Site revival - September 2019!

Yes, site revival! 

 I was at an amazing school reunion today, laid on by Jim Butterworth (ex-head boy) and colleagues for us fellow pupils who entered the perky, life-enhancing Bishopshalt School, Hillingdon (west London outskirts) in, wait for it, 1956!

Internet image file  

 Yup, some, nay, most of us are still going strong, some 63 years later!

 Even a contemporaneous ex-teacher  of Maths and RE (the engaging and venerable Ken Pearce MA, accompanied by wife) was around to give a presentation on the history and background of some of our teachers from all those years ago.

How many schools can boast a there-on-the-spot spokesman with such a sound link with past history?

I'll add a new posting in a day or two, with a selection of snapshots I took today.

(Update: change of mind - I'll put a few of my pix on the end of this posting, with names omitted - having not sought permission to include them...)

 Please be patient, all you time-mellowed fellow pupils, while I go through my photo-archive of today's hastily-snatched  snapshots!

(Blog commercial: yes, history needs to be captured, real substantial Brit history that is, as distinct from the yawn-provoking ephemera that comes to us via internet and social media with which we are now bombarded on a daily basis!)

Cheers

Colin (Berry)

Bishopshalt School, 1956-63

Here are those piccies:

(Point and click on piccy to enlarge)

That should do for now. I could add a few more to the above 10  if anyone's interested.

Addendum (9th September, 2019)

There were a number of whole-school photographs laid out on the display table of which I took snapshots.

Having studied them closely, yours truly finds he's in two of them! The upper piccy has me still in short trousers, knees drawn up, end of Year 1. The second  below it is in the upper sixth, seated between  a fellow prefect and the 1962/63 Head Boy (see lapel badges!), again, centre of the 3.

Can you guess which one of the 3 sixth formers is in two, yes TWO, of the previous snapshots? Clue, he's without specs, but sporting a green shirt!


Oh, and here I am again, end Year 5, performing in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream", out in the Ornamental Gardens at the annual Summer Fete, organized by live wire Head of English ('Ken' Jardine).  We'd sat (and passed) our O-Level English (along with French and Maths) at the end of Year 4, so Ken had to find a way of keeping us exposed to the glories of the English language (mainly Lit) for a further year while we prepared for the remaining O-Levels (in my case, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, History and Latin (plus Biology by private study with occasional  - and  I have to say, much appreciated  - oversight from Biology mistress Mrs."Tessie" O'Shea, there being no timetable provision for those wishing/needing to get qualified - albeit ground story level -  in all three of the sciences. The other, apart from myself,  was Alan O'Neill, later Head of Kodak UK at Hemel Hempstead and stumbled-upon fellow Chesham-resident, who's in one of my Reunion piccies.). 

Apols for the somewhat blurry image. It was initially caught on 8mm cine film by my old man,  if you'll pardon the slang, then transferred to video at the turn of the century, then onto DVD earlier this year, then finally (phew!) onto laptop computer week or so ago.

(Role?  Answer: Peter Quince, leader of the six 'Rude Mechanicals' performing their  studiously ham-acted 'play-within-a-play', entitled "Pyramus and Thisbe").


Postscript regarding this revived website: it was set up in 2006, while living in Antibes, France, and received some 170 or so postings till the final one (on the wacky Hocus Pocus band) in August of 2007.

It was later followed by "New Dreams and Daemons", using a different website host based in Europe. That one later got closed and voluntarily erased  (I'll spare you the reasons).  My three current websites - all with a more specialized scientific flavour - arrived later:

science buzz in 2009

shroudofturinwithoutallthehype , tail-end 2011 

sussingstonehenge , early 2012

Late addition: have just spotted this group photo from the Reunion on a generally-accessible online site (Old Uxonian Facebook). Had previously kept it back, having come to me initially via personal email only:

Update: March 7, 2021

Have recently updated both my sciencebuzz site and specialist Stonehenge site:

Here's the Home Page of the latter, now extended to cover not only timber forerunners of Stonehneg, notably Woodhenge, but the vast number of stone circles that were set up in Neolithic times, 5000 and more years ago:

Link to the above site: