Cars

I still walk quickly because there were only five minutes to get from, for instance, the Art School or the Whatton Block to the Science Labs or Bradby. I have never been good in the mornings either, and the payback for maximising time in bed was the rush to get to breakfast on time from Hailey.

We have learned this week that visionaries are thinking about rocket - planes to cut the travel time from London to Sydney to two hours.

It is noticeable how many cars there are nowadays around Haileybury. There are many more day pupils than once there were, and many of those who, like my boys, board, go home most weekends. Parents come to watch games in large numbers and attend things at school much more than in the days when we were dropped off for eleven weeks of no contact except by post. Many senior pupils have cars. Car parks are springing up: on the corner of XX Acre; on the lawn outside the Batten entrance to the KBM block; by the mini range on the edge of Hailey Field, and anywhere people can park a car.

With the cars come notices and yellow lines and so on. I suppose it is inevitable, but it does seem a shame.

Reading

Returning to the 'Proud Father' theme from Sunday evening's post, seeing No3 reading in chapel as the youngest boy in the school (he will not be 12 until next August), I was put in mind of the reading I did as one of the youngest (my birthday falls in June) in my first term at Haileybury.

London Weekend Television broadcasted the Remembrance Sunday service from the Chapel in November 1979, and I was asked to read the scripture passage (it was the Beatitudes in Matthew Ch5). It was all a very last minute arrangement and I was whisked out of lessons to be drilled in getting it right. I remember the Chaplains (Peter Lewis and Jim Pullen) were pretty stressed.

I decided not to tell anyone in House that I was doing the reading; not sure why, I suppose I thought I might not be believed and that I might be thought to be showing off - a sure way to get taken down a peg or two. I remember sprucing myself up to be all neat and then having to help tidy up the VI From corridor kitchen ready for Sunday House inspection, and getting all messy in the process.

When the moment finally came I was put on the end of the row in Chapel, and the prefect sitting next to me thought I had gone mad when I got up to go and read.

It was the days before video recording was common. I seem to remember seeing a recording once some years later, but I don't know if it is anywhere preserved.

Harvest

The Indian Summer is keeping the grounds staff busy. The whole place looks immaculate as always, but it has a feel of Summer about it even as the leaves turn on the trees.

On Saturday they were mowing the grass.

Harvest

In my new peripatetic life going from one church to another and not having a specific parish of my own, I have missed any Harvest Festival this year. So singing "We plough the fields and scatter," in Chapel tonight at the new pupils' chapel service was a joy, where in previous years I might have thought 'Oh no, not again!'

I was playing proud father as No3 son shared reading the prayers, and also proud President as the other Lower School reader is also the child of an OH, the daughter of Andrew Hine (Tr 1979), who was an exact contemporary of mine. I don't think I had seen Andrew since we left Haileybury in 1984 until he greeted me in the meleé of parents dropping their children on the first day of term. One of the extraordinary things about my year as President and just being around Haileybury again, has been to meet people again after a lifetime.

Indian Summer

At Haileybury today I had my summer hat out in the sunshine on XX Acre to watch the Junior Colts team in which No 1 son plays win against Kings Canterbury. It was more cricket weather than rugby.

Rare picture of the Archdeacon not in clericals!

The school is in Summer uniform and there is talk of having to cancel next week's games if there is no rain. That in turn led to a conversation on the touch line about when conditions ever cause the rugby to have to be cancelled. Frost - which is of course the same problem as heat: the ground gets too hard; but anything else? No1 Son tells me that there was a match last season which had to be stopped when the fog became so thick that they could not see from one end to the other, and the ball (and the chap carrying it) would come out of the murk unexpectedly. Otherwise, rain, snow, wind they play through it all. After all, as we all know, when you stand on XX Acre there is nothing between us and the Ural mountains.

Just like Home?

I am away at the moment so blogging is light, but you migt enjoy this link to another group of Old Haieyburians.

http://oha.org.au/index.php?id=2

The Grubber

The Grubber has changed a bit since the days of scrambled egg sandwiches.

Here are some pictures of the swish interior as it is now.

But what they have not got is the pizza making machine I saw in the new student accommodation at Tottenham Hale last week. You pout £3 in at one end and a stone baked pizza comes out at the other!