EAC Magazine - Alleyn's School

C l u bn e w sReunion of the decadesWriter Rohan Candappa (Brading’s, 1973-80)attended this summer’s Reunion of the Decadesto meet up with his class of 1980. Rohan is theauthor of many books including The Little Bookof Stress, The Little Book of Wrong Shui, andperhaps pertinent to this particular brief,Growing Old Disgracefully.I left the school thirty years ago.Going back always brings back memories. Going back in thecompany of people you haven’t seen since you departed bringsback a whole lot more.As we wandered round the school premises, guided by currentsixth formers, the questions came readily to our lips.‘Do you remember when...?’ , ‘Isn’t this where...?’ ,‘Whatever happened to...?’It was an answer I hadn’t expected. But the more I thoughtabout it, the more it was an answer I valued having. It was adifferent perspective. Maybe I valued it because one of thethings the school encouraged in me was my desire to think formyself. To consider situations from more than one viewpoint.And there was a group of ex-students returning after twentyyears. Strangely, a smaller group than the other two. But one inwhich there were far more women than men. It would havebeen good to get their views. For them the school had alwaysbeen co-educational. For us, girls were a miraculous arrival whomade us awkward, spotty boys become more mature.Though, obviously, not as mature as we liked to think we were.Teachers, of course, were also there. Teachers who I now lookedat as a 48-year-old man, and had to resist the urge to call ‘sir’.Teachers who, much to my amazement given how many studentsthey must have taught, actually remembered who we were. Orpretended to remember which, in some ways, is just as flattering.1970s 1980s 1990s‘You haven’t changed atall’ we lied to each other.But, of course, we hadchanged. How could wehave not? Thirty years is alot of water under a lot ofbridges. Less hair, morewaist. Definitely older,maybe even wiser.But then the school hadchanged too. Newbuildings, with newfacilities, ingeniouslyslotted into gaps I’d nevernoticed. And otherbuildings, ambitious bothin imagination and execution, transforming a space I had onceknown so well.Standing in a crowd, in a foyer, with a glass in my hand, while theHeadmaster welcomed us, I turned to a friend who asked ‘Do youknow where we are?’ And I smiled, and nodded, at the absurdityof drinking champagne in what had been a block of toilets.But there were other people at the reunion. Some had left theschool forty years before. Which meant they would have startedin 1963. (Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban and The Beatlesfirst LP, perhaps). I wondered what they made of it all. So as welined up on the school steps to have our photo taken, I askedone of them. And he told me that he had hated his time at theschool, and that he’d only returned to lay a few ghosts.All the decadesAll in all it was amarvellous day. A day thatmade me laugh a lot.A day that made me thinka lot. And one of thethings I thought was this:Time is linear. One thinghappens, then another,then another. And as wemove forward throughtime what happened inthe past should get leftfurther and further behind.Only if the thing thathappened was important, itdoesn’t. It still existssomewhere inside us. And given the right circumstances we canonce again access it.So go back to school with your friends, long years after you allleft, and you can find yourself back at school in more waysthan you can ever imagine. Ways that are for the most partgood. Ways that can make you thankful that you went to aschool as good as Alleyn’s.I left the school thirty years ago. But it turns out the schoolhas never left me. And for that I’m grateful.The date of the next Decades Reunion – for those who were inthe (and who taught the) Alleyn’s classes of 1964-71, 1974-81,1984-91 – is on Saturday 18 June.4