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AOSA ANNUAL REPORT 2001 |
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I tried to gain some inspiration and insight for this address by looking back at some addresses by recent past presidents and I had gone back only as far as Chris Scaife’s address when I found, in the same publication, a photograph of David Artiss and his wife Grace and me in Kingston, Ontario in front of City Hall. I’d obviously given my camera to a bystander to catch the three of us on film for posterity. As we stood there smiling for the camera, I remember wondering whether the camera man would have legged it down the street with my Canon, if only he had known that David could no longer bend over his cricket bat, Grace had only one decent knee and although I was an imposing 6’2” I had only one leg. We would not have been able to catch him between the three of us. This photo then reminded me that it was also the famous year when I was in Kingston to meet David at a convention and I found myself on Lake Ontario aboard a triple-decker cruiser and surrounded by a boatload of international scholars of German literature. David had invited me along for the cruise and I found myself being treated on board as though I were one of ‘them’, even though I was the only one not to have a name-tag. I tried to keep a low profile and stay close to David so as not to get dragged into any major discussions on German literature in general and on Theodor Storm in particular, subjects on which I would have been found wanting. As it was, many of the passengers were in deep and earnest conversation in German and the only German phrase I had available was ‘Der Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’, which is an impressive German phrase in itself but it is only the name of a newspaper! This is simply leading up to a general observation that sometimes things do not happen by design, but that outside influences take over and then things often start to happen to one’s person rather than that we actively cause things to happen ourselves. At the tender age of 10 for instance, Ayton happened to me, and I can’t say that I really know how it happened. As a Stokesley lad I guess I was supposed to have gone to either one of Yarm or Guisborough Grammar Schools, and ordinarily would have, if my parents had not been still working down south after the war and thought it best that I come to Ayton for a different kind of education. The trouble is, I don’t know how different it was, because I have nothing to compare it with. In any case, other presidents and old scholars have addressed this thought, that is, the Quaker ethic and ethos, more eloquently, and I shall leave it in their good hands, or more precisely, in their words. Best to stop talking when it has all been said before and I can’t improve on it, although I shall have a few words to say later on about my own education, but from a decidedly different angle. I thought it must be some kind of mistake when I received Sue Fox’s letter early in 1999, offering me the chance to serve an anticipatory and very suspenseful year as your President Elect. Not only a mistake, but I thought it was also a piece of sheer madness, when I was one ocean and half a continent away. But thoughts happen at the speed of light and within a second or two I had a million already and had realised that of course the Nominations' Committee had obviously mulled this over and had decided to go ahead and ask anyway, despite the impracticality of it all. I realised that in all likelihood I would not be able to attend any meetings of any kind other than this one and that my year of office would be really a titular thing. But with that thought out of the way I realised that there was really no impediment to my accepting the office and I really do consider it to be a signal honour and, when I look at the names before mine which appear in the list since 1889, I accept the position with much humility too. It also dawned on me that all of a sudden, and without prior warning, there would be two Presidents, old friends from the same class following each other in consecutive years. In her kind letter of congratulation to me Dorothy said “we are like London buses, for ages there are none and then suddenly two come along at once.” I was born in 1936, and I used to look ahead and wonder as a youngster how it would be in the year 2000 when we would all be 64, and the Beatles had not yet written their smash hit “When I’m 64.” I could not imagine my old gangs in Stokesley and Ayton, in and out of school, being 64 at all. I didn’t fancy the prospect of looking as old as my grandparents, or like anyone else’s grandparents either. Now, here we are and right in the middle of the year 2000, with a major ceremony to boot, and at least to ourselves we are looking at life with youthful attitudes and good humour. I have noticed in recent addresses that the incoming Presidents have all done just a little reminiscing and it seems to be customary, and I hope you will not begrudge me a bit of my own, if I try to make it interesting. Actually, it’s a bit of a daunting prospect nevertheless, because when I first saw the detailed programme for this weekend I read that the inauguration of the President was to be “immediately followed by the food” and that my Presidential Address was to be “immediately followed by tea and biscuits.” Now, if that isn’t pressure to finish in good time I don’t know what is. |
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Chairman, Old Scholars, Staff, and friends,