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There was, also,
one bath, without a hot-water tap, but as there were tables
in this bathroom there were men continually milling around
in it, using the tables for their wash-basins and shaving
mirrors and all but shaving each other.
(e) Lavatories. Three one-seaters
graced the corridor. That was the best place to have them
because of the queues. (Otherwise, atmospherically speaking,
they could just as easily have been in the bedrooms.) There
was one other, the Commandant's own. While out on an early
morning corridor recce I was astonished to see him step
out of a beautiful mahogany built-in wardrobe in one of
the corridors. It was not a wardrobe but an interesting
example of modest Victorian camouflage. I had the decency
to keep this intelligence secret and he only met me coming
out once, but made no response to my cheery "Good mormng,
sir!"
Twelve hessian-screened lavatories were situated outside
the house for the benefit of either the unlucky seventy-six
or the involuntary early morning athletes. (The distance
was sixty stone steps down and one hundred yards in the
bracing morning mist, rain or snow.)
(f) Health. Coughing and spluttering
during the night were incessant. Two cases of virulent 'flu
broke out in my dormitory (I brought my issue home with
me). There was no segregation of ill men. One case escaped
home early in the week. The other
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was too ill to go home at all. However,
dead or alive, the next batch of students will
never notice him in the gloaming.
g) Wardrobes. I have already referred
to the only one I saw. There are no hooks or shelves for
clothing. One "lives in one's suitcase" which
is stored under the bed and is easy to get at after slightly
moving the other seventeen beds.
LECTURE ROOM
This, in the basement, was not the coal cellar, after all.
Its windows, which were immediately behind the lecturer
had to be permanently closed to prevent his being frozen
to death. Two bulbs just above the lecturer's head provided
inadequate light, yet dazzled eyes focussed on the speaker's
face. We spent hours in this dive and the atmosphere was
pure New Orleans night club.
Seventy-five men were able to crowd on to most amazingly
hard forms. Five men (less the sick) had to stand and lean
against the wall. Between dormitory and lecture room one
came to have the liveliest sympathy for the humble yet sanitary
sardine.
The School Staff are inclined to be sympathetic (they are
forced, in rotation, to spend an hour or so daily in the
Lecture Room) and although they have their own quarters,
they do know how the poor live. The Commandant, for example,
made use of the word "baths" in one of his lectures,
adding jocularly "You know, the things you haven't
got upstairs."
(......continues.....)
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