‘Blame a cow’

You’ve heard, unfortunately, of hate crime and race crime. Here’s a new one to send out tremors within the ICS community, milk crime.


Inspector, last Tuesday week
‘It all started, Inspector, last Tuesday week when I saw the door of the milk fridge was open. I went to investigate and as I did so I saw boys scurrying at high speed away down the corridor. In the fridge there were tell tale empty spaces. And this is not the first time.’
To be filed under ‘next time I have a spare moment’? No. Because this is historical, cultural, arcane and mysterious. This is Jubilee Commemorative Album stuff. Bear with me. Over the years as the secondary school was proposed, founded, added to and completed, a small group of unidentified students have in microcosm proposed, founded, added to and completed a secret society dedicated to illicit lactate consumption, milk prod purloiners, cow juice junkies, if you will.

Like the wind
It is difficult to penetrate this secret society as it has no known leader, no meeting place, no written down membership conditions. Like the wind, you only ever see its consequences. The freemasons and mafia are beginners in comparison. But this group over the years and even generations - well, one generation – have risked punishment and ridicule in order to purloin milk cartons from the primary fridge and consume the contents on campus. In previous iterations of this secret society a rudimentary (and, frankly, pretty gross) pastime was added which involved playing football with an unopened carton and as a strong shot towards goal exploded the cow juice another was quickly substituted, and the game went on virtually seamlessly.

Shadows and silhouettes were glimpsed of post grade 5 size
I thought this year, for the first time, the enigmatic group had ended their sport, that the esoteric hierarchy had failed to pass on its secrets. But, as I say, last Tuesday week, milk was missing. Footsteps were heard. Shadows and silhouettes were glimpsed of post grade 5 size. The Dairy Dean was alerted. Colleagues were consulted. Tales and ideas were swapped in the DSC kitchen over morning break on the Wednesday. But eventually we shrugged our shoulders and sighed our sighs knowing that we could go after the malefactors, again, this time, once more. But our chances were slim of stamping out this noisome phenomenon. Why our collective despair? Because, it was alleged, they were now hiding in cupboards, too.

NB. It IS the primary school’s milk and when secondary students take it, it IS theft so warnings have been given out. We shall not shirk. I will keep you in the loop.