Righto. Welcome one and all. My top conversation of the holiday was with a prospective international pupil.
“Why Bromsgrove?”
“I have always wanted to see the Garden of England, Sir.”
“But that’s Kent.”
Awkward pause. Subsequent slow realisation on both our parts that the pupil thought he had applied for Bromley. Further doubts ensue when pupil expresses interest in History (Bromley hasn’t been in Kent since 1963) and Geography (Bromsgrove is over 100 miles away from where he thought he was).
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Parents have received formal notification of our results and sundry achievements over the summer, so I’d like here to mention something that isn’t on the website or on headed paper. It’s this: more pupils sat public examinations at Bromsgrove over the summer than attend an average Stafford Rangers home fixture, and more public examinations (A level, AS level, GCSE, IGCSE, IB, BTEC etc.) were taken than there are stars visible to the naked eye at any one time. Bravo to the staff who processed the results. Epic.
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My butch swaggering around the building sites this summer saw me chomping a Yorkie or two on the living roof of the new sports arena. It really is quite a thing. You could hold a grouse shoot up there. As for scale, I have been taken aback by the size of the new Hospitality Suite. The first floor is a whopping space with wonderful views. So, if you are a parent cheering your children on through horizontal rain this term, salvation is at hand in the Senior School at least. In a few months you’ll be sipping piping hot tea (laced with whatever you keep in your hip flask) in the equivalent of a Royal Box at Wembley, waving cheerily to your bedraggled warriors down below.
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I’m sure all discerning parents watched TV highlights of the High Voltage Festival over the summer. This is the rock festival where one person from a famous band of forty years ago gets three or four younger people to help him recreate the magic of 1973. The bands retain their original names, of course, to give the impression nothing has changed, even though only the bass player is still alive from the original line up. So, instead of calling yourself “Creaky Bob Patterson and Five Young Blokes”, you remain “Washington Farmhouse Kitchen” or whatever you were. I ponder this merely because Bromsgrove is 500 years old and none of the original line up is with us. So, can anybody think of a band without a single original member who became all the better for it? Glass of Babycham for the best answer.
