Week ending 28 June 2013 - Trinity School

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The range and the depth and the height that Trinity students reach, whether in academic studies, in music, in sport, in drama, art, community service, fundraising, film making, debating and so much more, never fails to astonish me. Do any of them take it for granted, I wonder – what it feels like, to be living with all three of aim, belief and ability? I feel an especially bittersweet sense of admiration and (in the nicest sense) envy when seeing sports awards collected. It may shock you, gentle reader, to learn that my own sporting career at school could not be filed under “Glorious” without a serious breakdown of administrative efficiency. Not one certificate, not one medal, not one trophy. As for a mention in an on-line newsletter – well, in those days such things were but the stuff of a madman’s dreams. And yet it was not for want of trying that my name never adorned a plaque hung in the assembly hall – though I did once achieve reasonably honourable mention on the back of a lavatory door in connection with a frozen Cornish pasties scam, a tale for which the world is not yet ready. I can at least claim, with absolute probity, that I was picked for every single rugby game ever played in my school’s history. A grand total of two matches. Mine was not a rugby school. This is only one of a number of ways in which it diverged from a place of learning like Trinity. We also didn’t have things like German, or Latin, or CCF or A Pleasing Absence Of Grim Faced Police Officers Pulling Into The Car Park On A Pretty Much Daily Basis. Rugby was introduced to my school by an enthusiastic and fresh-faced young Games teacher called – slightly presciently – Mr Leeder. To us he was known as “Bulldog”. Quite from where that sobriquet originated I can no longer recall. There was nothing notably dumpy and Churchillian about his appearance, though his rhetoric was suitably upand-at-‘em. He brought with him the strange game of rugby – or “egg-chasing” as it’s still generally referred to round my old neck of the woods – and, within two weeks of arriving at the school, had organised a first match, so that those of us who had cautiously volunteered (i.e. been pressganged) could gain some practical sense of how this strange, foreign ritual was actually meant to work. As far as we could see, this “rugby” was a faintly absurd pursuit in which a leather ball was chased, to no very great effect, around a muddy field on a cold afternoon. Imagine! Our game was football which is, of course, completely different. But a fixture was arranged so that we could play for real. That first fixture was against Manchester Grammar School, a level of sporting mismatch perhaps comparable only to a hypothetical situation in which one imagines 80s pop icon Boy George offering the entire Texas branch of the National Rifle Association “outside”. Boys attending Manchester Grammar are immersed in the game of rugby for so long and so fully that it would not be difficult to believe they emerge into this world with their fathers calling out scrummaging advice from touchlines that they have insisted on having painted around the delivery room, whilst they also try to flag the midwife for having handled illegally. We had been playing the game for only two weeks and had barely any concept of the basic rules. Our opponents looked like they could legitimately hope to see themselves, one day, as British Lions; we looked like we had little chance of making it as British Terrapins. In these circumstances, the result (a mere 96-0, in favour of Manchester Grammar) is one I still like to regard as a moral victory. Although what the actual moral might have been escapes me. Were we downhearted? Were we broken? Oh, you bet we were. Absolutely. Never wanted to do that again. And please don’t imagine I’m now going to turn this into some schmaltzy, inspirational tale of triumphing over incredible odds. Not going to happen. That’s just not how we “roll” in the North. We had one more game, about a month later, this time against a similarly incapable school. This involved my only real, quasi-intentional contact with the ball. I played number 8 and, without any particular warning and to my considerable surprise, found the ball had somehow arrived in my hands. Having no especial sense of how to progress this situation, I simply responded to what I took to be the consensus emerging from the advice now being offered to me on all sides. This was, in essence, “Run, you lanky streak of uselessness”. Thus I did, and I have never forgotten the pure, existential freedom I felt on realising that I had quickly left the chasing pack behind me and was away, away and gone, far beyond the grasp of any opponent, running free and knowing only the purified now, the liberated geometry of eternity, the sanctified moment that is man, ball and space. (I hope you’re hearing Vangelis, at this point.)
Sadly, being required to play without my spectacles on I had not successfully factored in the significance of my instinctively chosen direction. Not only had I somehow turned around and started running back towards the end my team was defending, I had also then carried on straight through the posts, stopping only on reaching the goal posts at the far end of the pitch adjacent to the one on which our game was being played. It was a long walk back, towards a line of still figures, players and parents, silhouetted against the sun going down behind the cemetery next to the pitches. (Seriously. You can see it on Google Maps. Look up “Hough End Playing Fields” in Manchester – right next to Southern Cemetery. Well, they’re spectators of a kind, one supposes.) Everyone was so very silent. Everyone. Possibly a dog howled, somewhere in the distance. Still, a final result of 8 – 8 represented, surely, one of the most significant improvements in the history of the game. But there were no other fixtures where this improvement could have been built on. No chance to play and grow and, perhaps, even to hope for an award, or just a mention in an assembly. I recall being the last to be collected that day, the daylight having run out with an odd, almost embarrassed suddenness, like an old acquaintance met on the street who hurries away with barely hidden haste, giving off a clear sense that one’s all-too-evident misfortune is regarded as, very possibly, contagious. Hours passed as I waited alone. The electricity meter of the world wanted feeding. My Dad was late because he had run over a dog on the way to pick me up after the game. Even at the age of 12, my nascent literary-critical sensibilities saw in this a potent symbol suggesting it would be right to hang up the barely used boots. The writing was on the wall. Much like some parts of that unfortunate Alsatian, in fact. Trinity’s students can, as another year ends, all point to a far, far, far greater level of ability and dedication and achievement and spirit in what they have done, both as individuals and in every conceivable manner of team, than anything I can scrape together from my time at school and I salute them all, whether receiving an award at this year’s end or not. There are many things we don’t have prizes for. The Good Bloke/Good Lass Trophy you won’t see listed. The No, Please, After You certificate is notable by its absence. There’s no photograph for our marketing material showing the mildly embarrassed recipients of the “You OK, Mate?” Prize. The could-be, should-be winners of these imaginary accolades are all around us, though. You may well know one and even have told them to sort their bedroom out, recently. For me, David Bowie is a reliable source of truth about most things in life and how right he was when he sang about what we all could be, just for one day. Then again, he also once sang “I’m the laughing gnome and you can’t catch me” so, y’know, thanks for that, Dave. Croydon Heritage Festival Trinity helped bring the Croydon Heritage Festival to a successful close in the final weekend of celebrations. Last Friday our ever-brilliant Big Band played a medley of jazz classics at Fairfield Halls and on Saturday, in Matthews Yard, “Pirates” was performed one last time, to the considerable appreciation of a substantial audience. Three Trinity pupils saw their writing picked out by the editor of the Croydon Advertiser as the winning entries in the newspaper’s “Celebrating Croydon In Writing” competition. Neal Kesterton (First Year) was third with his chilling tale of “The Airman Ghost of Addington” while Thisura Silva (Fourth Year) was second with his vignette of every day life in Croydon, “The Tram”. The winner, to whom enormous congratulations are due, was Josh Leigh (Fourth Year) for his story “Pickles, the Curious Canine” which told, from the eponymous hero’s point of view, the story of one very notable piece of local history – when the Jules Rimet Trophy (the original trophy awarded in football’s World Cup competition until – I think – Brazil got to keep it, in 1970) went missing during the 1966 World Cup tournament. As you may know, and as is related by Josh, the trophy somewhat bizarrely turned up in a park in South Norwood. Trinity’s students and staff have made a massive contribution to the Heritage Festival and I would like once again to voice my thanks and appreciation for all that’s been done, in and around school, to ensure we have played a part in this major event in the life of our immediate community.
Page 1: Trinity School Headmaster’s Newsl
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Week ending 28 June 2013 - Trinity School

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