“..Let me sweep aside the veil on latent lesbianism in New Zealand girls’ boarding schools of the past, since British author Fay Weldon has already twitched that Terylene.
It was alive and throbbing in my boarding school long after she dwelt in Christchurch Girls’ High School dormitories; ..
.. not a matter of girls having dirty minds – which they do – but of sheer, nagging boredom.
It was something to do.
We weren’t allowed to listen to the radio, after all ..
.. there was no TV ..
.. and the showers were communal.
I savoured the response to Weldon’s vivid recall last week by a contemporary of hers, Nan Scoones, 81.
“I never even knew what a homosexual was until I was 20 years old and my brother told me,” Ms Scoones declared ..
.. adding that “if any lesbianity went on, I’m sure it was extremely well concealed… ”
I picture Ms Scoones being a very competent arranger of flowers, a collector of china squirrels.
“You have to remember Fay Birkinshaw [Weldon's maiden name] was built on the lines of a Sherman tank…
.. The way she and [her friend] went on, it was like having a crush on someone,” she added, cattily.
There is a rather famous portrait of Weldon and her sister, painted by Rita Angus, which shows a healthy-looking apple-cheeked girl with a mischievous smile, hardly a human tank ..
.. yet in girls’ school dormitories the old finely honed nastiness about each other’s appearance and foibles sparkled afresh in those words.
God help you if you had ears that stuck out, red hair, a large bottom, freckles, buck teeth, fat ankles, a short neck, large moles in prominent places ..
.. or a splodge for a nose.
You were doomed to carry a graphic nickname you’d wear for the rest of your life.
British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes last week recalled with bitterness the bullying at Eton ..
.. saying that even 50 years later he contemplates revenge.
He has said that none of the hardships of polar exploration came close to the misery he suffered as a schoolboy ..
.. though he was bullied verbally rather than physically.
Among girls, too, the tongue is the preferred weapon.
Its sting is more long-lasting than scratches..”
go to source/story>>The pashes and bashes of boarding school | Stuff.co.nz
