It was a signal honour to be invited as guest speaker at the annual Speech Day. I'm told. Strict criteria attended this appointment. An Old Boy of the school, a household name in some acclaimed field of endeavour, and an entertaining and motivational speaker. Exceptions were allowed and indeed were normal. The best speaker that I remember was a woman. Two out of three isn't bad. The ethos of the school was to prepare its pupils for successful careers by encouraging initiative and stimulating imagination, on a sound base of academic achievement. Sigh. This involved pupils travelling everywhere in two-by-two crocodile formation, dressed in identical uniforms. We marched to the centre of town for Speech Day in this fashion; as we were for the Polio inoculations, as we were for weekly sports day activities. There was a range of sports activity, depending on the season. The aesthetes (a small group, only two courts) marched off in whites to play tennis; the bruisers marched off to settle a few scores in rugby practice; and the rest of us marched down to the local park. Here the two supervisors (arrived by car) made themselves comfortable while we ran two circuits around the perimeter, possibly five miles in total. Whatever the weather. The threat was that the last five pupils would run an extra circuit. In practice we all realised that Authority could not keep track of some sixty pupils strung out, running, jogging, strolling in discussion, or pausing for a quiet cigarette. We knew that at four o'clock everyone would march back to the showers (those without a note from Mum). Two memories stand out, but I'm not sure what they say about the school ethos. Any boy dashing ahead with exuberance was soon brought to heel by fellow runners (bad form), but also any boy struggling to make the distance was motivated and supported by fellow runners (good). Looking back, there seemed to be an unconscious attempt to remove outliers from the population and lower the standard deviation. That's mathematics. Maybe politics as well. Smokey Checked by Norton 2004 before transmission with Mozilla Thunderbird