Water - did you drink in school?

When we got to the final year in our prep school we were allowed to play in the air raid shelter in the play ground. It was dank and dark and I would imagine was home to some hairy rodents.

Bags that might be a reflection of you age - I think you are a bit younger than us baby boomers. The country was getting a bit more affluent once the post war 10-15 years was over. Also I guess the capitation money given to schools may have varied around the country. Our head often remarked that she could not afford to buy new books.
My grammar school was housed in a group of sheds that were originally built to house TB patients. One wall of each classroom consisted of "partitions" (fresh air having been considered best treatment for TB) and we longed for hot days when the teachers would put up with the hassle of getting them open. But most of the time they were cold and draughty.
I once remarked to an English man that we had no playing fields in our grammar school. He was incredulous. I pointed out that it was Wales and we were girls - not boys in the home counties.
School toilets were so disgusting in my primary school that they probably caused all kinds of long term problems in its alumni.
They had no locks on the cubicles
They were never cleaned
They had no toilet paper or hand washing facilities and there was shit smeared on the walls of the cubicles.
On wet days water ran down into them and they were flooded to a depth of 2-3 inches.
When we went to grammar schools the toilets were semi-indoors, unheated but functional and we thought they were the height of luxury. My most vivid memory of my first day there was "have you seen the toilets!!!"
School milk often sat around all day in warm weather. The crates used to stink of sour milk.
It was tough back then in the late 50s and very early 60s!

There might be a lack of textbooks in my old school.

I nicked my cookery book. I still use it more than any other.

Free milk couldn't be abolished fast enough for me. My primary years were made hideous by teachers making me drink it. I never drank fresh milk, even as a toddler, I loathed it and it made me gag and at times I was sick. The attitude to milk varied from school to school, I went to 8, I became very good at taking my milk and then quietly making myself unobtrusive and going somewhere where I could pour it away but in one or two schools the teachers had radar eyes and sat over me until I drank it, crying and gagging as it went down.

DS also had a visceral loathing of fresh milk from he first time I gave him any, so it must be genetic. DD drank it by the pint, if allowed to, and still does.

I don't remember a lack of textbooks either - certainly not a desperate one. The worst thing at the beginning of the school year was having to cover the ones you'd been given - I hated that job!

We had jugs of water on the table at lunch time and milk at morning break - heated around the stove in the winter! I also remember access to a fountain though I didn't use it much because I didn't like going to the loo at school if I could help it. Surely fountains are only germy if you put your mouth around the nozzle - the water comes from the mains?

Never got the impression there was a desperate lack of textbooks at the secondary school I went to.

And the primary school I spent my last two junior years in was brand new in the 1960s, as were two other primary schools in the same town, so money was obviously being spent on schools.

As long as you can lift the jug on your own ana
I used to get given a second milk if there was any left over by one teacher. Because I was "pale" and therefore deemed to need it. I think we had an option on free milk in secondary school at break. I just looked up when it stopped:

The 1944 Education Act provided free meals and milk - a third of a pint a day - in schools to all children under the age of 18. In 1968 Harold Wilson’s Labour government withdrew free milk from secondary schools. In 1971 Margaret Thatcher (then Secretary of State for Education) withdrew free school milk from children over seven.

Odd to think that we had free milk in the 1960s but desperate lack of textbooks.

In the 50s and 60s we had water fountains at both infant/junior and senior schools. The milk was not welcome in the lower school especially in the summer. Not so bad in the winter.

I'll only drink water at room temperature - can't stand it cold from the fridge. Good to know I'll be well catered-for when I'm in my dotage and in hospital...

I suspect the bottled water companies are behind it. Very elderly people more at risk of dehydration that anyone else I suspect. Certainly while in hospital. They get about 4 tiny cups of tea a day and they are expected to drink plain (warm) water (which they never drink at home) to make up their fluid needs in a hot environment. And they end up on drips.

It's all a bit pretentious though, clutching your bottle of eater says"Hey I'm trendy / sporty / cool. I have just power walked from my gym to my cool trendy office. " Kids used to clutch bottles of water when they went clubbing to counter the dehydrating effects of Ecstasy. Is that an image we eant to endorse?

Water at lunchtime - which I did drink - and water fountains around the school.

At home I mostly drank water and sometimes squash.

Nowadays I have orange juice at breakfast, and about four cups of black tea across the course of the day.

A few years ago there was a lot of media coverage about how if children have access to plenty of drinking water in school it improves their concentration and behaviour. There was also a big push to get elderly people to drink more. It seemed sensible to me and I wonder if this advice was generally pursued once the story had faded.

I also wonder if the companies selling bottled water are responsible for this sudden need for everyone to carry bottles of water around wherever they go.

Soup is a very cheap course! We didn't have to 'dress' for dinner but I did have to keep my elbows off the table, use the correct cutlery, say please and thank you and ask if 'I could get down'. It stood me in good stead I think

JessM - I agree with you, fluids are fluids. I heard a doctor on tv saying that people no longer drink enough fluids and that by the time your mouth is dry, you are already dehydrated (he then went on to state what urine should look like in a well hydrated body) but he also said any fluid intake, not just water (I don't think he included alcohol though!).

Marmight did you have to dress for dinner too?
Hollydaze if you drink a sweet or milk drink there is some digestion needed. But with water, black tea etc there should be no work for the body to do, just absorb the water molecules.
I think if you needed to drink plain water to function then millions of people would drop dead on the spot. Most days I drink a fair amount of tea (more of a pausing activity) and no plain water at all. I know someone who drinks several litres a day because she thinks that will make her slimmer or something.

thatbags - I don't really remember, as this was about 12 years ago. I think with tea and coffee, the tea, coffee, milk, sugar (if taken) have to be processed by the body but with plain water, there's nothing really to be processed. Galen would be better versed in this than I would be.

I'd been given an abdominal scan and the flabby kidneys showed up on that (they weren't the reason for the scan). The consultant asked if I drank a lot of water and when I told him that I supposed I did, he asked how much - as I would drink the same amount of water that most people would drink combined tea/coffee/soft drinks/alcohol - I suppose it was just too much. I did notice, once I started drinking tea and coffee that I didn't run to the loo as often so water definitely goes straight through you - maybe the kidneys were just overworked? I did cut down on the water (only about 5 cups a day) and within a few months, the kidneys were fine again.

I think it's like everything else, moderation being the key.

hollyd, that's interesting about "flabby kidneys". I've never heard of that before. I'm a bit puzzled actually because tea and coffee are mostly water so why would drinking them instead of just water make any difference to your kidneys? Was that explained?

We couldn't drink water in Aden unless it had been boiled then chilled in the fridge. It was a hanging offence in our house to finish a bottle of water and not replace it. At school we had to drink a horrible orange or lemon flavoured powder diluted in water which we called 'Jungle Juice'. It set your teeth on edge but was deemed necessary to top up our vit C levels. My mother taught Music at a Jewish school which had connections (probably financial) with Marks and Spencer. THEY had a chiller cabinet in the courtyard full of Coke and Lemonade. It was a treat to meet mum after school as we were allowed to help ourselves.

My experience is similar to others, water in jugs at school, tea and water at home (I loathe milk).

When we lived in the Far East there were jugs of iced water and, often, lime and water in the fridge and we drank more there. As I grew up I started drinking much more because of a bowel problem I had.

My parents, particularly my mother, continued to drink relatively little and all my parents drank in their later years was coffee, with or after each meal and occasionally between meals. Both of them developed bladder cancer, although it was discovered early in both so never fully developed. Whether their lack of adequate fluids, or the fact that they only ever drank coffee contributed to the development of bladder cancer I do not know, but my sister I would like to know to find out whether we have a higher than average chance of getting bladder cancer

When I was at school, the only drinks we had were at lunchtime. We used to go on an annual trip to Leeds, to a panto every January, and lunch was always booked at the restaurant in Lewis`s, very posh to us kids, and I loved seeing jugs of water on the table, only ever saw it there, till I was grown up.

LOL no boarding school for the likes of us - I lived in a small Swiss village in the mountains ;)

Blimey Grumpa which boarding school were you at?
At mine in Livhfield it was water only and no slinking off to pubs

We had water fountains at both schools that I attended and there was, of course, jugs of water and glasses on the dining tables at lunch time for those who stayed for school meals; little bottles of milk or squash in the morning and little bottles of squash in the afternoon.

My mother frowned upon drinking anything with a meal (and she still does) and any drinks we were allowed couldn't be drunk until the meal was finished.

I was a water freak long, long before it became fashionable anyway: as a child and then teenager, I disliked tea, wasn't allowed coffee, never liked fizzy drinks (and still don't) but I would occasionally drink squash. My mother, thinking she was funny, made me a cup of hot water on a cold, winter day and I loved hit and drank it for the following 30+ years - then I was diagnosed with flabby kidneys and told to cut back on drinking so much water! I had to learn to like tea and coffee.

I remember a skit on tv about the water fad: it was set in an office and one worker picked up her small bottle of water and drank from the bottle, the woman next to her picked up a litre bottle and drank from that and on it went along the row of workers until it got to the woman at the end who picked up one of those enormous bottles that sit on communal drinking machines and she drank out of that - quite funny at the time.

I wonder if many schools are overheated nowadays so that kids feel thirstier? I certainly always found Minibags's primary school too warm.

Cubs run around a lot and quite often, ten minutes before they are due to go home, half or more of them start clamouring for a drink. I'm usually thirsty at that stage too but I manage to survive until I get home. I really don't see why they can't last a couple of hours (I'm including time to get to cubs and time to go home after the one and a half hour session) without a drink. We used to provide squash but several of them always spilled it and we got fed up of having to get the mop out so stopped. I think they should swill their hot faces with cold water from the tap and have a slurp while they're at it.