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I find it fascinating that I don’t understand a sentence of this.



'mandatory milk'

Many primary schools in the UK in the 1960s/1970s would have had 'milk monitors' - pupils whose job was to help distribute small servings of milk to their classmates. The milk distribution was an attempt to offset child malnutrition. The role continues to evoke strong feelings today. The Brit ex prime minister Rishi Sunak was described as a 'jumped up milk monitor' and when (in the 1970s) Margaret Thatcher as education secretary (minister) cancelled the school milk programme, she was reviled as 'Thatcher Thatcher Milk Snatcher'.


I was "computer monitor" (no pun!) for a year in the 1990s, when I was about 10.

I can't really remember the timing, but perhaps in the first half hour before lessons had started I would go to the classrooms of the 5-8 year olds, and if the teacher wanted I'd switch on the classroom computer and load the required program. (Maybe a different child did the 9-11 year olds' classrooms?)


In this case 'fag' seems to follow the definition: an English public-school boy who acts as servant to an older schoolmate

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fag


It’s listed on that page as a synonym for toil or drudgery. So basically a chore is a fag. It seems like the definition you mention is likely the origin of today’s gay pejorative.


It's the same definition. A servant is a person who toils. This is a discussion about English public schools.


See also: ‘can’t be fagged’.


Recommend Roald Dahl's "Boy" for a fascinating glimpse.


As well as a reminder that, at the time (~1930), it was really just a form of extended and unusually cruel hazing.


I found it fairly transparent, maybe because I've read more than one novel in that setting.


Something happened around 7:00-7:15, of that we can be sure.




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