A modest school reunion

I often “dwell in the past”. It’s a fabulous museum, where you can look at the same exhibits time and again, and discover new ones you hadn’t noticed before, and see the familiar ones from new angles. My fondness for this pastime owes a lot to my sense that I didn’t live my life fully the first time round.

It was by sheer chance (idle browsing on the Internet) that I learned of the four-hundredth anniversary of my old school. Whilst not keen on social gatherings in general, I felt I had to be there. We started with a plaque-unveiling ceremony, attended by the Lord Mayor, wearing his chain of office, and the Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight, Her Majesty’s representative, in his Major-General’s full-dress uniform. I was impressed by the heavy braid epaulettes and the spurs. Much more impressive was his fine speech, in which he remarked that centenaries are common enough, but quadricententennials are exceedingly rare. Our school was already quite old when it found new premises in 1610. These survive to this day, having changed little since the mid-Fifties, when I carved my name on the hallowed bricks. I wrote up some school memories three years ago on this blog, using sometimes real names, sometimes pseudonyms for the characters involved:

The school yard
He was a veray parfit gentle knight
Memoirs Continued – At Mrs Jenkins’
Head’s Sermon at St Thomas’ Church July 1958

School was the orchard, so to speak, in which we had been planted as fresh-faced saplings. Here was a unique chance to muster one last time, saplings turned now to gnarled trees, still blossoming and fruiting more than fifty years on. I’m fascinated by the differences between then and now. Old photos can only capture moments, but they perform a vital role in assisting recall. My own memory seems to consist of mental snapshots too. It has a disrespectful habit of condensing years of acquaintance into a single incident, which comes up on its own whenever a certain name or face is presented. In my piece three years ago on The School Yard (see link above) I mentioned a couple of these. On Saturday I met the boys concerned, but they could not remember the incidents I see so vividly in my mind’s eye. I immortalised one for his utterance of a colourful epithet I’d never heard before. I could mark an X with chalk on the very spot in the playground where that occurred. And as for the other, I have only to see his face on a school photograph, or (as on Saturday) read his name-tag, to recall the only fight I ever got involved in there, a fight engaged on his behalf. Again, I could mark an X at the spot where I challenged the boy who wronged him, though I cannot remember the wrong itself. I could draw a circle to mark the circle of boys who quickly gathered to watch the fight. Yet I remember nothing of the fight. I think it was stopped before any serious blows were exchanged, by the intervention of a a prefect or the school bell for resumption of class. The boy I championed doesn’t remember the incident, but assures me that in later life he learned very well how to stand up for himself. On hearing one or two of his subsequent adventures, I can only say that he’s done bolder things than I’d ever dare; and taken responsibility for the consequences too.

Several of the boys who attended the school after my time approached me, seeing my name tag, to say I’d been a kind of legend. My name had been on the board, hung in the school hall, showing all the head boys and their dates, and they’d heard it said of me that I was the brightest boy (i.e. most academic, highest-exam-passing, most book-wormish) the school had known. I can imagine how they may have felt comparing themselves to this mythical figure. Naturally they wanted to know what

I’d done and how I’d ended up. To some I said simply that “I went into the computer industry”, making it sound like a fate which swallowed you up whole, leaving no trace behind. To others I said that it had all gone downhill after I left school. Both are true: I don’t seem capable of telling an untruth. I noticed how their initial awe changed to a friendly relief, discovering that I was one of them, after all.

My old headmaster, PWF Erith, constantly held before us the ideal of the Christian gentleman-warrior, a kind of Chaucerian figure he may have invented. As I’ve said in a previous post, there was a boy called Parfitt. The Old Man (as we called him) could never mention Parfitt’s name without closing his eyes and recalling one of Chaucer’s tales he seemed to know by heart: “He was a veray parfit gentil knight”, epithets which could be well applied to himself.

Apart from its longevity, what could the school be best proud of, I wonder? In what ways did it excel? I don’t know. I look back to it with enormous affection and gratitude. Perhaps it was a shining beacon to modesty, caring more for everyday decency and kindness than for outstanding success in anything.

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PS Since our reunion, I have been visited by what I call an angelic messenger: a kind of voice that tells me something. Sometimes the mouthpiece is a person I meet, or an incident that seems suspended between this world or another. In this instance it was a single sentence in angel-language which I am not sure if I can adequately translate. It reads something like “You are more than you give yourself credit for”. I feel that applied to everyone I had been to school with; and perhaps everyone I know. In any case, this message has been sustaining me lately!