Jrh Mcewen

Set for life

You may leave school but it never leaves you, says J.R.H. McEwen – the character formed by a fine education is instantly recognisable

You may leave school but it never leaves you, says J.R.H. McEwen – the character formed by a fine education is instantly recognisable

 For several reasons unconnected with the merits or otherwise of the place itself, when I left school 27 years ago (crikey!), I was glad to leave and expected never to return. Unlike some of my contemporaries, already discussing whether their unborn children of unmet wives might receive the same education, I had no inkling that one day I might be a parent and, in any case, I had no idea how I might ever make any money at all, let alone enough to pay school fees. All in all, school seemed to represent an unfortunate if necessary episode in life, an appropriate theatre in which to stage those awkward years but demanding to be immediately forgotten about, and sometimes even denied.

In view of this initial bad and unappreciative attitude, I have been surprised to find that school is still not merely present in my ageing mind but seems to have become a positive and welcome presence. I have not started to intone those tragic words about the happiest days of one’s life — the happiest day of my life so far was last Friday — but my school continues to make, even now, an affirmative and unexpected contribution to my life.

I have never revisited (though I did once whizz through in a car to be amazed by the free hand the school has given to architects since I was around) and have no desire to do so but the school remains in a sense unleavable, and I am glad of it. This fact is brought home to me not so much by a growing awareness that it was a good enough education, and some teachers were fantastic, but by chance meetings with fellow old boys — they are, almost invariably, such fine fellows!

There is a quality about them which is too consistent to be chance and seems to emanate from this school’s former pupils — boys of any age, 20 or 80, whether I have met them before or not.

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