News from Mr Grady
4th May 2023
Hello everyone,
We’re already two weeks into this half term, and the time simply seems to be flying away!
This week and next week also feel slightly truncated with the two bank holidays, creating that four day week for us all, and meaning you never quite seem to get up and running in the way you’d like. However, I hope everyone is making the most of those extra days at the weekend.
For our year elevens and thirteens, we are entering their last two official weeks of education, although throughout the exam period students can attend, and we will also be putting on specific revision sessions that students will have been invited to. For those families with students preparing to sit GCSEs and A-Levels, I’m sure you’re thinking, “where did that time go?” “Only last week, surely, we were thinking about the move from primary to secondary school?” And now here you are, 5 or 7 years later thinking about the upcoming exams.
Time really does ebb and flow in the oddest of ways, and I was reminded of this recently whilst talking to a neighbour. As we approach this weekend, with the impending celebrations surrounding the coronation of King Charles III, I am excited to say that in the small close in which I live, one of our neighbours has organised a street party.
I have some sort of random nostalgia for a street party, despite never having attended one. I thought I dimly remembered doing something in our primary school playground for the Queen’s silver Jubilee, but a quick google told me that this was 1977, and I would have been aged one. So that can’t be right. I wonder what that was…? There was definitely a street party feel to whatever was happening. Time once again, playing odd tricks on the mind.
Anyway, a street party to celebrate the coronation seems a very pleasant thing to do with one’s Sunday afternoon. We are all meant to bring a plate of food, and it will be a chance to catch up with our neighbours, some of whom I never really speak to, and perhaps make some connections with those living close in our community. I’ve had a go at making the Coronation Quiche, relatively successfully, although I have to say it doesn’t have the excitement nor flavour of Coronation Chicken.
Excitingly though, I have also got a plan for a small performance at the start of the party. Those of you who remember Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee, (Again – time is a funny thing – I thought this was relatively recent – but it was 2002. Twenty-one years ago! The entirety of our student body will have no memory of this!) those of you that DO remember it though, may remember that Brian May, the guitarist from the band Queen, performed “God Save the Queen” whilst standing on top of Buckingham Palace. Well. I have an electric guitar, and a hefty amplifier. I can play “God Save the Queen.” And, I can get onto the one story roof above our garage with the help of a stepladder. All I need is a large curly wig, and I can really kick the start of the street party off with a bang!
As a younger person, and certainly as a grumpy student at university, I would not have expected my older self to be in quite such a celebratory mood around the coronation, and would certainly have shared a variety of views with you about the monarchy – whether you’d asked me for them or not. But the older I get, and as time moves on, the more I find some comfort in the continuity that our monarchy brings. There is something reassuring about the ties that bind monarchy and state, king, queen and parliament, and during such an occasion, with what I am sure will be hours of television and media coverage, it’s a great opportunity to learn a little more about our constitution, why our country works the way it does, and reflect on how we can continue to be a part of our local and national communities to continue to make a difference.
I’m not going to be painting myself red, white and blue and camping out on the mall at all hours, but in my own quiet way, with my amplifier turned up to eleven, I shall be celebrating the accession of our next monarch, and enjoying the company of my local community.
For those of you celebrating the coronation over the bank holiday, I do hope you enjoy it, and next time I write to you, our year elevens and thirteens will have officially left, our year tens and years twelves will now be the official oldest in the school, and we shall officially have entered a new Carolingian era.
Time moves on.
Stay well and safe everyone,
With all best wishes,
Mr Grady
