Extracts from "The Tower"

NEWS AND NOTES

FOLLOWING the success of "Iolanthe" in 1964, the School Dramatic Society this year produced the popular Oscar Wilde comedy, " The Importance of being Earnest." A full report of the play appears elsewhere in this issue.

Theatre visits have been made during the year to Oxford, Stratford, and Derby.
Due to bad weather the 1965 Inter-House Swimming Gala had to be cancelled.

We are pleased to record that the sum of £250 was collected by the School in the Christmas Charity Appeal, in aid of the N.S.P.C.C. As a result of this collection, the N.S.P.C.C. were pleased to present the School with their Certificate of Merit. Nearly £100 of this sum was raised by prefects at a Jumble Sale.

At the end of the Autumn term the Annual Carol Service was held in the School Hall. The service was conducted by the Rev. T. A. Taylor, and lessons were read by members of the School, with the Choir singing two carols alone.

Nineteen boys and girls went, as a choir, to an audition for a B.B.C. television programme at the B.B.C. Show. at Granby Halls, Leicester, on 6th April. Although not selected for the programme they did appear on Midland Region television.

The School extends a welcome to the following members of Staff who have joined us during the past academic year: Messrs. Austin (an old pupil of the School), Brewer, Daly, Joy. and Miss Farnham, Mrs. Smith, and also Mile. Stephan.
Last year we were sorry to lose the services of : Messrs. Little and Williams, and Miss Ekins, Miss Perkins, and Mile. Chevalier.

Mr. R. Bennett and Mr. A. C. Clements are retiring at the end of this year, and to both we offer our best wishes for the future.

We congratulate Miss J. Perkins on her appointment to the post of Regional Organiser of Girls' Physical Education for Northampton.
We congratulate L. F. Evans 4S, and T. H. Crane 4K, who were selected to play Rugby for the Northamptonshire Schools' Under 15 team, and J. Swingler, who has played for the County Under 14 XV.

Last Christmas, members of the School again collected at Northampton Castle Station in aid of the Blind, and also distributed Oxfam Christmas Boxes.

We are pleased to record that a number of our Old Boys were awarded Prizes and Apprentices' Certificates at the Annual Dinner and Apprentices' Prize Giving of the British Timken Co. Ltd., held last December at Daventry.

GEOGRAPHY FIELD COURSE 1966

As if once wasn't enough Mr. Fellowes was again persuaded to take a group of ten Sixth Form Upper pupils to Longtown for a geography field course. Apart from thoughts of an extra week's holiday, the eight male members of the group were also delighted to find themselves accompanied by seven Grammar School girls.

After an uneventful coach journey to Longtown, we were thrown into a turmoil of WORK!! Yes, work that proved to be unceasing seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Indeed, three members of the group were so completely and utterly exhausted that they were consistently unable to get up in time for breakfast.

In the field, the athletic Mr. Fellowes set a cracking pace always striding ahead with a man-sized rucksack filled with every-thing from surgical spirit, (for overheated feet) to a geologist's hammer, for taking rock samples. The pace set was terrific and only those people who were completely unencumbered were able to match his pace. Despite all the complaints, some five mountains were climbed in the course of the week and everybody managed to reach the top. On top of one peak in the Brecon Beacons the group nearly experienced a quicker descent than they bargained for when they were lashed by a 90 m.p.h. wind and a hailstorm.

Occasionally, we were given a break from walking and subjected to new terrors in the minibus, but miraculously we escaped unscathed, although one steep hill and ten people did prove too much for it on one occasion, and it had to be pushed.

However, all good things have to come to an end, and after a week's hard work at walking, climbing, writing and learning three L.P.'s by rote, everybody was just a little sad to be returning to a more mundane life.

FENCING

A SPORT which has grown in popularity this year is fencing. It began with a few 6th Form girls participating in the sport on Wednesday afternoons and gradually learning the elementary steps and hand movements involved. After three weeks, a few of the boys in the 6th Form decided that they would also like to try. At first everyone was put off by the awkwardness of the stance and the various positions of the arm, but after a few weeks of aching muscles and disastrous lunges, the people taking part began to enjoy it. Fights are now held between the fencers, who take turns at judging, presiding and actually fighting, although more energy seems to be given to saluting the judges and president than in actually fighting.

It is to be hoped that the sport will become popular enough to attract not only the older but the younger members of the School to the Northampton Fencing Club, which is free to anyone who is still attending school.

VIVIENNE MORTIMER (6UG).

HAVE WE THE RIGHT?

Miss Bell was a very frail lady of advancing years. She lay in a hospital bed with a broken leg but one could tell that she was suffering from some other disease. She was wan and wasted, her eyesight was failing and she talked of visiting her optician when she left the hospital. People smiled and agreed with her, not liking to tell her that she would never leave the hospital. Miss Bell had an incurable disease.

The weeks passed. Miss Bell's leg would not heal properly. She became frailer, her face became slightly deformed and she became inarticulate. At times she had a pain, which passed off after a doctor had given her injections and told her not to worry.

Gradually the pain became worse and more frequent too, and once during a very bad attack when she had been moved into aside ward, they told her that she had an incurable disease. But after the pain had passed she had forgotten, the news had not registered.

Soon they were continually drugging her to deaden the pain and feeding her intravenously. She was no longer living, but just existing, a machine being stoked, watered and oiled, under constant supervision to keep it working for as long as possible. Although she was given as many drugs as possible to alleviate the pain, they did not kill it completely. How can one stand by and observe suffering which is being prolonged by us? An end could be put to her suffering, easily and painlessly just as an animal does to one of its poor suffering offspring. But have we the right ?

LETTER FROM THE PREFECTS' ROOMS

YES, dear reader, "Rooms" - in the plural. For now we not only possess our usual habitat, which derives its characteristic homely atmosphere from the smell of stale soup, the blare of "Radio London" and the sight of water pipes and decaying furniture, but we have recently appropriated a luxuriously palatial room in the new building, which has been devoted solely to the comfort and well-being of those few who are everything and yet do nothing: the Senior Prefects. Here, if one is lucky, one can find Vaughan Meakins singing, Martin Verity composing tomorrow's joke, John McLellan correcting errors in the use of English and a variable number of girls knitting or talking.

We prefects think of ourselves as the Good Shepherds of the school - although more colourful descriptions of us have sometimes been advanced. At the beginning and end of the day we usher our flock in or out of the fold with gentleness and kindness, while at break we provide milk and fodder for our charges, quell riots and maintain a suitably pastoral environment by making other people pick litter up. As a further service we lock and un-lock innumerable doors at various times as a training for possible careers as Prison Warders, while we also provide exhortations to the Way in morning assembly. Such tremendous exertions as these, though, tell heavily on the prefect and the evening often finds many of us asleep. It also finds many more just waking up.