enough to get one of them, when everything was arranged. I was glad I did not have to play in room 6. It is the sewing room and there is a whole lot of dirty clothes and mosquito nets and dust in there. And PHEW – does it smell! You can think of me practising at 4 o’clock every school day and at 11 on Saturday.

About 3 weeks ago I was practising one day, when Bub rushed in and said: ”Serge tunic, long sleeves, hat, gloves, stockings up. Hurry up! We are going downtown.” Before I could ask her why, she was gone. – What I had to go down for was the gloves and blazer (eine blaue Jacke aus Wollstoff). Well, the silk gloves were too small and the others I did not like, so I did not get any at all. All the blazers were too big, so some had to be ordered. I was not the only one that went. Laurice Hinds and some other girls went too.

On the 11th February the old girls had a concert, as they have every year at this time. It was very good. One of the items wa a mock court, where they judged some of the new girls. That was very funny.

The following Saturday the new girls had a concert. I was in 4 things – the opening chorus: ”Far away Places” (that was a flop, because where they had changed the words to suit the concert, half the girls sang the proper words of the song). ”The too fat Polka” (I was just singing behind the stage with the chorus), a mannequin parade and a quiz.

In the quiz I won a peg (Wäscheklammer) for answering 2 questions correctly. What is the capital of Northern Island? and how many fingers have you? The answers to which were Waterloo and 13 (Ich musste schreiben und fragen: wieso?)

Coral Challinor was asked: If all of P.G.C. went and washed their clothes in the Condamine river, what would you call the water you bath in? Coral replied ”I don’t bath”. For this she was awarded a safety pin, but she would not accept anything but something to eat, so somebody had to go and get her an apple.

Last night we had a kind of debate. Miss Taylor had 10 chairs on the stage and she auctioned them. Shirley Wolfe bid ”The bad meat I get for breakfast”. Everyone in the whole school was disgusted. When all the chairs were sold, each of the 10 on the stage got a slip of paper with a topic on it. Carol Challinor had to talk about bobby pins (Haarnadeln). She began: ”These interesting articles, we are told, are manufactures in factories”. Bub had to talk about snakes and some other topics were: Condamine River, boys, life at boarding school, comics and mint.

This afternoon we had great fun. While we were lying on our beds (I am writing this in the classroom).

We were not supposed to talk, but the girls in our balcony had a concert. Pat Hennid sang a ghost song and Blowy and Provo (Margaret Gillanders and Margaret Proven) did a dance on their beds. I made up a song about a pig who sat on a fence and after I had finished everybody was singing it. And said a poem about a mosquito and a fly and gave a description of Emu (Ena) Hall and Vivian Mann in Norwegian. We did a lot of other things too, but I have not time to tell you about them, as Mardi Southern (the prefect in charge) says that we have only a few minutes more.

Lots and lots and lots of love from your loving Marie.