Firstly, I wish you all a very happy Christmas. As I said at a similar time last year, I am perhaps beginning to feel a touch of Advent in the air. It's probably all the talk of the Christmas dinner and the Carol services, both junior and senior. I look forward to them all immensely.
As I look back across the term, the College has, as usual, achieved a great deal. The Michaelmas Music Concert was a delight: once again it was a magical festival of different genres of music. From Madeleine Marinko Maechler's classical singing to the rock and rock edginess of the The Hats and The Seth Bristow experience. Well done to all of them. It was one of the shortest few hours of my life, as it was so enjoyable.
Our victory in public speaking over worthy opponents from the Towers and Shoreham Academy was superb. I was there with Ms Whitmill and Mr Jelliman (great to have his support) and was treated to a very fine display of eloquent argument and verbal theorising, thanks to Aimee Cheeseman (Y10), Madeleine Marinko Maechler (Y11) and the charismatic Lucas Atherton (Y11). Their performances were excellent.
We have had a tremendous time in a sporting sense, bagging lots of gold, silver and bronze medals for junior and senior swimming at JAGS and I was particularly pleased by Mrs Liley's Under 13 female football players who saw off 8 other independent schools at Great Walstead in November. A governor went along for the afternoon as she thought we were playing one match: she saw far more than she had bargained for and was thrilled.
A highlight for me was the meteorite that crashed to earth in the Junior School, inspiring pages of creative work for the Big Write. Well done to all involved in that - staff and pupils. I thought the crash site was dramatic and convincing, which it needed to be, of course, in order to get the creative brains of our budding War of the Worlds authors going. My thanks to the staff for setting that up and the pupils for getting stuck in to creative work.
My sincere thanks to the SCPA this term who have donated for our junior use the most lovely boat, Dragonfly. We appreciate their work in fundraising for the College enormously. The Forest School, another of their major contributions to all that we do here is going from strength to strength, spearheaded by Mrs Savill. It is a superb facility. The Winter Fayre, on that note, was packed with people this half-term and raised more than £4,000 for the Association. My thanks to the parents, families and staff who all made the event a Christmas cracker. (My apologies - I couldn't resist.)
Picking up on the charitable theme, I am also pleased to say that the junior and senior pupils managed to raise just shy of £680 for Children in Need through bake sales. I must say that I am not sure that I have been in once place with so many cakes before and I thank the parents who make this possible. Next term, we will be looking at Sport Aid and in the summer term we will be looking to support work for bumble bee conservation.
Of course, I must just mention the Little Lions and Junior Christmas play which was a festival of costume, character and song. It certainly made me feel some Christmas cheer and my congratulations to all of the pupils and staff who took part in it and who produced the spectacular piece ‘The Amazing Advent Calendar.”
Finally, I am pleased that the weather has taken a turn for the cold and crisp. I think it's what the doctor ordered for this time of the year and there's nothing better than singing out some wonderful carols loudly and then heading for some mulled wine and a mince pie - in moderation, of course. Do all have an excellent Christmas.
Mr Taylor-West, Headmaster