Lift Up Your Hearts

Tempus fugit! I preached today at the golden jubilee in the priesthood of my training incumbent to whom I went 20 years ago last June. Fr John seems not to have changed at all since then. 

Time sometimes seems to have flown. Then again it can go so slowly. Waiting behind Big School for the team coaches to get back from Rugby with the teams - including no 2 son - it seems very slow. 

Maybe time really does go at different speeds. However that may be, what we do with the time we have is the important thing.

Trevelyan c1987

Sandy Rich (Tr 84) sent me this picture of the Trevelyan Dormitory in about 1987.

Sandy wrote: I rarely reminisce with OH's and thought you might also be interested in another picture from Mark Draisley's "Public School Photographs" - which you blogged about on July 7 2010. I've not been able to decipher exactly who is who (especially those in the distance) but I'm pretty sure the main people in the foreground are as follows:-

Rupert Edmundson (extreme left in black tee-shirt in compart), Victor Manning? (walking up house), Piers Chapman? (doing up Green Flash), Sandy Rich [me] (doing up tie in compart), Paul Dansie (head only visible), James Nodder (leaning on compart wall).

I remember Mark Draisley spending a week-or-so at Haileybury towards the end of a summer term. I think that I was in the Vths so it may have been 1987. I recognise so many faces from his images but only recall about 1/2 the names now!

Master in Charge of Antiques

Congratulations to Sandy Rich (Tr 1987) on winning the Antiques Master BBC series in the final screened last night. It was by all accounts a nail biting finish.

He writes

Since leaving University I've been in insurance, but have always had an interest in art, antiques and history. My wife spotted a call for contestants for the series, which was billed as “a cross between Mastermind and Masterchef... but for antiques”, and she and our children encouraged me to apply. My "Chosen Specialised Subject" in the heats was "British Commemorative Objects 1750-1900" (a nice, concise period) which saw me through as highest-scoring-runner-up to this week's Semi-Final and from there to the Final. Unfortunately, we now have to drop specialities, so it's wits alone (Eric Knowles seems to take great pleasure in throwing googlies into the mix so expect the unexpected).

Of course the OH blazer is at the cutting edge of modern fashion, so not sure how the BBC let that into the publicity shot along with all the old fashioned stuff.

Family Album

FCO Shaw (Th 1903) was a photographer whose album has been posted on Flikr. There are some splendid pictures of Haileybury both from 1905 when he was a boy but also from the 1930s. According to the Register, during the Great War Shaw served with the Honourable Artillery Company and with the RAF, before becoming a wholesale drug supplier.

There are pictures of the OTC at Summer camp in Aldershot in 1933, and a splendid shot across Terrace towards the Bradby showing the water tower. There is a picture of Shaw himself taken in 1912 in Buenos Aires here and here.

This is not from the Shaw Album, but gives a flavour of the period.

There is a picture of a very well scrubbed 'prep school boy' taken in about 1928, which is thought to be of FOJ (John) Shaw (H 1931), FCO's son, who became a doctor and a Lt Colonel in the RAMC.

Flikr does not allow one to download other people's photographs, so do follow the links.

These are pictures from the same period to give a flavour.

Gamma

They call it "The Uniform Shop," but the Gamma is still in the same place next to the Rackets Court. We went in on Saturday to sort out some studs and a spare pair of rugby socks.

Most of the business of buying uniform is done on line these days, and the trip to John Lewis on Oxford Street (who are anyway no longer the uniform provider) is no longer part of the rites of passage of joining Haileybury.

I seem to remember that the Gamma used also to do dry cleaning and that trousers and jackets put into hags were sent there to be cleaned with an extra on the school bill. None of that seems to be the case today. Polycotton has much to answer for!