Letters 2001- Alan Gilmour/title> </head> <body background="../Images/background.gif"> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="newsletter2001.htm#Letters 2001">BACK TO NEWSLETTER 2001 CONTENTS</a></font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="../index.html" target="_parent">HOME</a></font></p> <p align="center"><font color="#800080" size="5"><b>Letters 2001</b></font></p> <p align="center"><b>Alan Gilmour</b></p> <p align="left">106 Crock Lane<br> Bothenhampton <br> Bridport <br> Dorset <br> DT6 4DH <br> 22nd, December 2000 </p> <p align="left">Dear Nick, (or according to generation, Zelle!) </p> <p align="left">1 Beth and I would love to come to the OC Dinner, and I enclose the pro forma and a cheque. </p> <p align="left">2 to 22 (at least) Congratulations on a Newsletter so full of interest, pictures, data, reminiscences, news, - it is a tour de force and shows quite astonishing devotion to duty!! It has seriously impeded my contribution to preparing the house for Christmas, as has (I expect) been noticed... </p> <p align="left">23 Once you start stirring the mud in Memory Lane all sorts of ghostly pictures float into consciousness. My introduction to Clayesmore is rather bizarre - my Prep Sch headmaster had hung onto one or two older boys like me to help run a wartime school; in exchange he coached us for School Cert - in the subjects he could. The outcome was that I came to Clayesmore just 14, moving into the upper VI with my distinctions in Latin & French, and into Shell and lower 5 to begin to do the science I needed for medicine. I think that I was regarded as a little odd - by me as well as the others! (Shifty Sessions was kind, after testing my singing he said "Don't worry, Gilmour, you're not completely tone deaf!") </p> <p align="left">24 I don't really have time to indulge in anecdotage just now, which must be a relief to you - but in consulting my AppleMac for your address I came across the enclosed - commentaries I wrote in '94 to Tony Chew on two photos I found for him. The adaptation of La Donna e Mobile was mainly the work of A Luboff, who with Robin Kirkby was the moving spirit in lively end of term concerts. After playing the King to Brooke-Little's Hamlet his capacity for bawd-lerising Shakesperian pentameters was prodigal. <b>(See below)</b> </p> <p align="left">All good wishes, again very warm congratulations, and I hope to see you in 5 weeks. </p> <p align="left">Sincerely </p> <p align="left"><b>Alan (Gilmour)(43-46)</b></p> <p align="center"><b>Clayesmore in Wartime </b></p> <p>1. The main building. I think this was either 1943 or '44. the master walking could be Mr LeBreton, who probably was called out of retirement because of the war; he was nicknamed 'Ghandi' because of some facial resemblance. (In those days there was no glazed partition to what is now the Library office; it was used for storage and for some special books. LeBreton was in it one day when some wag locked him in and put up a notice "Quiet! Ghandi is fasting!") The photograph shows clearly the steps which King had made so that he could use his study window as a door; when you thought he was safely in his study he could be anywhere, which was disquieting. Less obvious, although discernible, is one of the two steel "rope" ladders which hung from the parapet of the library roof as fire escapes from dormitories which had windows opening on to that roof. (Treads of steel plate about ? 9 in by 3in. with four chains at the corners.) The main building then held the Senior and Junior Houses. The Junior Common Room is now the Ismay Room; The Senior CR is now a Drawing Room - the one facing the front door. The Drawing Room, next to the library, was elegantly furnished and used for prestige entertaining etc., acting as the Warden's Study when EM King took on that title, appointing Burke as Master. What now looks like a Careers Library was the Staff Common Room. It only had a 6ft partition on to the corridor, looking like a wooden chancel screen filled in with plywood.</p> <p>2. The Stables (Middles' House) (Gate House) Also either '43 or '44. I can name most of the middles there but not all. They had two common rooms (dating I think from when it was two 'houses' - Burke's and Spinney's) one being in the NW corner behind the cycle racks, the other along the east side backing on to the road. On the reverse of the outer arch was access to the bell rope - what presumably had been built in as the stables' fire bell was the school bell, being rung for all lessons, chapel, roll call etc. One RJ Snell missed the end of each class as he was the designated ringer. About 1945 King installed an automatic electric bell system, with a granny clock 'master' in the hall, backing on to the staff common room. There was a manual override bell push which was a gift for jokers, as the bells rang all over the school. An end-of-term concert included the chorus </p> <p align="center">I am E King-ee-o <br> Hark while I sing-ee-o <br> 'lectric bells ring-ee-o <br> Their ting-a-ling-ee-o <br> Electrified bells they are <br> They're going to get you far <br> When you come up to pa- <br> ss your exams </p> <p>The pre-war house system - Burke's Spinney's Appleby's and Mackenzies' was kept on Vestigially as an arbitrary way of allocating boys to groups for competitive sports, but I don't think that house matches can have had the same buzz. I only knew the school as divided into three age bands. Middles had their own caretaker who lived in with his wife near the turret; he woke us by walking the upper floor (a continuous square walk) through the intercommunicating dormitories, clanging a hand bell of no mean size and giving us a running commentary of cockney wit. The 3 main Middles' dormitories were former haylofts, and still had the wooden beams passing vertically through them to support the roof. These were ideal for fastening both ends of the long rope we had for fire escape and making a swing; add a pile of blanket rugs on the linoleum central strip and you could swing-fly-slide with great abandon. With the rope down again there was nothing to explain the bare foot marks on the rather high ceiling! </p> <p><b>Alan Gilmour (43-46)</b></p> <p align="center"> <font size="2"><a href="newsletter2001.htm#Letters 2001">BACK TO NEWSLETTER 2001 CONTENTS</a></font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="letters01_gilmour.htm">BACK TO TOP</a></font></p> <p align="center"><font size="2"><a href="../index.html" target="_parent">HOME</a></font></p> </body> </html>