| Index (Aston) |
Annual Reunion Dinner 2008 - Friday or Saturday 7/8th November in the McGregor Suite, Villa Park.
 |
"Old time is on our track, boys, and seas may soon divide The voices now united, the friends now side by side." |
Without doubt Aston has been one of the major influences on my life: who I am and what I have become. For many years my memories were not the happiest, but distance has lent a greater objectivity to those perceptions.
My last two years there should have been the best but weren't. I think the principle of recency coloured my attitude and feelings towards the place for many years thereafter.
I have never lived very far away, but went back for only three reunions: once with my father (himself an Aston Old Edwardian) sometime between 1967 and 1970, once on my own shortly after his death in 1980 (when I met Peter Band), and once with my brother (who is not an AOE) in 1988 when he was the guest speaker. Apart from Peter, I never saw any of my contemporaries on those occasions, so stopped going. But things have improved recently!
Then, like many other old boys, I went to the centenary celebrations in 1983. This time I did meet a few contemporaries: Dennis Herdman, Peter Killingback, and (Dr.) Richard Horobin. But especially pleasing was to see former teachers: Stan Calvert, Tony Cooke, Theo Fox, Lindsay Hayden, Derek Hobson (who had by this time become Second Master), Eric Pedley, Colin Tyson and (a real delight) his brother Harry.
Some time after the centenary I went, in the course of my work with EITB, to give a careers talk at the School. The only survivor of my era was Harold Jessop - by this time grey and portly (but now white and slim!).
Not forgotten are contemporaries David White and Tony Powick, both of Sutton Coldfield, who died young in accidents and - more recently - John Clarke, Peter Prole and David A Davies.
I expect that, like me, you have a few old photographs to jog your memory of those far-off days!
Needless to say the school has its own web site (as do the AOEs) which you might like to visit. How 'Billy' Chivers would have loved, and enthused about, all this new technology!
(There have been visitors to this page since September, 2005.)