Family Fun at Forest - Old Foresters Reconnected

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Annual Reunion, 13 May 2012... Or Tempus Fugit Derek Inkpin (Johnians 1961-1968) Why do we go to school reunions? Memory Lane trip, or is it as simple as that? The answer is either obvious or perhaps ever so subtly not so. Some OFs who have moved away from London travel quite a distance to be there on the day, so why the effort? Whenever these reunions take place, whether you greet old friends or those you can’t remember, there is always an obvious and immediate camaraderie. You simply pick up and carry on as before even though you may not have seen each other for over forty years. Funny that. OFs just seem to have an obvious friendliness and sympatico. It must have been something in the water. The one sound that you hear above the chatting is laughter. The Annual Reunion was all of these things. Chapel, drinks in the Quad afterwards and, of course, lunch in the Dining Hall produced, as you would expect and what the Warden mentioned afterwards, a lovely atmosphere. High Five! Last June, a reunion for OFs who left school five years ago, was successfully added to the calendar of events. It proved a great success as both a social occasion and an opportunity to meet with current Year 12 pupils to discuss university life and the many options on offer. This year it was the turn of the Class of 2007 leavers. Again four volunteers, Nikki Wolstenholme, Fayyaz Muneer, Jack Sandford and Ben Lloyd, gave short presentations on their university experiences at East Anglia, Oxford, Manchester and Loughborough respectively. There were then discussions with the other OFs present, first in the Dining Hall and later over drinks and a barbecue in Chapel Quad. Ample 2 The introduction of a new element at this reunion of several OFs speaking for about a minute on “Forest and Me” was a bit of fun and I take my hat off to Martin Oliver, Lee Clarke, Jayne Alexander, Tony Armon-Jones, Roger Stebbing and Michael Head for stepping up to the mark and regaling us with some 1960s memories. 1960s Forest seemed to be the end of the post-war era and the start of a totally different world of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mary Quant, Carnaby Street and Flower Power. What Dennis Foxall faced then was the end of Dotheboys Hall and a growing liberalisation of education and discipline, the latter by Monitors who in our day regularly administered beatings. Society was obviously changing but in our cloistered world at the School much of it I suspect passed us by, until we were let out into the wide world at the end of the Sixth Form. If a school does the right job in educating its pupils in every sense of the word then the buildings, the teaching staff and all your contemporaries provide an obvious safe and friendly environment. Perhaps returning to the ambience of our school days for just a few reunion hours simply provides a snap-shot of the good memories that we have of Forest. Whatever we have done since we left Forest and however complex our lives have become we retain parts of what we learned at School about how to treat and socialise with people and how to achieve relationships with others in the workplace and in our social lives. The experience at Forest was inherently decent and gave us a good education as well as all the activities of sport, music and drama and simply provides us with an acknowledgement that we owe in small or large measure a debt to the School. Even though we didn’t know at the time too for OFs to catch up on five years of news, five years of changes and developments around the School, or simply to sit in the sun and chill out watching cricket! Feedback has again been positive and the format will be repeated next year for the Class of 2008; add 22 June 2013 to your diary as a not-to-bemissed opportunity to return to Forest School. time, it would perhaps become so instrumental in influencing us in our lives after leaving it. If I am lucky enough to survive into my 80s, let alone my 90s, and they offer us oldies a reunion, I for one will return even if I sing the hymns in the Chapel on my own or raise a glass to myself in the Dining Hall to acknowledge the old place for what it is, a singularly impressive establishment. P.S. Just a Minute on film can be found on OF Reconnected.
Identity Week, 25 June to 1 July Those who attended the OF Day will know all about the strange appearance of the word ‘IDENTITY’ in the Chapel Quad. A variety of different events and activities took place and OFs led the way with collected comments and pictures pinned to the giant letter ‘I’. All week, contributions were added by pupils on topics ranging from exams and Chapel to games and lunch. ‘Every time you walk up the stairs to the pavilion, a smile of joy appears on your face’ ‘In the Dining Hall I feel tremendously small’ Gagan Mohindra (School 1985-1996) Conservative Councillor, Epping Forest District Council, was invited to judge the Year 12 Politics Essay competition and he visited the School on 2 July to meet the six finalists. Roisin Perry (Baylis) was judged the winner! ‘When I first came I was very bad but somehow you managed to tame me.’ Some comments will resonate with what Forest meant to you so a selection will be posted on old Foresters Reconnected in September and all can be seen in the Archive. Calendar of Events 26 August OF 5-a-side football tournament, 10am 22 September School Open Day, 9.30am 5 October OF Annual Dinner, Dining Hall, 7.45pm 10 October Opening of the Dr Colin Barker Laboratory 2 November Cambridge Dinner, Emmanuel College 11 November Act of Remembrance, Chapel, 10.30am 4 December OF Club AGM, Girls’ School Hall, 8pm 5 -7 December Anything Goes by Cole Porter, Deaton Theatre 9 December BS Carol Service, 5pm, GS Carol Service, 7pm 11 December Winter Concert, Sports Hall, 7pm 3
Page 1: OF News Trinity Term 2012 Issue 12
Page 5 and 6: Ben Gibson, aka Ben Santiago (Mille
Page 7 and 8: Celebrating Success in Science, Spo

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