The scary ladies and I were in the Prep School last week watching creative curriculum lessons. In one class, a little girl told me that the boy next to her was the “number one class genius.” The boy agreed this was the case but generously averred that the young lady was “number two class genius.” At this point another little girl said no, she herself was in fact the “number two class genius”. The original girl thought about this for a moment, acknowledged there might be some truth in the observation, and then cheerfully demoted herself. It struck me that Ban Ki-moon’s job would be considerably easier if we kept that attitude into adulthood.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that the difference between a professional musician and a large pizza is that a large pizza can feed a family of four. Undaunted, our young vocal and instrumental heroes recently offered a gripping Senior School music competition, and then the School orchestra gave a cracking performance of the opening movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony in Routh Hall. It took me back to a conversation I witnessed during my school days when a friend of mine was arguing the toss with a teacher over homework. The boy’s argument was along the lines of “How come when Schubert doesn’t finish something he’s hailed as a genius but when I don’t finish my homework I get a detention?” I was waiting for a response worthy of Oscar Wilde but, alas, it wasn’t that kind of school. The teacher hit him over the head with a text book.
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Bigger and stonier than my gaff, Windsor Castle hosted our Chapel Choir last Wednesday. Evensong in St. George’s Chapel was sublime, and as the Choir pulled their “newsletter faces” for the photograph afterwards, I underwent a shameful moment of hubris. Poor show, I know. But how many schools, when they are one match away from Twickenham in the Daily Mail Cup, would have a choir singing Evensong at Windsor Castle just days before? It seemed to me, in the Windsor twilight, that some schools are so obsessed with specialisation for the sake of tables and charts that they ought to pause and reflect on Hillaire Belloc’s tongue in cheek advice to a young writer: “Concentrate on one subject. Let him, when he is twenty, write about the earthworm. Let him continue for forty years to write of nothing but the earthworm. When he is sixty, pilgrims will make a hollow path with their feet to the door of the world's great authority on the earthworm. They will knock at his door and humbly beg to be allowed to see the Master of the Earthworm.”
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One trench in to the new Housman Hall build and we’ve only gone and found King Arthur, the round table and all his knights under the car park. There they are, perfectly preserved in full armour with Galahad clutching the Holy Grail for good measure. An absolute nightmare. The Council would never let us continue if they knew, but parents will be pleased to hear we kicked dust over the find and then went back under cover of darkness to pour concrete foundations over the bejewelled Camelot floor. I pinched the Grail and stuck it in the Elmshurst trophy cabinet. Nobody’s any the wiser and the programme is back on schedule. Close one.
