An obituary of the School Disco through the eyes of teenage Miss Polson – Lydia Torrington
In light of the time-old tradition of the school disco coming to an end this year because our generation has moved on from awkwardly dancing together to chart music in a dark room, it is only fitting to give respect to the disco by reminiscing on old memories of the disco from the 90s from our own Miss Polson.
The first thing that the ex-head girl was keen to make known about the late School Disco is that it was cool. And by cool, I mean that everybody who was anybody would turn up. Owing to the fact that the school was fully boarding back then, this may have due to the lack of better things to do on a Saturday, but still a good time was had by all.
The disco was such a big deal that there would be shopping trips with Mum the half-term before to find the perfect disco outfit which would then remained untouched until that sacred Saturday eve when you would take hours to get ready with your peers. Due to the influence of the risqué Brittney Spears at the time, short skirts, tight tops and PVC were all the rage much to the disproval of the teachers stood on guard around the room, especially when the explicit version of Shaggy’s ‘it wasn’t me’ came on. However, the one-metre rule between girls and boys kept all behaviour completely PG at all times.
Many weeks before the disco came around, you would ensure that you had a boy or girl on your arm to walk you into the event and to be your dance for the night. As Miss Polson liked to make known, due to the lack of social media and accessible phones back in the day, there was no way of sliding into the DMs of the date that you wanted to ask. Instead, the keen RHS-ians of the day would resort to a letter writing system. You would write letters that you would smoothly pass to one another whilst crossing paths in the locker. According to Miss Polson, the system was so efficient that you would often receive a reply by the next lesson, so you may benefit from using letters the next time you urgently need to get a letter to someone.
The highlight of the school discos was watching the Nelsoners come up in their glad rags and passing them as they came in and you were sent off to bed. Miss Polson can’t claim to have ever spoken to said Nelsoners, but she has many memories of staring up at them in awe before being kicked out before the real party started.
In terms of music in the late 90s and early 00s, run DMC was all the rage, most notably their songs ‘it’s like that’ and ‘it’s tricky’ which are still often dragged out at parties. A huge circle would be formed, and those brave enough would show of their breakdancing skills in the middle. I am told that the ‘worm’ made a regular appearance. Also up there in Polson’s favourite school disco musical memories was good old ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis which of course we are all familiar with. Miss Polson assures that the famous song ‘tubthumping’ by the interestingly named Chumbawamba was the song that birthed moshing which happened often in the Assembly Hall and even ended in shoes going missing and juniors being trampled on. Perhaps it is the lack of this in our current school discos which may have led to its demise. Of course, the macarena made a regular appearance and all the kids who were there would line up and do it together, something that has not happened in any discos I’ve been to. Although it is sad that the disco is dying, perhaps the social side of the school will move onto bigger and better things.
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