Entry tags:

food, school

Any other interpretations are All In Your Minds
Conversation over on Reddit, prompted by this image:

the_bob: Since when are meatballs a meal in of themselves!?
pozorvlak: If these are anything like the faggots I was served in my youth, they're quite serious hunks of meat and onions and god-only-knows.
rockefeller2: Was this served in a Catholic church?
pozorvlak: English boarding school. But the principle's similar.
Sabremesh: Did your school have fagging, too?
pozorvlak: In former times, but not while I was there.
Actually, come to think of it, that's not quite right. I went to two different boarding schools in the course of my education: one served us faggots but IIRC never had fagging, and the other had had fagging in the past but didn't serve us faggots. The food was considerably better in the one with fagging but not faggots, though faggots were actually one of my favourite school meals at the one with faggots but not fagging. Although the huge servings of instant mash and peas that they served the faggots with were less pleasant.
pozorvlak: Actually, the school with fagging but not faggots had started life as a Catholic school. But mainly because it was founded before the Reformation.
Sabremesh: Thanks for that! At my boarding school we weren't served faggots, and never had fagging, but I can confirm that fags were everywhere, but heavily frowned upon. In fact smoking indoors was an expulsion offence.

For the terminally confused, faggots are a (very tasty) foodstuff geometrically intermediate between a meatball and a burger, made of pork offal, onions and herbs, and fagging was a system whereby younger boys acted as servants to older boys. It's not clear to what extent this was a form of institutionalised paederasty. "Fags", of course, are cigarettes in British slang.