BEDALES ASSOCIATIONASSOCIATION & OLDand OLD BEDALIAN BEDALIAN NEWSLETTER 2014NEWSLETTER 2013 To Members of the Bedales Association BEDALES ASSOCIATION AGM Notice is hereby given of the 31st Annual General Meeting of the Bedales Association to be held at Bedales School on Sunday 29th June 2014 The details are as follows: 11.00 Bedales Association AGM in the Reading Room 12.30 Light lunch for Bedales Association members Once the exact timings have been confirmed, they will be published on the school website, where the Bedales Association Annual Report will also be available. Exact timings will also be available from: Helen McBrown by email ([email protected]) or phone (01730 711561) who will also send you a hard copy of the Annual Report if you prefer. Please give her the relevant address details. Richard Lushington Bursar and Clerk to the Governors Bedales School Petersfield Hampshire GU32 2DG Front cover image: Bedales Bee-keepers. Photo: Peter Coates 2 www.bedales.org.uk Tel: 01730 300100 Bedales Association and Old Bedalian Newsletter 2014 CONTENTS Bedales Association AGM Invitation ....................................................................... 02 Editorial ..................................................................................................................... 04 Head’s Reflections on 2013 ....................................................................................... 06 Parents Day Invitation .............................................................................................. 07 London Concert ........................................................................................................ 08 Memorial Services ..................................................................................................... 10 Global Awareness ...................................................................................................... 12 Badley Society ............................................................................................................ 13 The Ties That Bind Us .............................................................................................. 14 A Year in the Archives ............................................................................................... 15 Art & Design Centre News ....................................................................................... 16 Bedales in the 1940s .................................................................................................. 18 Bedales Farm in Wartime ......................................................................................... 20 Avocados, Adversity & La Bonita Andalucia ......................................................... 22 From Cyclones to a Grand Condom Challenge ..................................................... 24 Judgemental? You Must Be Mad ............................................................................. 27 Some Plain Facts ....................................................................................................... 28 Class of 2004 Reunion ............................................................................................... 29 Death of a Neighbour ................................................................................................ 30 Class of 1989 Reunion ............................................................................................... 31 Streets Alive ............................................................................................................... 32 Alumni Communications .......................................................................................... 33 News in Brief .............................................................................................................. 34 Senior Reunion .......................................................................................................... 43 Bedales Arts ............................................................................................................... 44 Classes of 1978 & 1979 Reunion .............................................................................. 45 Births, Engagements, Marriages, Deaths ............................................................... 46 Recent Degree Results .............................................................................................. 48 Destinations of Leavers 2013 .................................................................................... 48 Obituaries .................................................................................................................. 50 Tim Slack ............................................................................................................... 50 Jill Bright (née Mursell) ........................................................................................ 52 Nicola Cleminson .................................................................................................. 53 Brenda Gillingham (née Gimson) ......................................................................... 54 Bastien Gomperts .................................................................................................. 55 Martin Nelstrop ..................................................................................................... 56 Christopher Thomas Inglis Rayson ....................................................................... 57 Martin Arthur Rackham Soper .............................................................................. 57 Peter Oswald Eric Trubshawe ............................................................................... 58 Contact us at: [email protected] 3 EDITORIAL hy Bedales Bee-keepers on the BGTF trustee, Bedales Association receive will have the stamp of her Wfront cover? Just because it’s a Committee Member) said to me “When personality and will also, I hope, be lovely image? Because I like to emphasise Gonda (Stamford née Neale 1924–31, very different from the previous fifteen. the Bedales Difference and there can’t Head Girl, Bedales Librarian, Bedales She brings much needed new ideas and be many schools where you could do this? Association Committee Member) is expertise to the task and I am sure that Because it will remind many a recent gone there won’t be any such thing you will enjoy liaising with her as much student of Ashley Bray (2003–08), a as Bedalianism”. Apart from enjoying as I am already enjoying helping her lay bee fanatic, whose life was so tragically myself a lot, I have spent twenty years down the groundwork for the future. cut short recently and whose memorial trying to prove her wrong. Please help her now by completing her service takes place in March? But then request for information on the Newsletter why not something to remind us of Tim I have tried to give a distinctive flavour cover sheet if you can. Slack (Headmaster 1962–74), a major to alumni relations. To deal with them in figure in Bedales history, whose service a way which was sharply different from takes place two weeks later? Because Tim other schools. My approach has been to Leana Seriau attended the Lycée and I would surely have agreed that the treat the alumni as a rather large, loose, Français Charles de Gaulle in London young always take precedence. extended family and to avoid at all times and then Lancaster University, anything which felt corporate or formal. where she studied Geography. There are more reasons. Because it is a I like to think that Gonda would have She has worked in Marketing and photo taken by Peter Coates (staff 1989–), approved of this. It is certainly not in tune Admissions respectively at Southbank who has contributed so much to this with the modern way of running schools, International School and then North publication with his images over the but it hasn’t been hard for me – it felt Bridge House School, London. She years. As a ‘thank you’ to Peter you can a natural thing to do. moved to Hampshire at the end of see him with Hector, the school carthorse, 2013 and is very excited about her on this page. I don’t know who took this Everything that I have done has been new role picture. Peter has contributed hugely to motivated by the idea of offering a at Bedales. the Bedales Difference over many years service: helping OBs to keep in touch She looks as Head of Outdoor Work. with each other, helping them to achieve forward to things in their adult lives, making them getting to Something else: out in the Caribbean is an feel that their alma mater continues to be know the OB who has spent his professional life as actively interested in them and keeping school, staff a bee-keeper. He will be greatly pleased to them up to date with what is happening and students see these bee-keeping Bedalians. Perhaps at Bedales in a way which is not burden- (past and it is a little crazy to choose an image for some. Even occasionally offering some present!) a magazine with a circulation of 4,500 entertainment or provocation. copies with a few individuals in mind, but that illustrates an important principle So what of the future? I will still be Inside this one you will find much that to me. I have always liked to deal with alumni officer behind the scenes for is familiar. Five articles by OBs about Bedalians individually rather than en a couple of years yet, but in a gradually their present life are included, of which masse. That has seemed to be how they reducing role, so you can still find me at I draw special attention to Ben Strutt’s worked best. [email protected]