PINEAPPLE CIDER (from the Southern Hemisphere) this is a recipe handed down through three generations of Diocesan School for Girls girls. Since pineapples grow prolifically in Grahamstown, the ingredients were plentiful but a great deal of skill and cooperation was involved in getting the skins from the institutional dining room to the group dormitories. This required considerable organization.

Directions: come prepared with the equivalent of a plastic bag (not easily obtainable at a boarding school). When the prefect at the head of the table is distracted, slip as many skins as possible into the bag without its becoming too heavy. At the next opportunity tuck the package into the outer side of your bloomers* At the end of the meal, walk carefully out of the dining room and straight to the dormitory. (Some danger lies in not predicting whether everyone will be ordered directly into chapel or the auditorium.)

Process: Place the pineapple skins in the wash basin provided with each girl’s cubicle. Add sugar (as much as can be collected) and immerse in water. Cover with a bath towel. Place under the bed for the first three days and stir regularly. If, by the end of three days, the matron (usually a penniless widow who could find no employment other than herding dozens of girls to bed or to get up at 6.30 a.m.) has not detected the absence of a wash basin, it is advisable to move the fermenting concoction to some other safe place. A ledge outside a bathroom window is ideal if available. If, as was seldom the case, the cider had not putrefied after a week under the southern sun, it will have developed a good intoxicating quality. In any event, the main advantage of this recipe is the enormous status the perseverance, farsightedness and vision that the makers achieved among their peers - and even among the boys over the wall at St. Andrews College.

*1. women’s loose-fitting almost knee-length knickers. 2. colloq. any women’s knickers. 3. hist. women’s loose-fitting trousers, gathered at the knee or (orig.) the ankle. Mrs. A. Bloomer. Amer.social reformer d. 1894, who advocated a costume called “rational dress”. (The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary)

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