An 1894 Complaint to RGS Newcastle, Signed by a Coat

The grievance is pegs. Lower-school boys, the coat says, crowd the pegs by the main entrance, when there are other pegs in the corridors. Then the 4.30 bell goes, everybody hunts for their coats, and the senior coats end up trampled. Its neck cord, the letter claims, has been broken twice. Not the boy. The coat. The boy, presumably, was fine.

The school still has it. Its anniversary page describes a pupil writing under an alias to complain about the treatment of coats in the entrance hall, “from the perspective of a coat!”, with the exclamation mark the material deserves. The Senior School Drama Club has since produced a dramatic rendition. An overcoat has had a stage adaptation. I have three children, and not one of them has had a stage adaptation.

The magazine, now NOVO, turned 140 in the 2025–2026 school year, and two Year 9 writers went back through the old issues for the anniversary edition. They found the school’s concerns surprisingly familiar, and a lot of jokes. My favourite is a line from the old School Pars column: “I hope my name will go down to posterior as good a man in the scrum.” The coat, at least, kept its dignity.

We have five pegs in our hall for five people, and somehow eleven coats. The eldest’s puffer is on the main-entrance peg, which is to say the one nearest the door, and has been since 2022. My husband’s fleece is on top of mine. The youngest’s parka lives on the floor, where it is trodden on every morning at 8.15, which is our 4.30.

So I wrote a letter. From my coat. A good wool one, bought in a sale, never once hung up properly. I listed the trampling, the fleece and the missing toggle, and pinned it to the fridge, and signed it B. Arbour, which I was pleased with for most of an evening.

The youngest replied the next morning, in felt-tip, from his coat. He signed it P. Arka. It is a better pun than mine and he is eight. His coat is now on the main-entrance peg. Mine is on the floor.