IN these days of carriage-less horses, one can easily forget the simpler things in life. The rush of anticipation on receiving a letter from Mama and a package of crimble cake from the stable boy's mother. But how soon 1995 sluices like a wet jelly into 2002 - in the blink of seven years, peppered only with achievement and cries of Vivat Haileyburia. How soon we forget that our end is another's beginning.
Some of us may take the King's Shilling; some will call the City 'home'; others may yet turn to the Cloth. Whatsoever path we choose the shadow of our past will follow us like a beggar in Picadilly.
On the wider scale it has of course been a hugely difficult year for many people. A sense of change, of fragility, of transience, is all too inevitable in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, in the state of heightening tensions in the Sub Continent and the Middle East and nearer home. The rise of the Right, the acceptance of intolerance and bigotry must be resisted. So our little lives pale against this backdrop. it has nonetheless been cheering to see the sense of camaraderie that infused the Jubilee celebrations and so far, as we go to press, the progress of the England team.
So, how will we leave Haileybury? For myself I am more and more convinced that that question must be answered in these great schools. If they are sending out a constant stream of young men and women, not only of high intelligence (because that goes without saying) but also in habits strong in principle, who have learned that lesson so hard to learn in this luxuriant and self-indulgent time, to say the words "no," and "I can't afford," then I have little fear of our Country losing her great place among the nations. Sursum Corda! Up With Your Hearts!
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