It was the great journalist, Bernard Levin, who began his column in
the first Times newspaper after a year of closure caused by the
stand-off between Rupert Murdoch and the printing unions, back in the -
when was it? eighties?- with the words, "As I was saying..."
I feel rather the same way after a half-term of non-blogging. Not, I
thought, that anyone had noticed. Not, that is, until I was inundated by
a flood of concerned queries shortly after half-term. I say a flood; it
could more accurately be described as two. One from a parent who sent
in a sort of email headed more or less along the lines of "Wot, no
Blogs?" - thank you, Micheal - and a colleague who mentioned the absence
of the blog more as something to say than as a genuine and concerned
inquiry. Well, if the statisticians can extrapolate from a sample, so
can I and two, in my book, constitutes a flood. So, here I am, back
again.
The six weeks between Christmas and half-term were extraordinarily
intense. The weeks immediately following Christmas always are: A Level
modules, mock exams, work experience, parental consultations, all
combine in their own way to eat up time. The pressure was greater this
year because of the financial environment and the detailed work on the
budget to keep the number of impending redundancies to a
minimum. Detailed work, I may add, led by the Bursar, whose coolness
under pressure never falters. Throw into this mix the breaking of the
news about Eddie Irvine buying the College Avenue site with the
consequent media flurry - it was more of a flurry than a frenzy in the
end - and the final decision about when we are actually going to move
into the new school, and it all added up to what the media call a
'rollercoaster' of a term.
The decision to move in January has not been an entirely
straightforward one, but in the end it is undoubtedly the best option
with probably he least disruption to the School. We arrived at the date
after an exhaustive review of all options and, curiously, selected
the time that we had always thought was an impossibility. New year, new
term, new school. A dignified farewell and an excited, breathless hello
in 2013.
The reality, the belief, has crept up on me, incrementally day by
day, until, suddenly, one morning, I woke up and the new school had
ceased to be an aspiration or frustration or distant dream; quite
quietly, the ground had shifted and I had never noticed ...
The highlights of the term so far. Let me single out two, both within a day or two of each other.
The first was the Politics Society's Questiontime with
Steven Agnew, Jim Allister, Leslie Cree, Conor Maskey and Peter Weir
answering a number of what I think were difficult questions. You'll
notice that the names are in strict alphabetical order, if only to
demonstate this headmaster's studious and careful neutrality. You will
be pleased to know that school principals have no political opinions of
any kind - well, not of the party political kind. Not, at least of the public
kind. I had the pleasure of chairing the debate, sitting in the middle
and observing, interested and engaged, but unable to indulge - a eunuch
of the political kind. It taught me how supremely good a job David
Dimbleby does, effortlessly managing the debate and mov ing seamlessly
from subject to subject. It would, as they say, have done your heart
good to see the politicians get to grips with each other tenaciously,
courteously - well, for the most part - and maturely. There were five
questions: three would not have been out of place anywhere; they were
bead and butter political issues - prescription charges, recycling and
the programme for giovernment - and the quality of the ideas flashing to
and fro was high. Two hit the old constitutional nerve and yet, even
here, the atmospherte was in an indefinable way, different. The
question about how the panellists would celebrate the Diamond Jubilee
didn't light anyone's blue touch paper as it might once have done.
Perhaps it took a while to get fired up, but it wasn't until the last
question which pushed the politicians to discuss the concept of
political maturity and the potential for a movement away from the old
fault lines of denomination and culture that the debate took off and
even then, the change was apparent. It struck me that, for better or
worse, and who am I to say, we were in a new world in which we were all,
dare I say it?, intelligent people, passionate, angry and adult.
TUV, DUP, UUP, Green and Sinn Fein in Bangor Grammar School, around the same table, ten years ago? I don't think so.
The other highlight? Unquestionably the second half of a very fine
Schools' Cup fourth round tie against Dalriada, when the boys played
with a commitment, intensity and skill, I don't think I have seen before
this year. They played as a team; it's such a trite cliche, but I have
never before seen it exemplified so gloriously, the whole greater than
any individual, the collective will absorbing and re-creating the single
efforts to produce a force which was in the end too strong to be
defied.
I had better stop. First because I am writing on the eve of the
quarter-final; and secondly because the language I'm using seems all too
resonant of something else, something much too inappropriately
political...
