It has been a strange year for us all, but it was heartening to see the School once again full of pupils at the start of September. Don’t look too closely and you could be forgiven for thinking everything was normal but it’s not. No competitive sport, no live music or drama, no Chapel, Perspex screens in Hall, and limited interaction outside year and house bubbles. But everyone is clearly delighted to be back.
The School rose to the challenge sprung upon it in March. The remote learning system proved robust and the envy of many rivals and the staff worked tirelessly to make sure the impact on pupils’ education was minimised.
Spare a thought for the 2020 leavers. We have (almost) all enjoyed our final days at Cranleigh over the years – at least, once exams were out of the way – with leavers BBQ, the last sports or lessons with friends, the leavers’ Chapel and Ball. And those are just the legal activities. All of this was denied to them, and I was hugely impressed with the mature way they coped with a summer of set-backs. The less said about the government’s shambolic handling of their exams the better. It is still hoped that there will be some kind of leavers’ service and celebration when normality returns.
I particularly wanted to thank Vickie Ingle for her unstinting efforts to make sure Old Cranleighan affairs have been looked after and individuals made aware we have been here for them. Largely working from home, she started lockdown by emailing those thought to be more vulnerable and sending out postcards to around 150 over 70s for whom we had no email address. This produced a mass of phone calls and letters, every one of which she answered. Many just appreciated a chat. She put a lot of people in touch with contemporaries (with more time it seems catching up with long-lost friends became more of a thing).
Vickie set up a lockdown forum on the OC Network Portal so people could share useful information about all sorts of things, such as where to get groceries etc. when things were really tough at the beginning, to what they were up to or just cheery snippets. She also set up a Business Directory on The OC Network Portal. This was on top of her already long list of daily tasks.
Thank you, Vickie.