Flood update and calling all furniture makers

The OBA mini-museum
adjacent to the school library

As has already been said on this blog, the president's flood appeal was very successful with about £2600 being raised. The aim is for this to go to making some minor improvements to a neglected part of the school and leaving a permanent reminder of the flood - things which wouldn't be covered by insurance payouts.

Somewhere on or near the library a place will be found for a brass plaque to indicate the level reached by the water. The rest of the money will be spent improving the entrance to the library - the small room giving access to the yard, library, quad and current careers room. The aim is to provide display cases and seating allowing this to become a comfortable meeting area for students, and a place where the Old Bostonian Association can exhibit artefacts and photographs and, we hope, increase awareness in the school of our existence, how we can benefit the school and what we do with and for our members.

The President, Peter Sharman, thought it would be particularly nice if we could find an appropriately skilled Boston Grammar School former student to make some high quality furniture for this project. So, if you are a cabinet maker, or know any other old boy who may be able to step up to the plate, please contact Peter Sharman at president@bostonian.org.uk.

On the OBA dinner weekend (21 March) I was pleased to be able to examine the progress in cleaning up the school following the flood. The OBA mini-museum seems pretty much back to normal, with the display cases having been re-varnished and looking like new. It seems that most of the major work in the library is complete. While books need to be returned to the bottom shelves of their cases and tables cleared of the repair company's boxes, the parquet floor, which had lifted, has had each block refinished and replaced. Apparently only one small parquet block from the floor went missing and it has been replaced with a new one. Even the long-neglected entrance, described earlier in this article, is looking pristine. The floor there too has been refinished and partly carpeted. Everything is looking great. Apparently the assembly hall was not seriously affected but the 1970s gym will probably need to have its floor replaced. Even the old science block in the yard has apparently had a much-needed lick of paint.

I had heard that the flood deposited a large amount of shingle on the sports field but the full story was much more interesting. Apparently the force of water had lifted a drain cover, which had long been covered in grass and entirely forgotten, causing the shingle to explode forth. The existence of the drain cover was only discovered when the shingle was moved away. I suggested that it may have been the Bar Ditch, an ancient waterway which runs under the school, but apparently this is not thought likely.

Interested in playing cricket or other sports?

Old Bostonian Association Cricket Team 1965

As you should be aware by now, the 2014 football match between the "old boys" and Boston Grammar School will take place on 3 April at the school. See the relevant article for more details if you want to be a spectator - I believe that we now have enough players and officials.

Together with the annual General Knowledge Quiz, ably MC'd by Richard Anderson, and the Snooker Tournament, which, following the death of its previous organiser, Paul Mould, failed to take place in 2013, the football match makes up the group of recently held competitions between the "old boys" and the school.

In the past there were other competitions: cricket, tennis and golf come to mind but there were probably others.

The Old Bostonian Association President, Peter Sharman, tells me that someone has shown an interest in organising a cricket match. There's no date for it yet, nor even a guarantee that it will happen, but if you might be interested in taking part, please indicate you interest to Peter, either by email (president@bostonian.org.uk) or via his Facebook account - he is a member of the Boston Grammar School Alumni group at Facebook.

If cricket isn't your thing, or even if it is, perhaps you could think whether you might be able and willing to organise a competition between the "old boys" (under the name of the Old Bostonian Association, but not necessarily involving only member of the association) and the school. While it can certainly be a sporting, event, it doesn't have to be. Again, send any suggestions to Peter Sharman, you could add a comment to this post, or if you're a member of the Facebook group, why not start a discussion there and see if there is interest in your idea.

Just a footnote about the snooker, while, as indicated above, the death of Paul Mould put a spanner in the works of the annual tournament, a new organiser was appointed in 2013 and apart from running out of year, there was another reason for the competition not taking place: Nigel Wainwright was unable to raise a school team. A proposal was made to have a competition between "young" old boys and "more senior" old boys, so if this situation continues, we could be looking for even more snooker players than usual when this year's competition is being organised.

Reginald Bosanquet Swing Band

I recently obtained recordings of several school bands from the 1970s and 1980s which were made by Ron Abbott in glorious mono on his reel-to-reel tape recorder. I hope to make all of these recordings available publicly for the first time.

The first fruits of this effort is in the form of the Reginald Bosanquet Swing Band, recorded at the BGS Follies of 1979. The BGS Follies were an annual talent contest at Boston Grammar School, and the story goes that it was this performance that caused the headmaster, Arthur Shrimpton, to cancel future events of this kind.

The members of the band were Keith Phillips (drums), Tim Loake (lead guitar), Dick Green (rhythm guitar) and Bill Dunham (vocals).

If you want to read a little more about the band then you can go to the OBA Wiki and follow links through to YouTube, or if you're impatient to see what they sounded like, you can go straight to the recordings on YouTube.

(Note that the graphic shown here is not the band's own logo, but rather just something I have designed to give the YouTube videos some character)

BGS Chairman of Governors resigns

Chairman of the Boston Grammar School Governors, Stephen Woodliffe has resigned. Stephen Woodliffe is a former teacher at BGS and a current Boston councillor.

OBA v BGS Football Match 2014

The School v Old Boys - Annual Football Fixture

Date - Thursday 3rd April 2014 - Kick Off 4.30pm

The team is now commencing an intensive 48 hour period of 'carb and protein loading' in advance of the big game on Thursday.

Report to the Pavilion for 3.45pm approx.

Fag and a Red Bull at 4.15pm approx.

Kick off at 4.30pm.

16 man squad is confirmed as follows;

Giles Elson
Paul Chester
Steve Woodcock
Tom Baxter
Lewis Mundt
Tim Bell
George Dix
Ricky Drury
Nick Jackson
Nathan Hubbert
Alex Tilley
Paul Fossitt
Paul Lenton
Jim Bedford
Ben Parkinson
Elliot Pogson

Steve Woodcock is kindly arranging a kit for us but please bring spare shorts, socks etc.

Going is good to firm.

Drinks afterwards at The Indian Queen, Dolphin Lane from 6'ish - 6.30'ish onwards.

Please support your Association !

School bands

Evil Scarecrow

I usually start discussions here on the blog and move them later to Facebook. However for various reasons the latest hot topic started over on the Boston Grammar School Alumni Facebook group.

There had been a short conversation about the recent report in the Boston Standard that a study showed Boston to one of the least musical places in the country. It's the usual journalistic simplification so I would suggest at least having a cursory read of the original report before blowing your top.

That discussion prompted me to act on something I had been considering for a long time: to start articles on school bands on the OBA Wiki. You will now already find quite a large and growing selection of bands linked from the Bands Category page of the Wiki, with more being added all the time.

If you have any information about school bands past or present, whether organised by the school (like the BGS Jazz Band), formed by students of the school, or made up mainly of former students of BGS, then please set up an account on the Wiki and start editing. The Wiki uses the Media Wiki framework, just the same as used by Wikipedia, so if you've ever edited Wikipedia you already know pretty much what to do.

If you really can't see yourself editing the Wiki, then please send the information you have to me: webmaster@bostonian.org.uk but it will probably take longer to appear.