![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3C5D5D35-2593-4181-8084-7FDD004565DA.jpeg?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nA friend of mine has daughters at one of those poncey expensive private schools not a million miles from Wellington. You may have noticed that we\u2019re right in the middle of ball season. One of the girls went to her school dance with an ex (as an aside – I\u2019m terrifically impressed how well today\u2019s youth seem to manage their relationships with their exs. So mature). Everything was fine until the young gentleman was searched and found to have a hip flask of something alcoholic on him. Luckily he was honorable and honest enough to insist that it had all been his idea, and the girl had asked him not to bring it. He was thrown out, and the girl left also, because she thought it was the right thing to do, even though she had the option to go in without him. It\u2019s lucky he did fess up, because there would actually have been repercussions for her future, including any references she ever asked for from the school being affected.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photo with offending bulge clearly visible. Doh!<\/p>\n
All well and good until Monday came. Her expulsion from the dance was the talk of the school. Teachers shook their heads in dismay. Other students gossiped about it amongst themselves or said to the girl how horrified they were, and how they would have left the boy to his own devices and gone in alone. The worst part was the sheer unmitigated hypocrisy. A number of these girls, and\/or their dates, had snuck in booze themselves. They\u2019d been planning it for months. One girl actually smuggled in a number of sachets of alcohol, so that she could sell it to other girls at the dance. \u00a0A most \u00a0impressive example of entrepreneurship and business acumen, but possibly a little lacking in ethics (am I just old fashioned?). Apparently the toilets were awash with girls who were tired and emotional. My friends daughter was dismayed at the school\u2019s reaction, and has become just a little bit more cynical because of it. Perhaps it\u2019s a sign that the time is coming to leave school behind, but still – it\u2019s sad. The end of innocence really. At least she\u2019s lasted longer at school than I did. I left half way through my 7th form year: I could stand it no longer. The fixation with the correct uniform, the time wasted with assemblies and other twaddle, the unhealthy addiction to punctuality – it just wore me down. But at least my school was free…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend of mine has daughters at one of those poncey expensive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sa8Ukf-cheers","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10255,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/29\/another-long-weekend-another-tropical-island-holiday\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":0},"title":"Another long weekend, another tropical island holiday.","author":"Interloper11","date":"June 29, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Does that make me sound like a wanker? No matter, because I\u2019m glad to be here. I used to see at work occasionally an equipment rep who lived up the coast, not far from our beach house at Waikanae. We would chat about life up in Kapiti, and the last\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/IMG_8252-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5547,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/10\/nether-garments\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":1},"title":"Nether garments","author":"Interloper11","date":"October 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Our lovely elderly female patient came to theatre for her fracture repair still wearing her petticoat. While the nurses and I were wondering whether to remove it or not once she was asleep, the orthopaedic registrar asked \u201cwhat actually is\u00a0a petticoat?\u201d I was dismayed by his ignorance but then thought,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1607,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/03\/the-princess-and-the-pea\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":2},"title":"The Princess and the Pea.","author":"Interloper11","date":"February 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A mountain bike ride on Makara Peak this afternoon, in the heat. A bit rusty with my skills after a break of a couple of months, coped OK with the workload but on one of the more technical runs* I came to grief, falling sideways off a bridge into a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1479,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/12\/dog-days\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":3},"title":"Dog days","author":"Interloper11","date":"January 12, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Walking to the beach yesterday with the dogs, a cyclist stopped me and said \u201cis that a cairn terrier?\u201d, I said it was, and she asked if she could pat her. \u00a0\u201cWe had a cairn for years, she died just before Christmas\u201d, she said tearfully. The husband chipped in that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2977,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/30\/lose-lose\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":4},"title":"Lose – lose","author":"Interloper11","date":"July 30, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"So, a seven year old girl gets reversed over by a rubbish truck on her way home from school, and lo and behold, the coroner blames the parents. It wasn\u2019t enough that she was accompanied by her older siblings, she needed an adult right there. What he means is, her\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5492,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/26\/categories\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":5},"title":"Categories","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 26, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Had a lovely dinner at a local restaurant where we managed to fit most of our meal in\u00a0al fresco\u00a0before the heavens opened while we were waiting for dessert and we had to move to a table undercover. We\u2019ve all been waiting for the weather bomb to arrive so we were\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}