Abingdonian 2020

86 The Abingdonian Pygotts’s House At the start of last year I gave an assembly on The Good Place , a Netflix series set in heaven. The main character, Eleanor, is there by mistake and has to be taught by her friend, Chidi, what it is to be good. He tells her that Aristotle says that good people are good because they decide to do good things and that all you have to do to be a good person is to do good things. I challenged the house to be good people and to do good things... would they succeed? To the Michaelmas Term. Last year at house singing we were criticised for looking too miserable. We took all of this feedback on board and picked one of the most miserable songs available ( Somebody That I Used to Know ). Arthur Boulton did a fantastic job arranging the piece for us to sing, but in the end it proved hard to get the house to look cheerful singing lines like “you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness, like resignation to the end, always the end.” My profound thanks to him for conducting and to Daniel Zhang for playing the piano. Next year – a happy song! The end of the Michaelmas Term brought the inter-house sports competitions. Notable performances included Will Taylor bringing us second place in the U18 table tennis, Kane Watson bringing home the house pool trophy (for the second year running), Jai Biswas Gladwin winning the squash trophy, and a creditable third place in U18 swimming. The term ended with the annual house carol service led by Reverend Steer. The Lent Term brought the house challenge and house debating. In the former, we started strongly, with first round wins for the third year, fifth year and Lower Sixth. The fifth year and Lower Sixth then lost close semi finals, while the third year (David Bassett-Jones, Philip Kimber, Thomas Woodrow & Luca Zurek) made it all the way to the final, which they lost by a single agonising point! Mediocrity was grasped from the jaws of success – I couldn’t ask for anything more.