This afternoon I was checking out “You Tube” and the clips for “Ladette to Lady” a popular British reality show where ladettes are turned into ladies
Ladette: Usage: UK
- (informal) a young woman that behaves like a lad.
The show reopened a finishing school, called Eggleston Hall. Once a manor, it is situated in northern England on the north bank of the River Tees near Barnard Castle. It once resided Charles Neville, the 6th Earl of Westmorland. He was implicated in the Rising of the North against Elizabeth I in 1569. When I was 17 years old, the Hall was still a school and I was a student.
True to many English private schools, you pay top coin to have minimal supplies and amenities; faculty and parents call this character building. The school prided themselves for teaching the culinary classes without any electrical appliances other than a stove top and an oven. They call this “finishing school”, at the time however, I thought it was where the head mistress designed a year long curriculum to dick around with flowers and torture young women with cookware.
One exasperating experience came when choux pastry was being prepared. Since food processors was not available, this dense bowel of fattening goo must be beaten with a wooden spoon over a period of a couple of days. All girls went to bed with pain in our entire upper appendages. We finally made dessert with this mess and that was the last eclair that ever passed my lips.
I have some fond memories of my stay, particularly my runs in the breathtaking countryside. Two hour runs were not unusual for me, really these are some of the best moments of my life. A dilapidated church and cementary from the 11th Century was on the property. The students were forbidden to enter the premises, but I frequently toured. I tried my only cigarette when I gallivated with a group of classmates to the local corner store, but at three pounds ($6) a pack, even if I didn’t think it was horrid habit, I could not afford it. Memories are vast, perhaps inclusion at a later date.
Currently, Donald Trump is looking to cast Eliot Spitzer’s, former Governer of New York, hooker Ashley Alexander Dupré to join the cast of an American version of the show. At least she is going from Ladette to Lady and not the other way around, as in my case.
LADETTE TO LADY: Episode 1 (Clip)
