Old Bostonian Association Annual Dinner 2015 - Report

Richard Anderson leads
everyone in some exercises

As predicted the Old Bostonian Association Annual Dinner 2015 was a huge success. Once Richard Anderson, the almost universally popular Modern Languages teacher of 43 years (and one term) who retired in 2014, was booked as the guest speaker, it seemed almost inevitable that we would achieve a record attendance for recent years, and so we did.

I hope you enjoy this long report with many photographs. Maybe you will be able to identify long-lost friends in some of the images - click on an image to see a larger version.

The last few dinners have been held at the Boston and County Club where our recent record of ninety-something stretched comfort; last year's sixty-something was perfect for that venue. We needed somewhere larger, and the solution was in hindsight obvious - we returned to the school hall for the first time in probably a couple of decades (dinners around the turn of the 21st century were held in the school dining hall). This time we were able to bring with us the excellent caterers from the county club and all was set.

Nigel Wainwright to retire

Nigel Wainwright, PE teacher at Boston Grammar School since 1977 will retire at the end of the current term.

Nigel arrived at the school following the departure of Bob Don-Duncan, who went on to teach Economics at Boston High School. He worked under Rod Dunn as his head of department until Rod left in 1996 and he took the helm.

Nigel has helped many students to sporting success and led the school to achieve Sports College status. He has often represented the school at Old Bostonian Association events, including accepting the toast to the school on a number of occasions at the OBA annual dinner, and selecting teams to play against the OBA in various tournaments - playing himself in the snooker and general knowledge quiz.

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.

OBA Web site change

I've just removed a page from the OBA Website. The page in question was "OBA News". That's not to say there will be no future OBA news, just that this blog is a far better place for it. It means you, the reader, can comment, articles can automatically be advertised on Facebook, and it's just easier to post them.

There were two rather old articles on that page that haven't been published anywhere else, so I have reposted them here.