The Flagpole Potty

A potty, or chamber pot, is not what one would call the normal substitute for a flag, let alone the school flag, but then that is a matter of opinion I suppose. Potties don't flutter very well, even if the wind cranks up to a full gale, and anyway they look a little undignified unfurled!

Once more a carpet of darkness shrouded two furtive figures skirting the Green Court and moving in the direction of, what back in the 1950's, was the school library and museum, beside the old Norman staircase. Earlier that day, one of the local hotels lost what to it and its keeper was quite an important piece of its functional equipment - to wit one highly glazed and decorated chamber pot.

For the uninitiated, a chamber pot is a receptacle which adorned each hotel bedroom and was used in lieu of a general toilet which was probably at the end of the corridor. It was the perfect parachute of the incontinence afflicted patron who may have a midnight emergency and not wish to grovel down the cold unlit corridor to gain relief.

This "borrowed" artifact now swung to and fro as the bearers nursed it to its new home where masters and students could ogle and stare at its smooth and obviously stylish beauty. But that was to come...

The Green Court was skirted in deference to the sign which read "keep off the grass" although monitors and sports colours were privileged to ignore this treaty. We, however, were but fags not ignorant of the fact and like automatons obliged without demure.

Back in those bad old days the designated library building sported a flag pole atop its structure with a precipitous drop onto the stone flagged courtyard below. Not a good places to splatter ones brains and make a mess! Never-the-less the plan to usurp authority was alive and breathing.

With much careful manoeuvering and not a little praying, the roof of the library was reached and traversed to the base of the fifteen foot (5 meters) flagpole. Looking over the edge at roof level beckoned a 40 foot drop to a very hard and sudden stop. How to place the potty on top of the pole? Well, the easiest way was to attach it to the cord which leads to flutter point, but then it could easily be retrieved in reverse fashion. No, it had to remain in place so that the powers that be can gnash their teeth, foam at the mouth and do all those biblical gesticulations which appeal to us lesser mortals.

And so it was! The pole was carefully tested for sway and movement, and the heights of Abraham were assailed. Slowly, hand over hand, the pinnacle of success was achieved and the potty passed up via the flag pole cord which had been earlier unhitched at the base of the building.

With fear and trepidation the potty was now carefully manoeuvred and positioned at rather a rakish angle which ensured it wouldn't easily fall off.

In less time than you could sing the Halleluiah Chorus, we repaired to Meister Omers and the safety of our beds where we endeavoured to sleep the sleep of the just.

Morning dawned and consternation reigned around the Mint Yard as staff and students, heads craned skywards, stared at the potty flag. Among the gawking students, larger, more malevolent creatures mouthed horrible retaliations and retributions against the perpetrators of scandalous behaviour and undignified doings.

The potty remained the centre of attraction for a few days as no one knew how to dislodge it. However, one morning it was gone! Rumours had it that Sergeant Major Barch shot it down using one of the school's World War 1 303 rifles from the school's cadet armoury. It's hard to know who or what to believe but I think it sounds a fitting conclusion to what was probably a rather stupid and dangerous prank.