I can’t believe that it has been nearly a month since my last post – nor can I believe that we’ve had the longest day of the year. The nights are closing in now and it will soon be Christmas!!
In the meantime, let us dwell on a few events that have not been spoiled by the inclement weather. Since I last wrote, we have had great success at the West Surrey Athletics, with 2 boys qualifying for the Nationals in Birmingham on Monday 2nd July.
The Common Entrance candidates have all passed very comfortably into their next schools and so we maintain our 100% success rate in this area. The Honours board has now also been updated with the names of the four recipients of awards this year.
Last weekend began with the Juniors Barbecue and continued on Saturday with matches against Sunningdale. We were handsomely beaten in the 1st XI and U9 matches but won the 2nd and 3rd XI games and both Colts fixtures too.
The Leavers felt that it was too cold for them to camp on Saturday night and so I lit the Wood-Fired Pizza Oven and cooked 14 pizzas for them instead. What a magnificent piece of kit – it took about an hour to get the fire hot enough, but once the oven was ready it was churning out mushroom, pepper, pancetta and pepperoni pizzas at a rate of 1 every 2 minutes. Once the gannets had been fed, I even managed one for myself – delicious!
On Sunday the Leavers breakfasted either with Mr. Lyddon or Mr. Paterson and then DP took the Under 11 6-a-side team to a tournament at Wellington where they won the Bowl. I took 2 pairs to the Knight Frank Tennis Tournament at Charters where we were defending our title but this year, in a much larger tournament, lost out in the semi-final on a tie break. The standard of tennis was incredibly high and the boys should be very proud of themselves indeed.
EL took a trip to Brighton – mackerel fishing – but although the boys were keen, the skipper was not willing to take them out on the choppy seas. They had to make do with a day trip to the Palace pier instead, but they seemed to enjoy this just as much. We then finished Sunday evening with Leavers’ Evensong and drinks on the lawn afterwards.
This week we have witnessed an excellent evening T20 against Papplewick; the Juniors have been to see the Queen at Royal Ascot and we have had two days of Athletics finals in preparation for Speech Day tomorrow.
I hope to be able to report back of a beautiful sunny day on which we were able to celebrate all that is so good about Woodcote. Judging by the amount of sunshine we’ve had this term though, I’m not holding my breath….
That is all.