Leo/Max Cookie Incident

The last day of term was always mufti day and bake sale day. On a particular such day, we bought our various biscuits and cakes, and went off to lessons. Leo Lenhard had bought a large cookie with green glitter on it (for... some reason..), except when the time came to eat it, it had disappeared.

Accusations were quickly thrown around, particularly towards Max. He denied any wrongdoing, but the ring of green glitter around his mouth suggested he was not being completely honest.

The Produce

We all needed a way to keep ourselves entertained in Ms Richardson's English lessons. One lesson, Max and I decided to chop up some apples wiht our metal rulers. After the lesson had finished, we somehow never considered just throwing them in the bin - we had to dispose of them discretely.

There was a small hole in the wood panelling in the room where the choir gowns were stored - where the radiator was. This somehow seemed to be the ideal place to put them. That was that...

...until we realised that we quite enjoyed doing that – and so began the 'produce'. We would take pieces of fruit and hide them around the school. Here are some that I can remember:

A mandarine in a drawer in Mr Fiveash's lab (which eventully turned to green dust)
A plum on the windowsill of Mrs Gilmour's Maths classroom (which just shrivelled up - although we always looked out of the window at the start of every lesson to check up on it. Mrs Gilmour never found out why we were so interested in looking out of the window every lesson)
A pear that looked like a penis, which I put behind a fire extinguisher (when I visited Hill House a few years later, the fire extinguisher was gone... so someone must have found the pear!)
Several fruits in the toilet cistern in the downstairs bathroom.
Half a cherry tomato in a small hole in the pipes in the downstairs bathroom.
A piece of butter in the same location
A banana on top of the cupboards in Mrs Rosillo's English classroom
A banana peel pinned to the cork board in the Fleming Room.
A mandarine inside a ski boot in Glion (I feel sorry for whoever discovered that one - especially if they found out by putting the boot on...)
A green apple in the choir gown room (ended up with a wall of fruit flies - so I hastily removed the apple and threw it away!)

That green apple was (I think) the last one. At that point I decided that it wasn't worth the risk anymore.

Hill House Soap

Back in my day, the downstairs boys' bathroom (and indeed the pupils' bathroom in Glion) were fitted with Provendi soaps. These were large yellow balls of soap, bolted onto a rod protruding from the wall. Having never seen them before in any other contexts, we all thought they were hilarious.

It turns out they were quite popular in French and Swiss-French schools from the 1950s to the 1990s (no surprises then that Hill House kept them going), and indeed you can still buy them today. I have one fitted in my bathroom at home (in the traditional Hill House lemon scent, of course).

Occasionally Giacomo would see them in shops when he visited the south of France, although I never had one of my own until 2025, when I found a shop whilst on holiday Paris where they were sold. The smell immediately brought me back to my days at Hill House, and indeed it still does whenever I wash my hands.

Sadly the government recently banned solid soaps from non-domestic buildings (which seems odd, to me - given that soap is a famously self-cleaning substance). Future generations of HH pupils will sadly no longer experience the joy of seeing a fresh new soap fitted to the wall...

The Padlock Challenges

Giacomo, Leo and I all had combination padlocks on our rucksacks, and during morning registration we would set them to new numbers, and give clues to each other to try to solve the locks.

The Fruit Runs

When we weren't setting padlock challenges, Giacomo, Leo and I did the morning fruit runs. Since we were in the dining hall in the morning, it was our form's responsibility to distribute bowls of fruit to each classroom that was occupied during breaktime. Leo stood by the door, telling us which rooms to go to, whilst Giacomo and I competed to see who could deliver the largest number of fruit bowls.