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 and 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...



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the Cards, Part 1

Image
Getting our new Bulgarian residency cards from the Microwave Oven Woman Rejoice! Let's celebrate. Hallelujah! At long last, the Microwave Woman has given us our new Bulgarian residency cards (BRCs). As a special treat, just in case you do not know what a BRC looks like, here is my old one.  My dear wife suggested that I should "black out" certain bits, as there are lots of evil people out there on the Internet, all gathering my personal and financial details in order to swindle me or involve me in some dreadful scandal or some such nonsense. Of course, no one who reads my blog could ever do such a nasty thing!   Getting our new BRCs means that we can go ahead with our applications for our Russian visas. Then, maybe two or three weeks later, our passports will be returned to us, with new Russian visas stuck into them. The other good news is that the insurance agent in Dragoman did not lose my car registration document. When she had finished giving me my new car
Read more

Educaring, Part 2

Image
Not so long ago, I wrote a post for my blog called Educaring . Please do not misunderstand me. I really do believe that teachers, youth workers, parents (and indeed anyone involved with young people) all have a duty to protect children and teenagers, to keep them safe. As I argued in my previous posting, I also believe that the task of protecting children is becoming more and more difficult - almost impossible, in fact. Yes, the Internet has a lot to do with it, I am sure, but there is another problem that is hardly ever discussed.  In a nutshell, anyone who genuinely cares about children finds it very hard to imagine how evil and how subtle child molesters and pedophiles really are. I think that is probably why many teachers and parents just do not know when a pedophile is "grooming" a child and why they often do not believe it, even when confronted with the unpleasant truth. Michael Green at Windlesham House School I knew Michael Green when I was teaching at Windlesh
Read more

Moving to Bulgaria

Image
A lady called Betty Bradshaw recently wrote this on the Facebook Group "Moving to Bulgaria" and my replies are in italics. Sorry if this sounds thick... but what is the very first thing we need to do before buying a house in Bulgaria? Is it the visas? Is it buy a house first? We are serious about moving over, but have no clue where to begun our journey. Dear Beckie Bradshaw,  You are not being "thick" at all. We all have to start somewhere, when we do something completely new and out of our comfort zone!  Anyway, the first thing you need to before buying a house in Bul garia is to read my blog  www.bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com   Then you should watch some of Susan Ashwell's lovely videos about Bulgaria on YouTube. (Her series is called "Escape to a simpler place and time.")  Thirdl y, you should reply to the message that I am just about to write to you. Here is the message (or messages) I wrote to Becky, together with her replies. Hello! My wife an
Read more