Jolly-hockey-sticks

Polly couldn't abide Pat Walsh's bossy, jolly hockey-sticks manner and her curious predilection for calling absolutely everyone "babe."

We had to march along behind one of our mistresses — they were all very jolly hockey-sticks. March to church and then a lockstep turn about the park, everyone staring at us, knowing where we were from.

There was a brigade of horsy women with enormous arses, moustaches and jolly-hockey-sticks ideas about everything walloping about in all directions, whose skins had weathered like leather and whose breath and hands always smelled of horse saliva and dung.

Boarding-school life was a lot like Mallory Towers or St Clare's, the fictional jolly-hockey-sticks schools created by Enid Blyton. 'We would have midnight feasts, and I suppose it was a bit like the Blyton books,' recalls Susan Lawrence.