Sammy

Sutton House

It is strange, how the past can catch up with you. On the whole, I cannot say that my schooldays were happy ones. My main memory from being at an English boarding school in the 1970s is one of boredom, rainy weekends with little or nothing to do. 

However, the other day I was very pleased to receive an email from Sammy (Siavosh) Ardalan, a fellow inmate at Lord Wandsworth College. (We used to call it "LWC" or "the London Water Closet".) In the sixth form, Sammy used to share a room at Sutton House with my friend Malcolm. Here is my reply to his rather brief message. 

Siavosh! Wow, that is a name I remember well. Sometimes I think back to a certain room in Sutton House, a room with velvet curtains, wallpaper that looked like wood, a cuckoo clock, a stereo system and a huge poster of a young lady who was not wearing much in the way of clothes...

So where are you now? What are you doing? Have you retired, like most sensible people?

Yes, please send me these photos. Occasionally I get an email from the Gibbon, aka Malcolm (MMC), who is something amazing in the world of Construction. He is in Riyadh, having divorced that awful Italian girl, and he is being paid lots of petrodollars by the Saudis for mixing some concrete. 

As for me, I was a teacher for nearly forty years, after leaving Oxford, and now I am retired. My wife Irena and I have a naughty Jack Russell and a country house in Bulgaria. (I am sure that you did not pay attention in Charlie Hallows' Geography lessons, so I suppose I had better tell you that Bulgaria is in the SE corner of Europe, next door to Greece and Turkey.) Bulgaria is rather nice and it is a lot cheaper than the UK (well, most places are).

You can read all about my misadventures in my blog. There is quite a long post about the last time I was in the UK, which was for RTD's memorial service in the Gavin Hall. I did see quite a few of our old teachers, including Peter Booth, Monty W., Hildebug and old Whibley. One or two Old Sternians were also there, including Markoi.

Simon (aka the Hippo)

Sammy is now some sort of real estate agent in California and you can meet him by going to his website http://www.RedHotPropertiesCa.com 

He looks rather different to how he looked when we were at school together. Well, it was more than forty years ago, but the voice is much the same.

And here are the extremely embarrassing photos that Sammy kindly sent to me. 


In the first one, I am supposed to be an old granny and Sammy and I are having a boxing match (I won). Ernie's Incredible Illucinations was our house play one year and you can see the school's rather pretentious school crest just behind us. I must have been about 16. 

In the second photo, I was a bit older and it looks as though it was taken in my first year at Oxford. Yes. I did wear a cravat in those days...



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