OLD BOYS' HOCKEY MATCH

The Old Boys were represented by: Messrs A Tasker,

G Blakemore, R Lander, D Smith, N Williams, E Murphy, K Martin, M Gay, D McGuire, A Allen, J Trinham.

The Old Boys' team this year was remarkable for its youth, Eamon Murphy (OC 1962) being the veteran. Usually two or three members of the Staff are called upon to augment the Old Boys' team, but this year the College XI faced a truly representative side. The majority of them were mere striplings, being OCs of three years' vintage or less.

The bully-off, and indeed the whole match, took place in conditions that would have made a Siberian salt-miner feel at home. The game went very smoothly with each side doing a fair amount of attacking. There were the

odd sabre-type slashes, euphemistically known as 'Sticks' from certain anonymous players. The second half brought the first and only goal, scored by G Blakemore for the Old Boys, after a short corner.

Result: Old Boys 1, College 0.

DE COLLE AQUAE VITAE

'Through my Windows' seems to have stolen all the Old Boys' thunder, but there are still a few snippets from my postbag which have escaped the eagle eye. Not being the tidiest of men, I find that things get pushed into the wrong file, which is a polite way of saying that they get shoved under heaps of other things and tend to get for

gotten, or, if not forgotten, temporarily lost.

Such a one is a letter dated August 1967, from Dr David Flynn, who receives a mention in the formal Old Boys' Notes. I knew that this letter had arrived and intended to quote it last year, but it had vanished, and I couldn't quote it from memory. However, it has now turned up, as things do, so that I can now put on record a success story which should stand as an example to the starry-eyed. David's summary of his achievements, which I wish other Old Boys would imitate (not necessarily au pied de Is lettre, but in sending them to me or to the Headmaster) is as follows: '1 wife, Fiona, very well: 1 daughter, Lucie Ann aged 2: 1 son Benedict aged 6 months (good RC name; Wilfrid the next?). Academic: Diploma in Child Health 1962; MD (Doctor of Medicine, as if I didn't know) commended 1960; only 5% of Medical graduates get an MD and very few at the age of 30. MRCP (London) at first attempt - 15%v overall pass, only 10% pass it first time. Post: Senior Registrar, Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond St, London WC1. So far so good. I feel a ghastly catastrophe is round the corner, but it is not actually in sight yet'. Well, this was all two years ago, and no report of any catastrophe received. Let's hope it was only a false alarm which some of us feel when things are going well for us, and, of all people, David deserves the best that life has to offer.

Kevin Goodwin is living at Great Bridgford, near Stafford, is married and has a son born in October 1968, and duly christened Damian James by another Old Boy, Father Cyril Adams, at Ashley.

Frank Audley is Grand Knight of the Knights of St Columba, Potteries Council 170, and is chasing Old Boys to talk to his flock. He has already caught Canon J W

Dunne, MA (family influence) and Father Chris Beater, not to mention the present writer, who is due to bore the members with 'The Elizabethan Settlement of Religion' some time next summer. His other victims for next year include Monsignor Gavin, Father Walter Joret and Father Frank Grady. Why didn't we discourage such activities when he was at school? Though it is good to see Old Boys doing such public services.

Keith Bear has followed the trend and almost abandoned letter-writing, but managed to write in May this year. In that month he left Trinity Academy in Edinburgh, where he has been for the last three years, to take up a Special Assistantship in the English Department of the Kirkcaldy High School in Fife, with 1200 pupils and a high reputation academically, and ten members on the English Staff alone. All this coupled with a faint hope of seeing the new Scottish Cardinal installed at Edinburgh Cathedral and some strictures on the 'splendid Gothic architecture' of the Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh. Keith has also been doing some research on the history of the Edinburgh theatre.

Coming from those who have arrived to those who are on their way, I was very pleased to receive a grateful letter from Patrick McMahon (also known as Mephistopheles) who seems to think that I had something to do with his present activities at Warwick University. As one doesn't often get such tributes, it is doubly a pleasure to record it, however exaggerated it may be. Patrick was hoping to go to Switzerland last summer in order to learn more French and German from the English and American tourists there. Michael Summerfield is grateful for the publicity in the last 'Cottonian' and was so pleased at being admitted to the Law Society in December 1968, that he sent a generous advance subscription to 'The Cottonian', a policy which the present Editor would like to see widely imitated. Father David Smith's first appointment in 1966 was to SL Michael and All Angels, Woodchurch, Birkenhead where

he and his Parish Priest have a flock of over four thousand to be tended. (I nearly wrote 'shorn'). He supposes that he will manage to survive both this and the transplantation from Rome. Brian Norris, now living at Churchtown, Southport, is married and rejoices in a daughter. He is working as a Civil Engineer for Leonard Fairclough Ltd, and hopes to introduce his family to Cotton sometime soon.

Peter Rochford writes from Chaddesden, Derby. He makes the interesting suggestion that Old Boys should combine their cheques, or make a Bankers' Order, to pay their dues - 'Cottonian', Old Boys and Cottonian Association - in une dollop rather than write three cheques. This has a lot to be said for it, and saves a lot of trouble. He also offers to run the system if asked.

We could do with more like him. Peter is Chief Programmer with the Furzebrook Knitting Co, which is Courtauld's fabric knitting company. He seems to love his little computers, as I'm sure they do him, though it doesn't seem long since we thought that computers were people who travelled to work by train every day.

Father Thomas McGuinness, who was here as a

master for some time in the 1950s and bore a striking resemblance to a recently departed Prefect of Discipline, is now a curate in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where he bumped one day into Michael Milner whom he taught in 1958. They are hoping for another reunion, which may already have taken place since Father 'Shamus's' letter was

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