Message #3419

[JJ]

I didn't mean the educational ethos Andy - more the overwhelming sense of what was right to wear and what wasn't - the quality of it, the colour of it, the make of parental cars on Saturday afternoons visits and what was spoken about in those town cafes - lines and lines of mums and boys shopping for leathery things - not plastic - the homogeneity of the people at parents' days as if they had come out of the Daily Telegraph style and financial pages, the assumptions about class, food, political allegiance, sisters, entertainments, exeats, odd little traditions, rowing picnics in summer term.  Things out of the ken of your average teenager shopping in Braintree town centre on Saturday afternoons and going back on the bus.