Tuck in
INSIDE a square wooden case lurks an assortment of food items lovingly aggregated by parents in the closing days of the school holidays. Depending upon the era, this might include anything from bottles of pickle, homemade jam, ginger beer and tins of Vienna sausage to lurid, coloured packets of sweets, crisps, instant noodles and squeezy bottles of tomato sauce. A 1920 edition of the British Journal of Dentistry and Prosthetics describes the tuck box as one of the ‘greatest enemies to all-round fitness’ among pupils.
There is no item more evocative of British boarding-school life, with its blazers, rainy morning chapel, evening prep and match teas, than this. A miniature trunk, secured with a padlock and emblazoned with its owner’s name, the tuck box has been a
