A Time for Renewal and Reminiscence
Tony Quance (1964) provides his personal thoughts on the 1957 Jubilee Reunion Day
During the week of 17th September I travelled from Canada, and with many others, had the great good fortune and opportunity to revisit the School on the 50th anniversary of our entering on 19th September 1957.
Some of us were very familiar to each other; others not so, with greyness and girth having wrought their changes over the passage of time. Typically, an approach with hand held out was prefaced with a quick scan of the lapel name badge first. The most oft repeated words over the many reunions were “Do you remember…?” followed by much embellished recollections of hilarious and miscreant incidents, usually involving the schadenfreude of some poor, long-suffering master, or boys smart enough not to undergo further physical or mental torture by staying away.
I found the tours of the School and Woollams very impressive. In a world gone mad with ever-present terrorist threats, an ego-driven war and a culture of celebrity worship, it is rewarding to find a School environment with a much-expanded curriculum, and celebrating intellect, teamwork, sportsmanship, and respect. During one brief moment, headmaster Andrew Grant and I stood to one side at the bottom of one of the School’s many stone circular stairways, as a group of boys were coming down. In my time at the School as boys faced with a similar situation, we would have shrunk tomicrobes and flattened ourselves against the walls to make way for the Head’s brisk ascent. The occasional disciplinary action by a master in 1957 would not have been out of place in a Dickens novel. We were ‘soft targets’ for the releaseof other frustrations the master may have had in life, and convenient targets for a well aimed hard-backed board rubber.
To this day, I am still able to decline ‘mensa’ perfectly, having had it literally beaten into my head. Such action today would result in an assault charge, and reversed outside the school with the boy et alia exacting revenge. Alternative discipline was administered at weekly prefects ‘up pres’ social gatherings during which, by invitation only, we were caned forminor offences. Sadly, those days are now past.
Despite the aforementioned incident, I have only fond memories of my time at St Albans School. My passions for English, rugby, and athletics are rooted there. All members of the 1963 4 x 110 yards relay squad were present at this reunion but we were smart enough to revive the memory without attempting a repeat performance. I also made strong friendships that exist to this day.
Hardly a day passes without another press article about our unfit kids and the growing trend of obesity in our young people. With others, I travelled from Mill Hill by train every school day, and had a 20 minute walk at both ends of the journey, twice a day, in all weathers. Over my years at the School, this computes to over 4,000 miles of walking. Recounting this to young people I meet today, used to cars and bussing right from home to the school door, I am met with stares one would reserve for an alien species. It certainly did me no harm, and I repeated the walks during this visit, to and from the station and The Black Lion in Fishpool Street. Accommodations at The Black Lion were comfortable, but as renovations were in progress, not all ran smoothly. There was a scarcity of hot water in the mornings which reminded me of the shower facilities at Belmont and King Harry playing fields, where if you weren’t quick enough, your choices were cold and colder running water.
To my eyes, after over 40 years away, St Albans is little changed, and that small area with which I was most familiar, thankfully not at all. Unfortunately, like most of urban Britain, the city has become paradoxically immobilised by traffic. Now used to the more open spaces Canada presents, I have changed, and felt confined by the concentration of people, buildings and narrow roads. Happily though, the draught beer is as good as ever and as a non-smoker all my life I welcome the new ban on smoking in public places. The typical whiny refrain by North American visitors to Britain regarding the cost of everything is constant, true, and will not be further expanded upon here.
As ‘Mediocria firma’ has given way to ‘Non nobis nati’, we realise as we grow older that ‘Carpe diem’ becomes ever more important as we have fewer remaining diems left to carpe. I was recalling the trip in my mind on the return flight to Toronto, and occasionally had to stifle a chuckle, much to the consternation of my closest fellow travellers who must have thought they were seated with an escaped nutter.
So after two days of good fun, good food, and good fellowship, my few regrets from the trip were of the guys who couldn’t make it and who I would have liked to meet again; if they are reading this, they know who they are. Also, that the timing of the reunion couldn’t have coincided with St Albans Beer Festival the following week, and that while I was away the Canadian dollar soared to parity with the US$, further reducing the exchange value of my few remaining pounds. In closing, I offer my best wishes for the continued success of the School, and for the fortunes of those boys, and also girls, smart enough, with little other experience for comparison, to appreciate the phenomenal opportunities that the School now presents, for which they will be very grateful later in life.