Figure 1.--This is a scene from the annual Drill Display at my Prep School. Note the variations on the theme of white shirt and shorts! Plimsolls were worn without socks.

For PT (as it was known there) indoors we changed into white plimsolls and removed our blazers and ties. In the summer we would normally be outside, for which we changed into white shirts (either button-up or t-shirts) and shorts, and wore plimsolls without socks. On (I think only) one occasion we were all told to strip to the waist, which I found very strange, but this was not normal practice. I don’t ever remember anyone doing PT barefoot. Games in the winter was football (soccer) for which we wore navy-blue shorts, football shirts in either white or the school colours, school football socks and boots. In the summer we played cricket, for which we wore much the same as for summer PT, but with white socks. Underpants were permitted, but not vests: the coloured football shirts were horribly scratchy on bare skin, so that I eventually persuaded my mother to line mine! The length of the PT shorts was quite variable, and latterly some boys wore them well above the knee, while others wore them little shorter than the gray shorts.

David