Learning to be a young lady

Many moons ago I went to boarding school. During a recent shift I unearthed the little diary I kept at the time.



I used to keep it in my sponge bag, along with the occasional illicit bar of chocolate, because I figured if the nuns did a sweep of my belongings they probably wouldn?t look in the sponge bag.



However, I was also careful not to write anything in my diary that might get me into trouble if my innocent little observations fell into the wrong hands.  Ironically, the diary itself was one put out by Dewar?s Whisky. Not very appropriate for a 12-year-old convent girl.



By day four I was starting to get a little homesick and, though I didn?t document my misdemeanours apart from ?Late with sheets. In a hurry. Room done late?, by the second week I seemed to be running foul at least one of the nuns - ?Sister still on warpath.?



I wish I could remember what prompted the entry "Crisis in boarding school. May have been Elizabeth T's imagination." But I do remember "Man on fire escape" and being told not to mention that little drama in our letters home.



Then there is a curious entry. ?Learned to eat fruit.?



Ah, yes. The nuns? mission was to turn us into ?young ladies? and we were taught the finer points of table etiquette. Eating fruit involved using cutlery and we mastered the art of eating a banana with a knife and fork, topping, tailing, cutting the skin lengthwise, releasing the fruit from the peel and cutting it into segments. And so on through stone fruit, pip fruit, citrus.



We learned the bishop?s hat fold (of course) for our starched table napkins ? a Sunday morning chore for a couple of girls. The remainder of the week our napkins were rolled up and contained in the engraved silver serviette rings we had to bring to boarding school with us. I still have mine.



We learned the correct way to set a table, how to place the cutlery and in which order. Most of us had learned this at home but there was the odd girl in need of a crash course.



Handling the cutlery was another lesson. No waving about of the knife and fork between mouthfuls. The cutlery had to be put back on the plate, in the 20 past 8 position, fork tines down, knife blade facing left, and our hands had to be in the lap while we chewed.



Woe betide the girl who turned her fork over to scoop up peas ? unless she put her knife down and swapped the fork to her right hand first but really, that was barely tolerated. At the end of the meal the knife and fork had to be placed side by side, fork tines up to indicate one had finished eating.



The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork - Oscar Wilde

Salt was not to be scattered over the food but poured in a little mound on the rim of the plate.



We were all knocked into shape fairly quickly. So successfully even now I feel guilty transgressing in case a nun's beady eyes are watching me. "You MUST push your soup spoon towards the back of the soup bowl to fill it - NEVER towards you. Sip the soup from the side of the spoon, NEVER the end. And tilt the bowl AWAY from you when taking the last of the soup."



Even today I feel horribly let down when a restaurant or host doesn?t offer a dessert fork along with the dessertspoon. ?Always use the fork to put things on the spoon, NEVER your fingers!?



However, I wasn?t schooled in what to do when the man on my left started using my bread and butter plate at a formal dinner recently and tucked into my bread roll. I was genuinely surprised but I swear I heard a nun whisper in my ear, ?NEVER criticise someone else?s manners.?





The hardest jobs kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any - Fred Astaire