Clothing

NanKate .

We had navy knickers with a pocket and also had to take our tunics off and prance around in our knickers for PE. For 'Games' we had horrible itchy navy divided skirt type things. In the summer we were taken next door to the public tennis courts to learn to play the game. The first time we went my friend's mum sent her in white knickers in lieu of tennis whites. The rest of us in our navy knickers giggled like mad at this poor girl in white ones.

[grin*, same here NotTooOld regarding divided skirts, ours were maroon, very scratchy. Awful memories of chapped legs out on the hockey field in winter, no sweaters allowed just divided skirts and aertex shirt, whilst PE teacher wore tracksuit, thick gloves, hat and Aran jumper -sadist!
Gym was maroon knickers.......I hated gym, not built for anything remotely athletic let alone agile!

Our netball courts were right next to the local park. There were rows and rows and rows of sheltered seats facing our netball courts. The local boy's grammar was only just across the road and their lunchtime as earlier than ours... Oh the humiliation. Divided skirts would have been a blessing. Our skirts were made of a very thick unbendable wool that stuck out almost at right angles and left nothing to the imagination once they had been shrunk in their first wash.

We had royal blue divided skirts - the nuns would not have countenanced us prancing about in our knickers no matter how concealing they were! The skirts were very smart but had box pleats at the front and back which had to be pressed back in after every use. What with that and our knife pleated school skirts which also had to be regularly pressed (no permanent pleats in those days!), I never wanted to see another pleat in my life when I left school!

Nuns decreed divided skirts to be no shorter than 1" off the ground when kneeling down, school skirts to touch the ground when kneeling. If they failed to do this then following morning offenders' hems were ripped down while standing in the stage in front of whole school!

We had the same rule loopy, though I don't recall ever having such a harsh penalty. Though the nuns were very fond of finding ways to humiliate pupils at the slightest opportunity - I imagine this particular ploy hadn't occurred to them