And so, with the aftershocks of a seismic election and some even more seismic football still rattling around us we have made it to the end of the summer term. Holidays await – travel, relaxation, reading (hopefully) and doing more of what you want to do rather than what you have to do. I have always found it difficult at the start of every term, to remember what being in the classroom is like. My longer-term memory lets me down – it comes back quickly thank goodness but there is a little re-learning to do once I’m back. The same is true of the holidays. Monday morning next week I will still wake up at 6.15 in the morning. Relaxation doesn’t necessarily ensue just because school happens to be closed to you lot. Muscle memory still rules in the short term, but we all will settle into a lower octane routine swiftly.
Summer term has, as usual, been the chance for all of us to ‘branch out’ and try something new or different. School can and should be about much more than just being in a classroom and learning simply refuses to be caged by the artificial barriers imposed by timetables or subjects. We’re all of us here to try to grow intellectually as well as physically. I’m no different – Great Yews with Year 7 and Year 12, The Longford Estate walk with Year 8, DofE and Pencelli with Year 9. With BWS Adventure there were DofE Silver and Gold and Ten Tors too – so let’s do a little test. Please stand up if you’ve been involved in any of those adventurous, outdoor activities this term. It doesn’t matter which year group you’re in, what you did or where you went. If you were involved in some way in BWS Adventure then get up on your feet.
Then there’s music – stand up if you have taken part in choir, orchestra, a concert or tour, a band, house music or Wednesday’s Battle of the Bands…
And sport – stand up if you have taken part in sport outside lessons this term – athletics, cricket, tennis, football or pre-season coaching for rugby or netball, lacrosse or Mr D-Gs marathon effort last Friday.
That is amazing. Trust me if I tried that in another school there wouldn’t be anything like the response. This place is different. Bishop’s is different and it’s made that way by your willingness to do things. Well done.
Of course none of that could happen without the hard work, dedication and imagination of the group of people standing around the sides of this hall. I'm going to ask you, in a moment, to give them all a big round of applause - but especially for those for whom this is the last day at Bishop's - Mrs Anders, Mrs Salway, Mrs Harkness, Ms Cleary, Mr Browning, and also our wonderful sports and music assistants Mr Edmunds, Mr Smith, Miss Cowey and Mr Jones.
Mr Oldham asks a very perceptive question of everyone who attends the Great Yews Camp. In what way are things better for you being there, and how are you a better person for your experience and impact on others. Think back over your year in school since September 2023 and ask yourself the same thing. Hold up the metaphorical mirror.
The holidays beckon then – and the school ends temporarily with partings and a walking away. The school’s metabolism slows to walking pace when we all leave through those gates and the only sounds around the site will be the echoes of the afternoon traffic and the chorus from the peregrines as yet another pigeon is brought to the meal table on the spire. Parting is the rule of thumb for the day, and so I thought I’d finish today with a poem, which I have asked Joe and Olivia to read between them. The words were written by the poet C Day-Lewis. They were inspired by his realisation that his grown-up, twenty-something son had fledged and was going to leave home. Letting go is like that, whether friends, family or school is at the heart – leaving is inevitability tinged with poignancy, inevitable reluctance bowing to the relentless passage of time and reality. Here is ‘Walking Away’ by C Day-Lewis.
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
Thank you. Have a wonderful summer everyone.
