Someone once said a successful speech should have a good beginning, a good ending, and the two as close together as possible.  Sorry but on that basis mine isn’t true to type.  There’s also a trend amongst clergy where sermons are concerned whatever the subject to make three points: four and you’re pushing your luck, two and the congregation can’t believe their luck, and one is hardly worth the climb to that secure six feet above contradiction.  Thank your lucky stars this is a speech not a sermon and that your clerical president does know the difference.

First things first!  I want to thank you very much for the honour of electing me, and to assure you I’ll give it my best shot.  Next, since this is a reunion I want to reminisce briefly about my time at the school, and lastly look at my life thereafter focussing on occasions when, often quite unexpectedly old school contacts have re-surfaced.

School for me was Bond Street with a daily trek over the Ferry Bridge from my Stapenhill home. In the dead of winter wind-blown snow lashed my bare knees and in the height of summer I sweltered in the sun’s heat, never daring to remove my cap or tie in case the Beak, who also lived in Stapenhill, spotted me improperly dressed.

It has to be said mine was not a distinguished school career.  I didn’t excel at games, though was once drafted into the school second XI for an away match, but only because they were a player short, no one better qualified was to hand and the coach was ready for the off.  Academically I was a ‘B’ streamer until the fifth and only made any perceptible impact on the school singing in the choir.  Just two school prizes came my way, in both cases the CS Dove Choral Prize.  Colin Dove was an old boy of the school, way before my time, and a well-known local baritone, always in great demand as the bass soloist in one of the many local annual performances of Stainer’s Crucifixion.  The first time I won the prize singing Blow, blow thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude in front of ‘Cherry’ Orchard.  The second time the prize was awarded, I can only assume for resilience on the tenor line at Speech Day and the Carol Service.  With such sparse achievements it’s hardly surprising I never had to affix a tassel to my cap.

One little anecdote!  History was always my weakest subject and having failed ‘O’-level History in the summer I had to re-sit it in the winter.  To boost my chances I was sent to join Chazzer Brown’s class.  I duly passed – just – and sped off to convey the glad tidings that he wouldn’t be seeing me again.  I’ve never forgotten his encouraging retort, “Passed have you?  I wouldn’t have said you would!”  Happily my interest in history took off with experience of life and after marrying an historian.  I must say she’s a lot more inspiring than the Goat ever was – and altogether more attractive too.

After school ordination was not on my agenda but such is the way of things the Lord chose my National Service to exert his authority and hopes of a lucrative career as an industrial chemist sank without trace.  I was demobbed 49 years ago last March and went to King’s College, London about a year and a half later.  In the interim and to earn a bit of money I decided to get a job that would produce the cash, keep me out of mischief and be fun to do.  So I became a bus conductor with Burton Corporation Transport.  On one journey out of town towards Anglesey Road a certain Horace Pitchford boarded my bus and I could see this inevitable confrontation might prove interesting, as indeed it did.  Aware the conductor was hanging over him for his fare he naturally looked up, saw me, ticket machine at the ready and nearly had apoplexy.  “What are you doing here?”  I managed to explain but for a while it must have given the old boy a nasty jolt, to think that one of his Grammar School pupils should end up a bus conductor and in Burton too.

Before university I was advised to make a start learning NT Greek, vital to any serious theological student, and so signed on with Wolsey Hall, Oxford the renowned correspondence college.  But working erratic shifts on the busses wasn’t going to help me, a science sixth former, get to grips with any language, let alone one that used different lettering, so I realized I must find a steadier nine to five job.  By chance a school contemporary whom I knew but whose name now escapes me got on my bus on his way back to work in Tutbury RDC’s Horninglow offices.  He told me he was giving it up so I applied for and got his job.  When I started to my surprise and delight I found my old school friend and our immediate Past President was working there, and Frank and I have kept in touch ever since.

We’re now entering the home straight: my subsequent life and how my old school came into it.  Early in my ministry I felt the urge to work in a cathedral or large church with a strong musical tradition, where I could use my God-given ability to sing.  The combination of the call and the gift ought surely to go hand in hand.  But how to go about this!  Then I remembered Paul Appleton, an old boy and part-time master at the school who’d taught me Divinity (as it was then called) and ran the school choir.  He’d gone from being Vicar of Rangemore to become a Minor Canon at Lincoln Cathedral so he should know the ropes if anyone did.  I duly dropped him a line and was told all you had to do was look for adverts in the Church Times.  In fact that wasn’t necessary for my first cathedral post at Southwark was actually offered to me quite out of the blue.

Moving rapidly on, I wallowed in the post of Precentor of first Ely and then Canterbury Cathedrals, in the course of which I was privileged to become steeped in some superb music and services, to meet the Queen on two occasions, several other royals, including Prince Charles with whom I spent some time when he came to make a TV programme at Canterbury.  I also met four Archbishops, broadcast a time or to on radio and TV and to top the list renewed some old school contacts.  Burton History Society visited Ely with George Cooper in the group, and at Canterbury Frank Toon came to call and Keith Day and Peter Snape turned up on separate occasions at an evening service.

Once when visiting Burton I spotted a familiar figure in the town, battered trilby dead straight on the head, the wearer sporting a little tache and carrying the ubiquitous small attaché case.  I caught him up and gave him a cheery, “I don’t suppose you remember me, sir.”  “’Course I do!  You're Gilbert!” said Pitchy.  Fame at last!

While still at university I was invited to take part in a 6th Form Society debate at the Winshill site, the standard of debating or so they said having sunk to an all-time low.  On reflection they must have been desperate!  I seconded the motion; This house would rather be notorious than unknown.  I have to say we old boys won!

While curate of Newbold I was given a free ticket for a Moral Rearmament play at a Sheffield theatre (not the Crucible – it hadn’t been built then).  The plot was dire but as if to offset it Philip Bond was in the cast, so I went backstage afterwards to renew acquaintances.  The only thing I can remember of that meeting was his astonished, “Surely you’ve never sat through that rubbish!”

By far the most curious inroad the old school made into my working life was during my last appointment.  I was at the local Primary School and the deputy head asked if the name Alan Bull rang any bells with me, as she thought he’d been at the same school as me.  He and his family had temporarily rented her house in the village so I decided this needed hastily checking out.  He wasn’t in but his wife was and also his teenage son, a dead ringer of the Alan Bull I remembered.  The upshot was a pleasant evening catching up on our mutual past.  Alan was and I’ve a feeling still is the highly influential Professor of Biology at Kent University in Canterbury.

Just to round things off I’m heavily involved in the ancient town parish church of St. Mary in Dover, occasionally presiding at the Eucharist and/or preaching.  I’m also still an active Minor Canon of Canterbury Cathedral howbeit in an honorary capacity and probably do a lot more singing than I ever did, some with Dover Choral Society but also with a chamber choir founded a couple of years back by the director of music at the church.  So for anyone interested the gift divinely bestowed all those years ago hasn’t gone to waste.  I suppose the icing on the cake would be to encounter a former Burton Grammar School contact in Dover.  Give it time!

Our thanks to Deryck Barker for taking the photos

If you haven't joined the OBA, just drop a line or phone to:
Ted  Warren, 76 Craythorne Rd., Stretton, Burton on Trent, DE13 0AZ
Tel: Burton 561721