WHEN a girl broke into our house tuck shop with a hockey stick and it was subsequently shut for a month, it was as if 60 pupils were suffering a bereavement. No Space Raiders, no Wham bars, no sherbet Dip Dabs to see us through those dark January days. We weren’t alone in our reliance on that saccharine oasis. At the bucolic Dorset prep school Hanford, such is the importance of the Sunday afternoon sugar hit that a parent of a recent outgoing pupil donated a bench with a plaque inscribed: ‘Keep your friends close and your sweets closer!’
Queues are so long for the tuck shop at Heathfield, Berkshire (housed in a storybookworthy, bay-windowed shop), that one old girl whose dorm was above it remembers presenting Tuck Shop FM with her boom box on the windowsill, to keep the feet of patient customers tapping. A girl who left Tudor Hall, Oxfordshire, in the noughties recalls being given 50p pieces by sixth formers to corridor creep to the vending machine when the tuck shop (run by Mrs Tuckwell) was shut, before lowering the goods out of the window to them in a bag tied with a dressing-gown cord—a sound grounding for a future investment manager. As the Old Radleian and man behind the sweet empire Candy Kittens Jamie Laing has said: ‘Sweets were like currency at school.’
Denne historien er fra February 28, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 28, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
