The special nun word for waiting room
Oct. 28th, 2008 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyDid you have a school song? We did. I could still give you a chorus of 'Dear Saint Ann, Be Joyful' if the need arose. It's a cracking song.
The reason that came to mind was that I went to my former school (St Ann's, as you might have guessed from the song) on Sunday. Well, part of the school anyway. There was an amateur art exhibition in the convent attached to the school, so my mother (another Old Girl) and I went to have a look around. We (students of my era) weren't allowed into the convent, except for a couple of specialist classrooms tucked away into odd little corners - the sewing and music rooms, for instance. There were always a couple of Naughty Girls among the younger set who got their jollies ringing the nun's doorbell, though, or hanging condoms from their washing line. In my mother's day, it was different: all the classrooms were in the convent building itself.
We bought our entrance tickets next to a sign saying we were in the waiting room.
'This used to be the waiting room,' she said. Oh, really? 'Only it wasn't called the waiting room back then, it was called a special nun word that meant waiting room.'
The exhibition itself was of, er, variable quality, and on the way out we stuck our heads into the chapel to see the Bloody Head of Jesus in a Box, which is always a treat. Walking back to the car park, my mother pointed to one of the distant playing fields.
'That's where we used to play hockey,' she said. 'And an old man used to sit in the garden of that house over there' - she pointed across the road - 'and shoot at us with a pea rifle. He probably wouldn't be allowed to do that now.'
No, probably not.
The reason that came to mind was that I went to my former school (St Ann's, as you might have guessed from the song) on Sunday. Well, part of the school anyway. There was an amateur art exhibition in the convent attached to the school, so my mother (another Old Girl) and I went to have a look around. We (students of my era) weren't allowed into the convent, except for a couple of specialist classrooms tucked away into odd little corners - the sewing and music rooms, for instance. There were always a couple of Naughty Girls among the younger set who got their jollies ringing the nun's doorbell, though, or hanging condoms from their washing line. In my mother's day, it was different: all the classrooms were in the convent building itself.
We bought our entrance tickets next to a sign saying we were in the waiting room.
'This used to be the waiting room,' she said. Oh, really? 'Only it wasn't called the waiting room back then, it was called a special nun word that meant waiting room.'
The exhibition itself was of, er, variable quality, and on the way out we stuck our heads into the chapel to see the Bloody Head of Jesus in a Box, which is always a treat. Walking back to the car park, my mother pointed to one of the distant playing fields.
'That's where we used to play hockey,' she said. 'And an old man used to sit in the garden of that house over there' - she pointed across the road - 'and shoot at us with a pea rifle. He probably wouldn't be allowed to do that now.'
No, probably not.