Abingdonian 2018

82 The Abingdonian It was a pleasure to welcome back all the members of the House at the start of the academic year, and of course to welcome plenty of new members, both students and tutors alike. Everyone was greeted with the sight of a wonderful new mural adorning the houseroom wall, put in place by Head of House Gianluca Cau Tait. Term kicked off for the new third years with the annual team-building exercises. They worked well as a group to overcome a range of fiendishly difficult tasks set out by the CCF and their tutors, before ending the day with a shooting competition in the range where Caleb Maijeh turned out to be the deadliest of the new third years - but was at least apologetic after roundly thrashing his Housemaster! Before we knew it, the first major competition was upon us with the whole house gearing up to have another crack at House Singing. We eventually settled on Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, with Head of School Ben Hall conducting and Chanka Pathinayake once again accompanying on piano. Alas, despite our best efforts it was not to be our year, with the judge harshly (but fairly) describing our efforts as “funereal”! Still, there was plenty of talent on show elsewhere in the Michaelmas Term, with third year Rowan Miell-Ingram dominating his age category in cross country and often beating the sixth form, Alfie Marshall, Liam Deegan and Fraser Scott producing fascinating films for the Abingdon Film Unit, and Harvey Jupp being selected to tour Sri Lanka with the Gloucestershire Cricket Board. Elsewhere we saw nine members of the house playing for the 1st and 2nd XVs against Radley, Daniel McNamara breaking into the top ten swimmers in the country during the ESSA finals and Callum Wilkinson providing us with a fascinating EPQ presentation on the role of women in the Odyssey. The end of term saw the usual inter- house competitions, with some incredibly enthusiastic performances and some notable successes, including Harvey Jupp and Jamie Lawson winning the U18 table tennis, the U15 swimming team cruising to victory in the pool, and James Munday and Ollie Graham winning U16 squash. We saw off the term with our celebration assembly where we handed out house prizes, beautifully handcrafted by Joshua Buckingham, and then a candlelit carol service in chapel. My thanks go out to Border’s parents and Rev Steer for leading the service, and Nathaniel Reading for putting together the readings. The Lent Term started with a bang as the fifth years produced some mock results to be proud of, but also showed great maturity in responding to any less positive results. The academic theme continued with our first competitions of 2018 focusing on debating and quizzing. My thanks go out to the many boys who stepped up to have a go in these tough competitions. Sadly, despite some great performances there were no overall wins here but I was hugely impressed with our debaters who made the semi-finals in three year groups. Sadly the annual Road Relay had to be cancelled for this year – a combination of snow and roadworks making the course unsafe – much to the disappointment of our Sixth Form A Border’s House