Abingdonian 2017

19 www.abingdon.org.uk Michaelmas Term cohort, there were individuals who really did make me love boarding. To name two people who are thought highly of by many people, the Heads of House before me, Justin Wilson and James Taylor, were brilliant supports. The house spirit is created and constantly strengthened by the pupils, helping each other as equals and bringing each other up. We are a distinct community. We mix well with the rest of the school and have plenty of day friends, but there is something a bit extra about being in the boarding house. These are the people we live with, eat with, spend the evenings we would spend with our parents with. We could compare the boarding house with a range of groups in literature, from the lost boys in Peter Pan to the school children of Lord of the Flies. And it really does feel like Lord of Flies sometimes. But to look at another School House, that of Rugby School in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, we there see a boarding house that is hopefully very different to the one we live in. Here I truly hope we have a progressive boarding house, where hierarchy is limited, except in the necessary cases, and honesty is not feared. Tom Hughes wrote, regarding how the upper forms should guide the younger years, ‘Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can have again.’ Next year, new people will be in and my year will be gone, but I hope that we continue to nurture and care for every new generation coming in. We are a community and a good community, showing peace to each other. Though I am hoping not to mimic the end of the first Harry Potter film too much, when I came back the first weekend after boarding and went into my room at my parents’ house which I had spent many years in, it felt different seeing it, looking at everything a second time as though it had changed ever so slightly, and I felt that this was because I now had another home. I hope we can all feel that this school is a home and I wish you all a very merry Christmas. Blake Jones, VIJFH