Fellow blogger Marcellous has posted about his important role as official school pianist and even come up with the words of his old school song. I'm impressed. I was never official anything at school nor do I recall my extraordinarily expensive boys only private school having it's own song. If there was one, then it must be buried deep in my subconscious.
We did, though, have a school war cry that was shouted at opportune moments by those of us on the sidelines of the sporting fields. We were required to attend on Saturday afternoons, dressed in full school uniform, to support those talented enough to play in the 'A' teams especially in winter during the short rugby season.
Earlier in the day poor sods like myself had played (or perhaps more accurately had destroyed) a rugby game in the depths of the 'F', 'G' and even lower grades. In fact I used to play in the lowest grade of them all, the 'Gentlemans' grade; a euphemism for those boys so handicapped, or worse still gay, that no letter of the alphabet could adequately describe the inferiority of our play. No sideline war cries for us.
For some reason, the words of the war cry remain etched in my memory. So here goes....
"Alligator mincemeat
Crocodile pie
V,
I,
C,
T,
O,
R,
Y
Are we in it?
We say, yes
We are the boys of the SGS
G,
R,
A,
M,
M,
A,
R
(last word stretched out) Grammar"
No, I don't know what the first two lines mean either.
And who said I didn't learn anything at school?
My god I can still cite my school's war cry too, don't know why cause my best mate at school and I were not on the sports lists so we just high tailed it into the city every Thursday afternoons instead of playing sport. Was so much more fun shopplifting etc.
ReplyDeleteHere's the war cry...
Who are?
Who are?
Who are we?
We are the boys from MBP.
Green and gold know no defeat,
Parramatta, Parramatta can be beat.
P_A_RR_A_M_A_TT_A
PARRAMATTA.
Sorry should have read 'can't be beat'
ReplyDeleteBut to add insult to injury (as I expect V will agree) sport at the SGS was a Saturday commitment, as unavoidable as, in those days, Cadets. What rank (if any) did you attain, V?
ReplyDeleteMarcellous - yes Cadets was another of those compulsory horrors; in our case on a Monday after school hours plus two or three bivouacs a year at least one of which was held during precious school holidays. It may not surprise you to learn that I achieved no rank whatsoever. More surprisingly I was placed in the Intelligence Section where I proved a spectacularly unsuccessful member.
ReplyDelete