Judith Lacy's boarding school days bound by rules

Judith Lacy's school badge card from the 1980s.

It's back-to-school week, those heady days when well-meaning people tell you to get those butterflies in your stomach to fly in formation.

Too bad if the butterflies are still those green crawly creatures.

I'm in awe of people who can remember their first day at school. My memories don't go back that far, but I can certainly remember my first day at boarding school.

This was no elite school with well-heeled parents donning their pearls and suits to drop their darlings off. Most parents were struggling farmers.

My year considered themselves fortunate a new dining room had opened. We no longer had to brave the rodents the older girls told us about with glee, but the most daring of us still showered in the old block making sure not to put our feet in the holes in the bottom of the shower stalls.

The uniform was something out of the dark ages. Imagine the most itchy fabric known to man - that was what our chapel cloaks were made from.

For PE we had these bloomer-type concoctions and white tennis shoes that needed special polish.

In winter we wore ties - different colours depending on our house - and woollen trousers that didn't flatter even the best figures.

But it was the regs that I still remember with horror. They were formal, stiff leather shoes only to be worn with our dress uniform when we left the school grounds and were like Edward Scissorhands for feet. Every Friday we were allowed to go shopping,

There I was trying to look semi-together with two fourth formers - one an allrounder and one a musical prodigy - and each step was beyond painful.

School rule 11iv made it clear girls were to go in groups of two or three for Friday shopping, not alone.

One Sunday walking back from church I got caught breaking rule 11ii that stated there is to be no eating in the street anywhere. I was eating a Perky Nana, of all things, when the principal happened to drive past. My punishment was to take charge of a group of girls cleaning the chapel.

Chapel was a big part of boarding school life with attendance twice a day during the week compulsory, Learning the school hymn and the Christian creed were two of the 11-step school badge we had to obtain. The most intriguing task, looking back now, was "50 cents for lepers".

The poor day girls were under constant pressure to break school rules by posting letters for us full boarders. I had to get the permission of my parents to write to, and receive letters from, a boy who lived near my house. My parents gave it willingly. Unsurprisingly, boys were not allowed to "be taken" to dormitories.

The school rules dictated sunbathing was only allowed in summer; our school was in a town known for severe frosts so I was never tempted to break this rule. One winter's morning I went to fetch my pale yellow sweatshirt off the washing line and discovered the frost had turned it to cardboard.

Viewed through an adult's lens, the most absurd rule was about earrings. Only fourth-year boarders could wear earrings but not in uniform and not at chapel services. Somehow those earrings must have interfered with one's communing with God.

At least, I never saw a butterfly wearing earrings.

+ Judith Lacy is editor of the Manawatū Guardian.