Rohan Candappa, Nick Wahla, Me, Steve Butterworth, Ollie Goodwin, Rich Davis & Lisa Pavlovsky – thank you for the photo, Mr Waiter.
A gathering of friends who went to my school, and great fun it was too. It is always enjoyable and uplifting when we meet up.
On this occasion, we gathered at Souk in honour of Rich “The Rock” Davis, who risked flying out of Toronto to London despite his own absence from air traffic control when so-doing.
But what should we call ourselves? “Alleyn Old Boys” was the standard term when we joined the school. Replaced by “Alleyn Old Boys And Girls” when the school went co-educational, while we were there. That’s a bit of a mouthful, though.
“Alleyn Alums” still has the requisite gender neutrality, but Latin is so old hat. Indeed some of us…no names, no pack drill Nick Wahla, showed little affinity for that classical language 50 years ago, and have not exactly changed their minds since then.
Coincidentally, I have recently had to grapple with this vital old-school nominative question for practical reasons. As part of my sporting activities playing real tennis…
…and as foreshadowed in one of my Ognblog pieces a few months ago…
…I have indeed teamed up with Professor Simon Barton (Alleyn’s 1970-1977, stop sniggering at the back of the class) to represent our old school against a pack of rather more seasoned old school pairings in The Cattermull Cup the weekend after Easter. I settled on “Alleyn Old Folk” as our team name, which seemed to amuse Simon – you need a sense of humour to deploy his medical discipline, and even more so to partner me at tennis.
But El Presidente, or Praeses Designatus as Nick Wahla would probably not put it – i.e. Lisa Pavlovsky, was unimpressed by that choice of title.
Sensible suggestions please,
she demanded. Someone needs to explain to Lisa that she is hanging with the wrong crowd if sensible suggestions are what she’s after. Inspired by Lisa’s plea for ideas, Rohan Candappa suggested:
The Canada/Greenland/Pavlovsky Plan – to invade Dulwich College and seize its resources. Finally our CCF training will come in handy! ‘Make Alleyn’s Great Again’ hats will be available for all).
But enough of this forward-looking frivolity. Such gatherings are primarily about reminiscing the past, not planning an heroic future.
There was a lot of talk that evening about train rides to and from school, plus parties which I didn’t attend…probably because I wasn’t invited…where juvenile behaviour, excessive high spirits and resulting broken glass seemed to feature a great deal. I have commissioned DeepAI to produce a couple of illustrative pictures, which I have entitled “Lightbulb Moment” and “Sliding Doors Moment” for reasons of my own.
Everyone played their part, but the hero of the evening was undoubtedly Rich “The Rock” Davis, who had flown in on the redeye from Toronto that very day, carelessly losing five hours in the process, yet still he was up for a Moroccan meal with his old school pals. True grit.
However, the evening ended on a very unfortunate note for me personally. I hadn’t noticed, on arrival, that one of our number had come to Souk on a bicycle. As I was slightly tired and a little emotional, perhaps not articulating my every syllable in my trademark, crystal clear, received pronunciation manner, I mumbled:
Whose is the bike?
…which Rohan, failing to catch my copula, aurally, as it were, mistook for the phrase, “Who’s the bike?”
That’s outragous – you’re cancelled, Harris,
said Rohan, who then followed up the evening with a new nickname for me – Ian “Cancelled” Harris, plus a new one for Ollie – “Glass-breaker” Goodwin.
So there you have it – we all have nicknames now. It’s only taken 50 years to complete the set.
Candy, Gob, Cancelled, Peanut, Glass-breaker, The Rock & El Presidente.