BGS GK Club Reunion "Sesh"

Richard "Anders" Anderson with
the late Andrew Martin in about 1981

There was a Boston Grammar School General Knowledge Club Reunion "Sesh" on Friday 23 January. It was attended by Richard Anderson who retired from the school at the end of the 2013-14 school year.

In further GK Club news, Richard Anderson announced that the club archives would be held in the school staff room by Mr and Mrs Rennie. The archive includes past questions which may be useful if members wish to hold quizzes in the future.

Richard hopes there will be at least one staff team and one student team at the Old Bostonian Association Quiz Night on 25 February.

Senior Schools' Challenge General Knowledge Tournament

East Midlands Senior Schools' Challenge - BGS team comes away undefeated!

Ten star members of the BGS GK Club travelled by train and tram to the impressive Cottingham Boys' High School on Wednesday November 26th to compete in the annual senior schools' challenge quiz tournament. (last year they won the plate trophy - duly returned by Richard Anderson).

There was a record turn-out of 17 teams from 10 different schools and the BGS a team of Sam Hallam (captain), Thomas Vamplew, Oliver Cammack and Neelay Sant gave an excellent account of themselves.

A hat-trick of wins:

BGS A	570	Trent College	420
BGS A	440	Kesteven and Grantham Girls	390
BGS A	450	Uppingham School	370

Therefore our lads qualified for the semi-final in a match scheduled to be against Leicester Grammar School. However, the time factor meant that our team had to pull out of the semi-final in order to catch the tram and train back to Boston at 6:44 pm as agreed in advance.

Hard lines for all, but we live to fight again!

The very young BGS B team of David Wardell (captain), Ross Hawkins, Abdullah Ahmed and enthusiastic newcomer Melbin Baby had the bad luck to be drawn against two A teams, scoring 160 against Carre's GS A team's 520. However, the lads managed a creditable 260 against Dixie Grammar School's A team's 580.

GK twins, Zain and Meursaleen Asif proved to be first-rate supporters and special surprise guest star, Ben Hallam (last year's GK club manager) officiated ''hot foot" from Loughborough University! Old boy Michael Mardell (big brother of David) also popped up on the Nottingham station platform from his home town university to cheer us all up after the disappointment of having to leave before the finish.

Special thanks are due to Mrs Rennie for giving up so much of her time to make the trip to Nottingham possible.

Many thanks too to the lads' parents and school management for their support of this highly educational and entertaining event!

RWA 27.11.14

Richard Anderson to retire

Richard Anderson has been teaching Modern Languages (French and German) at Boston Grammar School since 1971 and in doing so has inspired generations of Boston "lads" as he would call them. But his real lasting impression on those lads has often been from extra-curricular activities, having supervised clubs on topics from Cross Country to Subbuteo, and from model Railways to German.

It's difficult to choose where he has made the greatest impression but some of the highlights would be:

• Leading the Charity Club to raise thousands of pounds for all sorts of charities
• Leading the Schuhplattler Gruppe to perform its German style dancing at home and abroad over 700 times including appearances on television
• Leading lads to success in General Knowledge local, regional and national competitions
• Leading the Grammar Gazette to be what I understand is the longest running school student run newspaper in the country (I stand to be corrected if that is not the case)

And now, having easily passed the historical teaching retirement mark of 60 (thanks to government policy), Richard is preparing to put down his red pen for the last time, retiring on 31 August 2014, so the current term is his last as a teacher.

Some of us have contemplated in the past what Richard would do after retirement. Once when I asked his friend and former colleague, Ron Abbott, if he could contact Richard for me (before the age of school email addresses), he said that short of throwing a rock with a message attached over the school wall there wasn't much he could do. So dedicated has Richard been to the school, or really more accurately to "the lads" (although some are in fact now "lassies"), and the hours he has put in are surely matched by few in any profession.

In fact Richard's plans for retirement are to split his time between Boston, where he has made many friends, and regularly meets former students, who he calls "blasts from the past", the North East, his home territory and still home for one of his brothers, and Germany, where his other brother lives. Let's hope we continue seeing Richard around for many years to come and let's wish him a very happy retirement!

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.

National Junior Challenge Quiz - Semi-Final

The Boston Grammar School Junior Quiz A Team have been beaten by Haberdashers' Aske's School, from Elstree in Hertfordshire, in the semi-finals of the National Junior Challenge Quiz held at the Perse School, Cambridge. I understand that the BGS team put up a good fight but Haberdashers' Aske's, who have won the competition for the last three years, came out on top with 900 points against BGS's 620 points. This is the furthest a BGS team has got in the competition in over a decade.

BGS Junior GK Team through to national semis

The Boston Grammar School Junior General Knowledge A Team has made it to the national semi-finals of the National Junior Quiz Challenge after beating St Ivo School from St Ives in Cambs in the East Midlands final. The team were Oliver Cammack, Oliver Jones, Neelay Sant and Ross Hawkins.

Thank you to Richard Cammack for sharing this news on Facebook.

General Knowledge success

The Boston Grammar School Junior General Knowledge A Team has won the South Lincs junior challenge general knowledge tournament qualifier, beating Kesteven and Grantham Girls school in the final. They now go on to the regional final.

Thank you to Richard Cammack for sharing this news on Facebook.