Our Future: Their Future
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Number 24 Winter 2014 THE MAGAZINE FOR FORMER PUPILS AND FRIENDS OF GLASGOW ACADEMY AND WESTBOURNE SCHOOL Our future: their future Editorial Contents 3 Sir Steve Redgrave helps to The wisdom of Jimmy Murray, tuppenny raise over £20,000 for SciTech pies and the price of a postage stamp... Record ‘Higher’ results Once upon a time, when life was much simpler, Glasgow Academy communicated 4 Anecdotage letters with its entire community - pupils, their parents, former pupils, Governors and staff 6 More than just manners and - by sending them a closely-worded pamphlet called the Chronicle. This was nice rugby! and thin and easy to send by post three times a year. Since the Post Office enjoyed a 7 The hidden curriculum monopoly, postal rates were cheap and everyone was happy. 8 Favourite teachers remembered Then something happened - let’s call it ‘progress’. Photography became cheaper and 9 Introducing the Saunders easier. Photographs - which used to support the written word - became the ‘main Centre thing’ and words increasingly began to be relegated to a supporting role. 10 Glasgow 2014 - The XX The advent of low-cost colour photography only hastened the decline of the written Commonwealth Games word. Pamphlets blossomed into colourful magazines that were lovely to look at. But 12 Academical Club they grew fat with photographs. And expensive to post (since Royal Mail no longer 14 Westbourne Section had a monopoly and postal rates were exorbitant). And people were confused. 16 Overseas Representatives Witness Jimmy Murray who happened to write to us - by e-mail - from Canada: 17 Dallachy Lecture 2014 – £125,000 for SciTech ‘I received my Chronicle and see it came by airmail in 18 Events three days at a cost of £9.90. To those of us brought up in 20 Family announcements “Look at the Glasgow when a tuppenny pie cost tuppence, and now living overseas and unfamiliar with UK inflation, £9.90 seems a lot 25 Obituaries incredible of money. Perhaps it is chump change.’ 31 Picture post A good point, excellently made, with which we Do we have your e-mail address? things my old wholeheartedly agree. (Which is why we normally send It’s how we communicate best! school gets up Jimmy’s copy of the Chronicle by surface mail for less than a third of the price.) In case it was of interest, we Keeping in touch to these days” let Jimmy know that we have introduced a system of reading the Chronicle through the website, a move that The External Relations office is situated has reduced costs hugely. in Colebrooke Terrace. Former pupils are The next day we heard from Jimmy again: always welcome to pop in for a chat and look round the school. Just give us a call to arrange ‘I do not like to read magazines on line. I like to have them lying around to be picked up time a time. Our address is Colebrooke Terrace, and again. Or to be read in bed. Glasgow G12 8HE and you can contact us on ‘I also like to have the Chronicle lying around so that I can show it to visitors and say “Look 0141 342 5494 or at [email protected] at the incredible things my old school gets up to these days”. (I can also go on to comment that I The Glasgow Academical Club hope the young blighters appreciate how lucky they are and that they do not become spoiled, but 21 Helensburgh Drive, Glasgow G13 1RR I have to say they do look pretty sensible.) President: Douglas Robinson ‘So I would prefer to receive the Chronicle, even by surface mail if this can be arranged. E-mail: [email protected] Secretary: Stuart Neilson ‘I must say I am very impressed by all I read in the Chronicle (that should be “see” in the Tel: 07771 845104 Chronicle – there is not much written) and Etcetera. The new science building will be a huge E-mail: [email protected] addition. It is a very different school!’ The Academical Club pavilion A good point, excellently made, with which we once more wholeheartedly agree. is available for functions. Which is precisely why we continue to send Etcetera out as a magazine rather than Academical Club’s London Section solely on line. Secretary – David Hall, 20 Cadogan Place London SW1X 9SA For neither of these magazines do we make any charge - nor are they supported Tel: 020 7235 9012 financially by the Academical Club. We think they’re important enough to send you E-mail: [email protected] without charge. We hope you agree! Like us on Facebook; join us on LinkedIn Cover: Emily Porter and Hugh Fulton, both of P1, complete the topping out of SciTech. Photo - Roberto Cavieres 2 Etcetera Sir Steve Redgrave helps to raise over £20,000 for SciTech On 4 September a fantastic fundraising dinner, which raised over £20,000 for SciTech, was held in the Cargill Hall. Sir Steve Redgrave CBE was the principal guest and speaker. Academy rowers provided great entertainment for two ‘race night’ betting games and eight of our rowers were presented with their Glasgow Academy internationalist shields by Sir Steve on the night. Record ‘Higher’ results The Glasgow Academy This summer’s Higher results were our Calendar 2015 best ever at the pre-review stage. Our A perfect seasonal gift S5 pupils gained a record 358 A grades (63.5% of entries) and our highest-ever A We are delighted to show off our and B grade percentage (85%). school buildings this year in Particular congratulations to Megan Auld our calendar who scored the top mark in Scotland for Higher Physics. She was awarded an ‘Excellence in Physics Award’ by the Institute of Physics at the ‘Science and the Parliament’ event held at Our Dynamic Earth on 12 November. Along with Louise Murphy, Megan also scored 100% in Higher Maths. (Only 29 of over 22,000 candidates achieved this rare distinction.) But it’s not only the girls who have done well. Amongst 30 candidates who clocked up five, six or seven A grades, Philip Cai, Adam Kidd and David Retailing at a bargain price of Wu achieved 6, and in Philip’s case, a £5.00 each or 3 for £10 (plus P&P) remarkable 7 band 1s (i.e. exceptionally Orders can be placed by telephone on high marks all round). These record results 0141 342 5494, are all the more pleasing given that pass Megan Auld rates nationally were lower this year than or by email: [email protected] last year. Etcetera 3 Dear Sirs Anecdotage letters I feel I must correct a mistake in the late Andrew Wylie’s book A School at War, p8. Here it is stated that the Janitor, Charles Jones, returned from naval service in WW II as a Lt Commander. Not so I’m afraid. He never reached that exalted rank. He was a Chief Petty Officer. I know this because I was a lifelong friend and classmate of his son Charles William Donald Jones, BDS who died on 27 December 2012 in Kidderminster. Through him I knew his father well. As far as I know CPO Jones served throughout WW1 and subsequently, serving some time on the China Station until retiring from the Navy in 1936 as a CPO to take up the position as janitor. I don’t know about his DSM but he was decorated by the Italian Government for something and had a certificate and a medal. Charlie, his son never knew exactly what it was for as he never had the ornate Certificate that came with the Heady coiffure and mild who subsequently played for England. medal translated! On the outbreak of war concussion - Accies v West 1971 Those familiar with that Accies team in 1939, Charles was recalled to the Navy will be unsurprised to note the absence and was a torpedo instructor I was told. He The enclosed photo is of Accies v West from the pack of David Kernohan who was discharged on age grounds in 1943 and at Burnbrae in the spring of 1971. Accies returned to the Academy where he served preferred the maverick approach to won something like 8-6, I think, thanks for a number of years until his death in second row play and is likely to have to the inevitable Simmers drop goal late August 1960. been just out of camera shot waiting for in the game. The only other feature of a scoring pass! His son Charlie left the Academy in 1944 note was Willy Purdie getting concussed having been called up, and joined the early on and spending the remainder On a separate point, in answer to the Navy serving in destroyers on duty in of the game asking what the score was. question posed about the school team on Norway and after the war in Hamburg and (Double entendre here – I think he page 7 of Etcetera 22, I am third from the North Germany. He was an Able Seaman meant ‘What’s going on!?’) right in the back row - a callow youth and was demobbed in I think 1946 or of 15 who, for some reason I can’t recall, Accies left to right are Brian Lockhart, 1948. He then studied dentistry at Glasgow ended up in the 2nd XV with the year the said Willy Purdie, Graeme Mitchell, University 1949-1954 and on graduating above me (I left school in 1965). John Watson, Douglas Calder, Alistair spent a year as a Dental Officer to the Grenfell Association, St Anthony Hospital, Graham, Kit Smith, myself and Archie Note also Lord Maxton’s then coiffure! Newfoundland, where he met his first Hardie.