Guest Piece By Andy Dwelly: Memories Of & Thoughts On Stephen Jenkins – Alleyn’s School Teacher Extraordinaire

Stephen Jenkins in Combined Cadet Force (CCF) garb, c1975

Andy Dwelly and I were both at Alleyn’s School between 1973 and 1980. We were in the same class for one year only, in 2AK, 1974/75. But both of us, separately, experienced the phenomenon that was the “teaching style” of Mr Jenkins. In Andy’s case, as a nipper in 1C. In my case, in the third, fourth and fifth years. I have written a little about Stephen Jenkins previously and will no doubt write more as my diary trawl 1975-1978 unfolds.

Meanwhile, Andy has written the following charming, informative and thoughtful essay about the man. I am honoured and delighted that Andy has asked me to publish this piece on Ogblog.

Mayan friezes at Xunantunich, Belize

Some memories of my life around 1973 recently resurfaced and I found myself curious about our most unusual teacher, Mr. Jenkins, or Mr. Murder as he introduced himself to class 1C in 1973. That research led to Ian’s blog and the fact that Mr Jenkin’s given name was Stephen. That was something that I’d either forgotten – or given the distance between masters and boys, never actually knew. That name turned out to be the key that reveals some things about this uncommon individual that are still available to us.

I’m older now than he was when he taught us, and although I’m sure he would have regarded it as gross impudence, I’m going to refer to him as Stephen from now on. I’m interested in the individual and I’m perfectly willing to speculate where actual facts are unavailable. There are known facts though.

Stephen was born in 1920 so he would have been in his early fifties when we first encountered him.

Given his birth year, he must have been involved in the 2nd World War in some kind of military capacity and presumably stayed in the army for some time after. He was in fact Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Stephen Jenkins. In practical terms that means he probably would have been the commanding officer of a battalion – perhaps three to four hundred men.

If you needed to find him, to hand in some late homework for example, he could invariably be found in the CCF storage rooms in the basement level of the main school.

I was surprised when Ian pointed out that he was appointed head of the CCF in 1975, and was also in charge of a variety of other extra-curricular activities including fencing, wargames, photography, and he was house master of Brown’s as well. I wasn’t in Brown’s, so I don’t know how much of an active part he played in that area of the school, but I can report that in several years of war gaming including some rather good tank battles – I never saw him.

Eric Randall – most in our era would have associated Eric, rather than Mr Jenkins, as the CCF’s leader. Also to note, I (Ian) would have processed this picture through the Photographic Society, within which I was highly active for some years, but I don’t remember ever seeing Mr Jenkins there.

One notable characteristic of the man was that he could rhapsodise for hours on something that most reasonable people would regard as an insignificant detail. On one occasion he got started on the best way to take notes and he carefully went over his personal highly evolved system of note taking and notebooks. This included the one he carried around with him all the time, and the larger one where details got transferred to at appropriate moments. There might have been even more significant notebooks in a strict hierarchy that were used in special ways.

For some reason I have the impression that he used various coloured pens as well. Unfortunately I did not learn much more about the Fertile Crescent that I think was the actual subject of the lesson. I did learn that he had a great many notebooks and I developed a distinct impression that he would soon be checking up on us to make sure we were all carrying small notebooks as well. That last one must have struck a chord as inevitably I do happen to do that these days.

Editor’s notebook and editor’s note thereon: “I think I have spotted a pattern here, Andy”.

He was married in 1969 to a wholly remarkable woman, Thelma Hewitt. She died in 2019 and her obituary in The Times reveals perhaps more than Stephen would have liked about his own life. She certainly saw something special in him.

Stephen claimed a working knowledge of three oriental languages. Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchu. He also had a personal interest in the Maya and said he was familiar enough with their hieroglyphs and dialects to be able to translate them. He once set me a “project” of finding out what I could about the Maya and marked me down when all I could actually locate were facts about the Aztecs. I’m inclined to take both these claims at face value.

Tikal in northern Guatemala – a magnificent Mayan site

He did in fact visit Mongolia and I suspect Tibet, around 1970 for an extended period. This was one of two claimed visits though I can find no record of the other one. Rowswell showed admirable independence of thought when he publicly doubted this story…

Rowswell was however, completely wrong.

Stephen Jenkins went to Mongolia alone – ostensibly sent by the British Council. He returned several months later in very poor health and only able to walk slowly. He was nursed back to health by Thelma and he must have partly recovered by the time we knew him. Unfortunately the Gobi desert, a few hundred kilometres to the south was used throughout the 60s for above ground nuclear tests by China.

Project 596 Nuclear Test

His condition was poorly understood at the time but I speculate that at some point he may have been exposed to a significant amount of radioactive fallout. His death from bone cancer in the ’90s might have been caused by this. I don’t have an exact date although it was probably in or near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire.

I think some of these factors might explain both the slightly fierce personality that he displayed and his disinclination to actually teach. If he had been invalided out of some senior military position he would have effectively gone from a job with a great deal of responsibility and respect to trying to teach a class of thirty or so unruly south London boys in a subject that he had training in, but no very special interest. On top of this he was not entirely well. I have to acknowledge that in terms of actually teaching he was far from the most able. I suspect some very senior strings may have been pulled to get him the position. Of course that’s pure speculation on my part.

What he was interested in was a very esoteric form of Buddhism, UFOs, ley-lines, and ghosts.

Given the Christian-centric nature of Alleyn’s he certainly downplayed his own spiritual beliefs but as he claimed to have been instructed in both the theory and practice of Tantric rituals in Mongolia, I have no doubt that he was effectively a practising Buddhist. The other obsessions (they really were obsessions) seem to have gained their power from this.

These are bold claims. Where’s the evidence?

The first is from the relatively brief obit about Thelma, published here – just click.

Mostly about Thelma naturally but Stephen gets a look in.

The rest are from his book – The Undiscovered Country – which was recently reissued by somebody or other at around £17 on Amazon.

It’s very densely written but reading through it certainly gives you a flavour of the man and his era. It’s a reprographic copy of the 1982 edition I think. The pictures are very poor quality but it’s an interesting read. This reveals his age, his language abilities, his interests, and something of what he was doing while he was in Mongolia. He doesn’t give a lot of personal details but they are there. If you want to get it, don’t confuse him with the Cornish poet of the same name. Amazon certainly has.

If you cast your mind back to the actual cultural situation in 1973, ideas similar to his were having a rather public moment. Lyall Watson’s Supernature had just been published. Dr. Who in the form of the third Doctor had spent his final six episodes partly in a Buddhist monastery in Somerset. [Stephen was certainly aware of Dr. Who]. Uri Geller had bent spoons on Blue Peter. The Sunday Times had published a full colour story on Kirlian photography and auras in their Sunday Supplement. These were just the tip of the Age of Aquarius iceberg.

Samding Monastery, Yomdrok, Tibet. Editor’s note: Janie and I have been to Tibet. Really…honestly…

I can certainly forgive Stephen for his enthusiasms and he was working in a situation that surely wouldn’t have welcomed some of his more obscure views. Given the things he was prepared to talk about, it seems strange to claim that he was actually relatively reticent, but he was and we can hardly blame him.

Certainly one or two of the other staff must have been aware at some level of what an odd duck he actually was. I recall that we were occasionally asked by various incredulous staff members what outlandish tale he had come up with in the previous lesson. The one that actually sticks in my mind was his claim that he owned a cat that could talk. I was never able to tell if he was serious with that one or simply playing with our heads. I’m also very fond of his description of the instantly deep frozen mammoths around the size of Alsatian dogs that had been discovered in Siberia – were they actually mammoths?

Thanks Stephen. Godspeed.

Just a final editor’s note…or footnote. Stephen Jenkins clearly had a long association with Alleyn’s School, having been a pupil there and having taught there for many years before his Central Asian adventures/misadventures and his years teaching us.

This is a link to the above archive photograph from 1967, on Mirrorpix, where this image and others are licensable. It depicts Stephen Jenkins with singer/actor Gary Miller and his sons, ahead of a production of Hamlet at the school. Clearly Stephen Jenkins was properly active with the Drama Society at that time. And in the great Stephen Jenkins tradition of going off at a tangent – Gary Miller’s biggest hit was the theme music to the Adventures of Robin Hood. Try listening to the following YouTube and then getting that tune out of your head.

Once again, many thanks to Andy Dwelly for this corker of a guest piece.

Found Him! An E-mail Interview With Ian Sandbrook, 50 Years After 1S At Alleyn’s School, 6 November 2023

2020 Image “borrowed” from the bowels of the Endelienta Arts website

On the morning of Rohan Candappa’s small gathering of 1S chaps in late October…

…I thought I’d try to track down Mr Sandbrook, and indeed, a few day’s later, as reported in the above piece, I received a message from “Ian” addressed to “Ian”. Eventually it dawned on me that “Mr Sandbrook” and “Harris” were now, a mere 50 years later, on first name terms.

A few days after that, in response to my somewhat inquisitive follow-up, Ian wrote the following charming tour d’horizon of the past 50 years and a few Alleyn’s memories from his perspective.

Ian has kindly granted me permission to publish it here. It is reproduced below verbartim.

This image borrowed from LinkedIn

I’ve never been good at the alumni thing; I have lost touch with people with whom I have been close as I have moved to other places and situations and I have found that the few reunions I have attended have been rather hard work. But that hasn’t stopped me from wondering – frequently – what became of individuals who, somewhat unpredictably, surface from the past and come into brief but often quite sharp focus for a while.

So this 50 year-old blast from the past is quite a strange experience. I am very gratified to think that our trip to Scapino proved to be significant in some way; and I am amused that my ruse about looking for spelling errors on the blackboard has stuck in your memories. Funny to think too about how much has moved on – not many blackboards around in schools these days. Seeing the full form list of 1S set my synapses singing, although sadly only with tiny snatches of song.

I was only at Alleyns for 2 years, although they feel, in retrospect, to have been rich and full years. The salient memories were to do with the feel of the classrooms, hockey, snooker, the flat I shared with Dr Dave Wallace in Calton Avenue, particular staff such as Barry Banson, Colin Rowse, Paul Kingman – to name just a few.

Oddly enough, it was because of my role as the first-year form tutor of 1S that I moved on. I had decided that it would be a good idea to visit one or two of the schools from whom members of the class had come. Heber Primary School, in East Dulwich (which was rather rougher and tougher then than the somewhat gentrified district that it is now) was one of these. When I went to visit, the headteacher there persuaded me that I should switch to primary teaching and, cutting a longer story short, this is what I did. From there I moved into headship (at Rosendale Juniors, not far away) and on into the ILEA inspectorate. Thence to Hampshire’s school inspection and advisory service and then, eventually, to become Director of Education in Southampton. I completed my paid career with a five year freelance period as interim director of children’s services in various local authorities and as an educational consultant.

You did well to find me via Endelienta Arts. When I was a consultant in the noughties, I had a website which included a full CV. But the education consultant market contracted sharply in 2010 when austerity cut sharply into local authority budgets. My wife and I moved to North Cornwall, which we had come to know and love after my playing annually in the St Endellion Easter (classical music) Festival (also since 1973). While we were there, we helped to set up a new charity, Endelienta Arts, to run a year-round arts programme to complement the music festivals. Endelienta Arts is alive and well, responsible for regular concerts across the music genres, the North Cornwall Book Festival, reflective days, and a thriving arts outreach programme.

We moved to Lewes in December 2020 – mid lockdown – because we wanted to be closer to our grandchildren who are in Brighton and Tottenham. I’m still involved with the St Endellion Festivals in Cornwall but we are building a life in Lewes – singing in a choir, being a school governor, doing various bits of voluntary work, tending an allotment, lots of walking on the Downs, lots of culture – very much enjoying being part of a (slightly quirky) 15-minute community.

This is probably enough to answer the “I wonder what happened to him ?” question. Thank you for going to the trouble to make contact – and for the work that you do to keep the 1S community alive. As I said when I responded initially, it is gratifying to discover that one has left little bits of legacy in one’s slipstream – but it is only through the likes of you that I get to make such discoveries !

My very best wishes to all who might remember me from my brief but rewarding time at Alleyns.

I really enjoyed and was moved reading this note. Janie liked it too when I read it out to her. I feel sure that many Alleyn’s 1970s alums will appreciate the note. Thank you, Ian.

But there is just one small thing, Sir…I mean, Ian. I have spotted a spelling mistake in your e-mail. The same mistake appears twice. Does that mean I can claim 10p or 20p?

No-one likes a cocky little 11-year-old. Worse yet, one who is still cocky after all these years.

A Small Gathering Of Alleyn’s Chaps Who Started In The Class 1S Fifty Years Ago, 26 October 2023

Frankly, only Candappa could come up with an idea like this and see it through to implementation.

When I call my friend Rohan Candappa just “Candappa”, I am of course harking back to that time, 50 years ago, when we started secondary school and discovered that we all had surnames but none of us seemed to have first names.

Candappa – bellicose back then…

…merely cantankerous now: Rohan Candappa

But as usual, I am digressing.

The gathering was at The Young Vic, in commemoration of the first theatrical school trip of our young careers, with Mr Sandbrook himself, to see Scapino, in January 1974:

Rohan issued some specific instructions:

Dress code: Grey suits (too large ideally, but don’t worry, you’ll grow into it), black briefcases, and a slightly nervous smile. Oh, and make sure you’ve got some blotting paper in the briefcase.

I knew that I would be unable to comply fully with Rohan’s rules and also that I was no longer in a position to get my (late) mother to write a note of apology to Mr Sandbrook, our form teacher. I decided to commission ChatGPT to forge a note from my mum. It took four or five goes, as ChatGPT, unwilling to imagine itself in 1973 writing a note, was keen to use the phrase “1973 was a long time ago” as part of the excuse. Only when I advised it to use a “dog ate my homework” style of excuse did it muster the following:

Interesting use of a gender-neutral pronoun there. Not very 1973.

It was always only going to be a small group of us. In the end, only four of us met, as Dave French unfortunately was a bit poorly on the day. He did send an extensive note, which I shall quote from shortly.

The four of us who met were:

  • Candappa, Rohan
  • Goodwin, Ian
  • Maine, Myles
  • Harris, Ian (me).
Left to right, Me, Myles, Rohan, t’other Ian

We called the register – strangely while I was calling the register from my old 1974 diary, Dave French was sending me a message which included said register with some thoughts about the people, especially those who have sadly departed.

Dave French helpfully provided a legible list, when he wrote in to us:

Please raise a glass or three in my absence to:

Allott 

Athaide

Barrett

Burgess

Candappa – Candy

Carroll

Corrin

Dallaway 

Feeley

Foord – Dunkie

Forrest

Frearson

French – Frog

Goodwin – Milk

Handy

Harley

Hayes

Hollingshead – Mutt

Manhood 

Masson – Chimpy

Mayne

Moore

Ricketts 

Romain – Charlie

Sym

Stendall

???

One sobering thought was the realisation that at least four of our number have departed permanently. That’s at least as many departed as gathered that October evening. An attrition rate above 15% seems very high.

The memorial roll of honour is as follows:

  • Wayne Manhood – I have written an Ogblog piece – click here – including my own partly false memories of this one from the 1980s.
  • Jovito Athaide – as Dave French wrote: “I think it was in the early 1990s that I received a call from Jovito Athaide’s dad, letting me know he’d died suddenly from an undetected heart condition.” I think quite a few of us got this call – my parents probably told me about it without passing on my new number to Mr Athaide. I have an address and phone number for Jo in an old address book – I should imagine he made a point of collecting/exchanging them.
  • Dave Masson – Dave French writes: “I and a few others stayed very close to Dave Chimpy Masson for many years after school – very fond memories in the sixth form of going back to his house at 66 Woodwarde Road, 5 minutes from school, either at lunch or during free periods, to drink his home brew – made maths more tolerable in the afternoon. Devastatingly he and his mother-in-law died in a car crash in Namibia in 1995…his birthday, December 4th, is ingrained in my memory, and I always say “Hi” and raise a glass to him. Lovely guy”.
  • Paul Hayes – who died of cancer more recently, in 2017. He had many formal obituaries – e.g. the one linked here – as he was a high-profile media dude. We had our own Alleyn’s alums-style toast to him just a few weeks later.

Yet the four of us who gathered in October 2023 were able to park our melancholy, enjoy each other’s company enormously and share many reminiscences.

Rohan, being Rohan, brought a small collection of gifts for all of us who attended – a fountain pen, a piece of blotting paper and a notebook which he had craftily renamed G.W.B for general work book – gosh yes, I remember those.

Gifted, we were, all of us gifted.

Naturally, when I got home I wrote Rohan a thank you note in my GWB using my fountain pen and blotting paper.

I then scanned the note and e-mailed it to Rohan, which slightly spoiled the 1973 effect.

My favourite anecdote from 50 years ago was also one of Rohan’s. He recalled that, in one of our very first lessons with Mr Sandbrook, we were promised a princely sum of money – perhaps it was 10p – every time we spotted a spelling or grammatical mistake on the blackboard. Rohan recalls that it took him most of the year to realise that he was very unlikely indeed to hit pay dirt. Rather, Mr Sandbrook had duped him into paying attention to the spelling and grammar for best part of a year.

On the topic of Mr Sandbrook, I had exchanged e-mails with Rohan about the possibility of trying to track Ian Sandbrook down. Rohan said that he had tried to do that, but with only limited success. On the morning before our gathering, I decided to do a bit of detective work myself. I decided that an Ian Sandbrook who seemed to be highly active in the arts community of St Endellion, even since the days of teaching us, was still active there until very recently. The others agreed that the Endelienta bassoon reference clinched it, as we remembered Mr Sandbrook bringing his bassoon into the class room to show us.

What a rackett!

I decided to write to Mr Sandbrook via Endelienta and see what happens.

On 1 November, an e-mail arrived from “Ian” addressed to “Ian”…

…it took me a while to realise that Mr Sandbrook really had just written to me. He’d like to know how we got on when we met, so I’ll send him a link to this piece. Hopefully he will send through some thoughts and memories of his own, in addition to the thoughts he wrote in his first note. He might even grant me permission to share those thoughts with the Alleyn’s 1970s alums on Facebook, several dozen of whom tend to look at these postings, however long and rambling they might be. Even Mike Jones, formally of the masters common room, hangs out in the Alleyn’s 1970s Facebook group.

Oh, and by the way, there are no cash prizes for spotting my spelling and grammatical errors. I’m not falling for that one. But all subediting comments and corrections are gratefully received.

An Amal Alleyn’s Alum Net At Lord’s, 29 November 2022

Back in mid September, I sat next to Amal at a 50th anniversary bash for Saddlers’ Scholars. Amal had been part of the very first batch of such scholars, while I had been part of the very second batch.

If you look very hard, you can see me just to the left of the tree

Naturally conversation got around to cricket and naturally Amal and I ended up arranging to have a net at Lord’s for old-times sake a couple of months later.

Everything I want to say about that evening was captured in a King Cricket report on the matter, published soon after. (Less than a year is “soon after” in King Cricket terms):

If something ever befalls the King Cricket site, you might click this scrape instead to read that report.

Amal’s recollection was pretty spot on, if this extract from the Alleyn’s Scribblerus 1974 is anything to go by. For some reason, Colin Page doesn’t mention Amal carrying his bat for 0* -can’t imagine why not. But apart from that…

God’s Gift, Pure Genius, Or Both? Annex To Alleyn’s School Class Of 1980 Virtual Buttery 3, 20 January 2021

When I reviewed last week’s virtual gathering, I forgot to mention Paul Driscoll’s anecdote about the optional “prefect’s blazer” available to those of us who attained such giddy heights at Alleyn’s School. The blazer was emblazoned (pun intended) with the school crest and motto.

That motto was God’s Gift. Edward Alleyn no doubt meant that motto to symbolise education. But the phrase has a sarcastic meaning in modern parlance; e.g. “he think’s he’s God’s gift.” And as Rohan Candappa so ably puts it, “We are Alleyn’s. If you cut us we bleed sarcasm.”

Unsurprisingly, very few of us took up the offer of this optional, distinguishing garment. Beyond the sarcasm, such an emblem had every chance to land us in a heap near North Dulwich railway station, where the Billy Biros (pupils from William Penn School) needed little excuse to isolate an outlier from the Alleyn’s herd, taking severe retribution for invented sleights and offenses.

The main senior school uniform was a two-piece or three-piece suit. I have only one picture of myself wearing mine:

Me And Wendy Robbins, Autumn 1979, Westminster Bridge

I was reminded of all of this by a posting on Facebook in the Keele University alums area.

In the late 1980s, just a few years after a left Keele, when Guinness had a particular advertising slogan on the go, some fine folk in the University of Keele Students’ Union produced the following tee-shirt.

It dawned on me that I am a very rare example of someone eligible to wear not only the Alleyn’s God’s Gift blazer but also the Keele Pure Genius tee-shirt underneath the blazer.

In the dying moments of the Trump US presidency, this suitably modest mental image should be shared with the world and saved for posterity.

It’s just a shame I was unable to model the two garments together back then. I would have looked magnificent; indeed it would have been the best look ever, anywhere, for anyone.

With all due modesty…

But Me No Butteries, Virtual Buttery Gathering Of Alleyn’s Alums, 14 January 2021

This lockdown business is nobody’s idea of fun, but Rohan Candappa has been putting in some hard yards in setting up some meaningful distractions and social interactions.

This “Virtual Buttery” session was the third such gathering of the Alleyn’s School “Class of 1980”. I wrote up the first of those gatherings in the autumn:

It wouldn’t be Alleyn’s School without homework. For this third session, Rohan (egged on by Nick Wahla) asked some exam questions:

Nick Wahla’s suggested a question to ponder: “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”

It’s a good question, and one which I am obviously going to claim credit for. But I’d also like to twist it around a bit. My question is: “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?

I chose to answer this question by Ogblogging about the day I left Alleyn’s School…

…and confessing to the music I was putting onto my mix tapes at that time:

Anyway, loads of people turned up again…but not Nick Wahla – he of the exam question. Typical.

I took the headline screen grab more than an hour into the event, so several people had already come and gone by then.

Again we had participation from across the globe:

  • Neal “Mr” Townley in Sydney,
  • Andrew Sullivan in Phnom Penh,
  • Richard Hollingshead in Washington (desperately trying to convince us and himself that Washington State is a long, long way from security-alert-ridden Washington DC),
  • Paul Deacon and Rich “The Rock” Davis claiming to be in Ontario’s freezing cold lockdown, although I have a sneaking suspicion that they might actually be sunning themselves in the Caribbean, as seems to be the Ontario way,
  • Mark Rathbone, claiming to be in Purley, then Purely and eventually confessing to living in Kenley, a totally different place noted for famous current and former residents such as Des O’Connor, Peter Cushing, Harry Worth, Karl Popper (ironically, given this empirical falsification of the “Mark Rathbone lives in Purley” theory) and Douglas Bader – all together now – Da, da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da…or do I mean da-da, da-da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da…?

…I digress.

It is hard to summarise the answers to the exam questions, not least because everyone had a slightly different take on them. One theme that ran through the answers is learning quickly post school how to be yourself and follow your heart/instincts in what you want to become. Many of us suspect that we had more freedom to “find our own way” back in 1980 than pupils finishing their ‘A’ levels have now – as the route from school to career via university seems to be a more defined path now.

Some raised the matter of careers advice (it’s lack or paucity), others the more informal aspects such as teachers instilling us with confidence, arrogance or in some cases diffidence.

Naturally this led the conversation on to discussion about memorable teachers, good, bad or indifferent. Mr Jones got off pretty lightly considering he wasn’t there…

…which is more than can be said for David Wellbrook, who should have known better than to defy the wishes of Rohan Candappa by going AWOL, if Rohan’s opening remarks were anything to go by. Rohan’s willingness to turn on a loyal follower for the slightest slight is almost Trumpian in its intensity.

But then, as Rohan pointed out when the conversation turned to the vexed question of teasing, banting or bullying, we weren’t saints back then and we are hopefully a bit more grown up about it now. Well it was easy for him to say that AFTER the invective of his opening remarks.

Heck, I’m kidding. It was fun again and it seemed astonishing when Rohan pointed out that those of us who were around for the whole event had been gassing and listening for two hours.

A Virtual Gathering Of People Who Left Alleyn’s School In 1980, 12 November 2020

Blame Rohan Candappa.

Rohan Candappa: “I have another idea…”

Actually this was a very good idea. The face-to-face “40 years on” reunion had to be cancelled this summer, so Rohan figured we should have a “40 years on” virtual reunion through the good offices of Zoom instead.

Of course, back in the day, nobody used the phrase “back in the day”…

…and back then a Zoom was an ice lolly, not a meeting.

I paraphrase Rohan’s remarks in the form of a quote.

37 of us gathered, from a cohort of some 120. That’s about a third of us, which, 40 years on and with some of our cohort no longer with us…is a mighty impressive haul.

People joined from places as far afield as Ontario (Paul Deacon & Rich “The Rock” Davis), New Zealand (The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey), Phnom Penh (Andrew Sullivan), Australia (Neal Townley), Barcelona (Duncan Foord), Crouch End (Rohan Candappa) and Penge (somebody, surely?).

It seemed like a recipe for chaos, yet somehow the mixture of untrammelled chat and a little bit of structured “go around the virtual room for a memory each” worked surprisingly well.

Some of the people are friends I have seen relatively recently, one way…

…or another

…but many of the people present I had only corresponded with on FaceBook or not at all in the last 40+ years.

The array of memories was varied and fascinating. A lot of stuff about teachers, good, bad and (in some violent cases) especially ugly.

Some observations especially resonated with me and stuck in my mind. Paul Romain illustrated through readings from his first and last school reports that he was a keen scout at first, but by the end at least metaphorically semi-detached from the school…if not detached and several acres from the metaphorical school. That resonated with my experience.

It also brought back to me my lingering grudge against my late mum for throwing out my old school reports (and indeed all my juvenilia from that period apart from my diaries) on the spurious grounds that “no-one would ever want to look at that sort of old rubbish again”. When I challenged this assumption, by letting mum know that I was REALLY REALLY upset that she had done this, she said, “how was I supposed to know that you cared for that stuff?”. To which my simple answer was, “if you had asked me BEFORE you threw my things away, you’d have known.” No, I’m still not over it.

“Renée is an enthusiastic, diligent lass, but she sometimes allows her natural exuberance to mar her judgement”

I think it was Jerry Moore who held up some editions of Scriblerus (the Alleyn’s School magazine), threatening to scan and circulate some elements of them. I do hope he does that. David Wellbrook mentioned his first toe-dip into performing Shakespeare and the rather damning review Chris Chivers gave of his performance.

That all brought back to my mind my own somewhat involuntary performance in Twelfth Night, I think the year after David Wellbrook’s debut. I remember Mr Chivers’ Scriblerus review of my performance as Antonio; in particular I recall pawing over it on a train with my friend Jilly Black, trying to work out whether he was praising me or damning me with faint praise. I suspect the latter, but I would love to see the review again now that I am older and…well, just older.

I have to be honest about this; I really was not in the mood for a reunion come 19:30 on 12 November. I had received some horrible news just a couple of hours before the event; the sudden and totally unexpected death of a friend, Mike Smith:

Indeed I considered sending my apologies to the virtual reunion and spending the evening wallowing instead. But I thought better of doing that and Janie encouraged me to give the virtual meeting a go…I could always switch off the Zoom early if I really didn’t feel up to the gathering…

…anyway, I’m so glad I did join the group, even if I wasn’t entirely myself throughout the evening. It was great to see everyone and I learn that there is every chance that many of us will be doing it again.

I guess I need to dig out those diaries again and see what else I can find!

Bumping Into Old Friends Forty-Four Years Later, 15 September 2020

Tim Church (far left), Graham Watson (left bumper), Paul Deacon (right bumper)

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece about some schoolboy silliness from the 1970s, mostly revolving around my friend Paul Deacon, which included the above photograph:

In that piece, I promised to follow up the “bumps incident” in a further Ogblog piece, but subsequently that idea got mislaid amongst other musings and postings.

This morning, I woke up to discover this posting, from Paul Deacon, on my Facebook page; click here.

For those who don’t like clicking and/or object to Facebook, the following quote are Paul’s words on the matter:

Ian, with your recent birthday I thought of this legendary photograph of the ‘bumps’. However, with our advancing years it’s time to leave the school quad and visit pastures new.

[Several doctored versions of the above picture are displayed]

Which one appeals?

Thank you, Paul, for reminding me to write up the original incident. The time of year is apposite. It would have been around this time of year, I suspect September 1976.

My recollection is that we had witnessed somebody being given the bumps on their birthday; that was the tradition at our school and no doubt at many other schools past, present (even in these heath & safety, socially distancing, snowflakey times) and future.

Unfortunately, I chose to volunteer the information that, as my birthday takes place towards the end of the school summer holidays, I had always been spared the ritual humiliation of receiving the bumps.

Me & My Big Mouth

Some 44 years later, I still have not mastered the art of keeping my mouth shut when it really matters. But I have got a bit better at that art. The bumps incident, so brilliantly recorded for posterity by an (as yet) uncredited photographer, was one of many salutary lessons.

There’s a lot to like about the headline photograph. Paul Deacon seems hardly able to manage my weight in the matter of deploying the bumps, Paul’s growth spurt arriving a bit later than most of ours, Graham Watson’s perhaps a bit earlier. Tim Church is feigning disconnection from the incident, but I am pretty sure he was egging the lads on or at least enjoying the show. One (as yet) unidentified boy depicted is either oblivious or indifferent to the whole matter, reading the notice boards. Another day, another schoolkid getting the bumps. This was not a special or unusual scene at Alleyn’s back then.

Anyway, Paul has relocated the central subject-matter in several eye-catching ways and asked me to choose a favourite. So here is a scrape of all five of Paul’s. I have added titles of my own and marked Paul’s homework.

Goosebumps

Speed Bumps

Bumper To Bumper

A Bump In The Road

Down To Earth With A Bump

I have awarded Paul an A* for those five pictures; I think they are wonderful. Unfortunately the Ofqual algorithm has downgraded Paul’s GCSE Photography to Grade U.

Nevertheless, the winner for me is that last one: Down To Earth With A Bump.

Many thanks again, Paul.

School Dinners Again, Informal Alleyn’s Alums In The City, 28 November 2019

It was about time for another of our regularly-occasional gatherings of the old school clan, so, sure enough, an e-mail came through from John Eltham several weeks ago organising this evening for us.

More than a dozen of us gathered again, most for drinks at the Walrus & Carpenter plus dinner at The Rajasthan, while a handful came to just one or other of the venues.

This felt like a bit of a homecoming to regular City venues, as the last such gathering at this time of year was relocated to different venues, for some reason:

Anyway, my need to be in the City this week cunnningly conspired to coincide with this day, so I simply wandered over to The Walrus after work.

The group was already well gathered in the cunningly hidden dowstairs bar. Mostly comprising the usual suspects, the group also included Nick Wahla for the first time. Nick was in my class in the second and third years – here’s some evidence of the former:

According to the above piece, Nick’s nickname (if you can get your head round the idea of someone named “Nick” having a nickname), was “Gob”. It’s almost impossible to imagine why Nick might ever have been known as Gob. My guess is that the epithet “Gob” was handed down to Nick by our form master, Tony King, rather than an authentic compadre’s moniker.

Mr King, purveyor of synthetic sobriquets

In the Rajasthan, I ended up at the “breezy door” end of the room, next to Nick Wahla and opposite David Wellbrook, who for once in his life was being too polite that evening to promote his latest e-book – click here or the picture link below:

Soon we were joined by Mike Jones, who, coincidentally, had been form master to all three of us in our third year. Simon Ryan enocuraged the whole table to stand up and say, “good evening, Sir” to Mike, which I’m certain caused Mike not one jot of embarrassment.

We did a bit of 3BJ reminiscing at our end of the table…and why not? I particularly remembered Nick Wahla giving “Cyril” Vaughan a hard time in our Latin classes, but Nick claimed not to remember Cyril at all and went all “innocentia effecit imitatio” on the matter of Latin disruption, while admitting to having achieved a record low in his Latin exam. 8%.

Now I’m not saying that Nick was the main or only protagonist in the matter of Cyril baiting. Heaven knows, I personally pulled the “varnishing a stash of chalk and swapping the varnished variety for all the serviceable chalk” stunt…I am now prepared at this late stage to confess to that one…perhaps my best ever practical joke…especially the cunningly hidden addtional piece of varnished chalk waiting to be discovered in the master’s desk drawer…

…but I do distinctly remember Paul Deacon’s impersonation of Cyril, which was excellent vocally, normally comprising phrases such as, “…Wahla, please put that hand grenade down, there’s a good fellow…now Wahla, please don’t pick up that machine gun in place of the hand grenade, be a nice chap…”

If we’re really lucky Paul might chime in with a Cyril voice file to enhance this memory.

Bunch of clowns, we were and I’m sure the masters took great pains at the time to tell us that we wouldn’t be able to make a living in the real world writing silly jokes, speaking in funny voices and/or by having the gift of the gab.

Nick Wahla is now deploying his gift of the gab in the world of market research; he warned us all that no shopping visit nor even the supposed security of our own homes would make us safe from a possible approach by Nick at unsuspecting moments in our lives. It’s a minor miracle, it seems, that none of us have yet encountered Nick and his clip board in the field.

Meanwhile we ate Indian food, most people drank Cobra beer, while three of us (me, David Leach and Lisa Pavlovsky) braved the Indian Shiraz – I’m not sure we’ll be making that mistake with that particular wine again – my bad idea.

There was lots of chat.

At the end of the meal, it transpired that it was Paul Driscoll’s birthday and so David Wellbrook hurriedly cajoled the waiting staff into arranging a token birthday sweet, with which to embarrass Paul.

David Wellbrook uploaded a video of the resulting merriment onto Facebook – click here if you dare.

In that vid you can see an excitable-looking me (not sufficiently sedated with wine – one glass of that Shiraz was more than enough for me) jumping up to take the following picture:

As always, it was great to see the gang and especially nice to see Nick Wahla again after all these years. Astonishingly, he was too polite to ask a range of questions about the evening, so I shall provide the answers here.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “totally dissatisfied” and 10 is “totally satisfied”, I would give the following scores:

* quality of food, drink and service 6/10

* quality of company and feeling of bon-homie 11/10

As always, a great evening. Many thanks to John Eltham who always takes on the unenviable task of trying to herd our bunch of Alleyn-cats for these get togethers.

Is It Better With Or Without? by Rohan Candappa, The Gladstone Arms, 18 June 2019

In late May, I got this slightly strange message from Rohan Candappa:

Ian, are you around on 18 June? I’m doing a reading of a new piece of work about getting an eye test and the meaning of life at The Gladstone.

As it happened, that afternoon was the only slot I had available to go into the City to do City-based work stuff and that evening also happened to be a free evening.

Also, it was going to be a good opportunity to see old school friends, whom I had meticulously avoided seeing at the formal school 400th anniversary reunion a few days earlier, by sending a video of a mock-Jacobean musical performance rather than attending in person:

As it turned out, the day became a flurry of unwanted activity (not least a hoo-ha with Axa PPP regarding Janie) and then a bit of a rush to complete my City work, but still I got to The Glad in time for a pie, drink and chat with the pre-show diners, not least Johnny Eltham and Rich “The Rock” Davis.

Johnny Eltham was in especially skittish mood that evening, making some unusually disparaging remarks about my Jacobean music and mode. The Rock was his usually Rock-like self.

Others in attendance that evening included Paul Driscoll, Simon Ryan, Steve Butterworth, Dave French, Terry Bush, Jan and her friend Charmaigne, David Wellbrook and we were also blessed by the presence of The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey.

Last but not least, some minutes into Rohan’s performance, the late Nigel Boatswain arrived.

Something a bit misty-optic-like about the lighting

The setting; an Optometrist’s practice, is not exactly home turf for me, as I don’t yet need anything to adjust my eyes and have only had my eyes tested twice in that regard.

The phrase, “is it better with or without”, used many times, apparently, in the search for the optimal optical specification, provided the basis for Rohan to wander off on an existential angst-fest in which the said search might be a proxy for the meaning of life.

As is always the case with Rohan’s work, the narrative takes you into some detailed areas about which you have thought little, then makes you think about some big stuff and also at times makes you laugh a lot.

For reasons that seemed to make sense at the time but to which I cannot really back track, Rohan ended up getting the audience, led by John Eltham, to sing (or rather, “dah-da-da”) the theme to The Great Escape.

I feel bound to say that Johnny Eltham’s efforts dah-da-da-ing that particular tune ranged from poor on melody/harmony to utterly dire on rhythm. Elmer Bernstein was no doubt turning in his grave. And after all those back-handed compliments and disparaging remarks from Johnny about my Jacobean musical efforts too.

We have ways and means of making you sing…

Before his performance, Rohan made some moving impromptu remarks, not least praising our visitors from the Great Dominions, Nigel Godfrey for his sterling work raising funds for the Christchurch massacre victims and Rich “The Rock” for the success of his personal battles against cancer.

After his performance, Rohan told the assembled throng about Threadmash and asked David Wellbrook to retell his moving piece on the subject of Lost and Found from Threadmash 2 (below currently is my piece from that Threadmash – but I might at some stage persuade David to let me publish his Threadmash 2 piece as a guest piece:

It was a very stimulating evening and/but I was really quite tired once the performances were over, so I made my excuses and left promptly. Terry also left at the same time as me, so we had a chance to chat pleasantly until we parted company at Bank, where east is east and west is west.

So is life better with or without evenings like this? With – no question. Thanks, Rohan.