Last Post

The AGM is over and Chris Darnell (M 1965) has been duly elected as President and the medal handed over. He will be a great President for the school's 150th anniversary and we all wish him well. Meanwhile hearty congratulations are due also to Catherine MacLeod-Smith (Alb & L 1979), who has become the Chairman of the Trustees of the Society, the first woman to hold this office, as she was the first woman President. The President Elect for 2013 is Jane Everard (Alb & L 1976). Joe Davis, the Master, was elected an honorary member of the Society, as was Paul Wilkinson, the Bursar. Both have been great supporters.

This will be the last regular post on the blog now that the Presidency has been handed on. I hope you have enjoyed the miscellany of things. There are some posts which never quite made it, and I still have ideas, but 301 posts (including this one) in sixteen months has been quite busy. Of course the quality has been variable, and sometimes just a picture has had to do. The original idea was to post once a month or so, but I got enthusiastic and it has been much more than that. Sometimes I have had time to post daily, whereas over last summer the rate dropped down to less than once a week for a while.

Readers have come from all the continents except Antarctica, and at the time of writing there have been just under 25,000 page views. The busiest month was February 2011 with 1,645 page views from 1,020 unique visitors. People have stayed on the site too. At any one time according to the tracking software about 15% of my readers stay on the blog for more than 20 minutes, which is a long time for a website.

My family will be pleased that will not be forever taking pictures of Haileybury related things to put up on the blog. I have a set of pictures which did not get used for a series on 'nooks and crannies,' which was rather scorned by a friend who, seeing a photo of the urinal at the back of the pavilion on Lower Pavilion on my phone wondered whether people really want posts on 'places where I urinated when I was a teenager.'

Thank you all for reading. I shall leave the blog on the internet, and you can use the links on the right of the page to read the old posts. I am investigating how to make Haileyburiana available as a book using Print on Demand and will put up a notice if that can be done.

Finally, the Master said in his address to the AGM that in the 150th year he would ask the Director of Music to teach the school the Vivat, which has not, I think been sung at Haileybury for 20 years (the hymn Lift up Your Hearts, having largley taken its place). Here is an attempt at a Sesquicentennial verse:

Now we've been here thrice fifty years

Vivat Haileyburia!

Living out our hopes and fears

Vivat Haileyburia!

Girls have come to join the boys,

In other lands they share our joys,

And still this song our tongue employs

Vivat Haileyburia!

I fear it is not as good as AG Butler's original:

Then close your ranks and lift your song!

Vivat Haileyburia!

That life is short, but love is long;

Vivat Haileyburia!

And all through life, where'er we be

School of our hearts, we'll think of thee

And drink the toast with three times three

Vivat Haileyburia!

Autumn Leaves

The September sunshine is making the arboretum lovely as the leaves begin to turn. At least speaking for myself I have not been terribly aware of the arboretum, which lies behind the Lightning Oak on the gound beyond Terrace Field. I took some pictures in the Summer which must do for now, though when I go to Haileybury at the weekend I shall try and get some more autumnal images.

Broken Bough

At Haileybury last week I saw that the Lightning Oak had shed a bough. I thought at the time that I should get onto the Bursar to suggest that the timber was made into coasters and so on, but then I didn't and now it has all been cleared.

Can you spot the hole?

Arbori In Altera Terra

There are two exchange students from Haileybury Melbourne at College at the moment. Their distinctive piped blazers and badges make them stand out. Ailsa Wallace and Ryuun Fujihara are blogging aboiut their experiences and you can read the first post here.

Ailsa notes the differences of the physical enviornment.

I was struck by this picture of a tree at the Austrailian Haileybury when I had a hunt about on their website.

Similar - but different!

Lift Up Your Hearts

Mighty Oaks from little acorns grow. 

Oldest Haileyburian?

The Dumb-bell Oak stands at the bottom of Terrace. It is an ancient boundary oak, pollarded in its youth to thicken the trunk and prolong its life. Molly Matthews notes in Haileybury Since Roman Times that it is by an ancient right of way - a Portway - a Saxon name for the road to the market, and on what was the boundary of land owned by Hertford Priory before the Reformation. It may be seven or eight hundred years old.

Seven minute (half) mile

It is all the fault of a tree. A rather magnificent tree, but a tree which the Hertfordshire planning officers said could not be felled. It rises majestically from the clutter of huts and garages which deface the area between College Road and the kitchens, and it prevented the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) block being built there. Even a design which would have curved round the tree was rejected as the footings would have disturbed its roots.

This living but stationary obstacle has thus required of the smallest members of the Haileybury community that they learn to scuttle about as quickly as the squirrels who leap about in the branches. If the time-table with imperious command requires them to zoom from Lower School to French or Spanish, the regulation five minutes between lessons seems hardly enough. 

Last week the new Head of Lower School spent a morning shadowing a class, being a pupil for a day. My Lower School spy was ecstatic. "She believes us - it isn't long enough! We will get seven minutes between lessons." We shall see. If they do, it is the fault of a tree.