After a week’s rest over February half term, it was nice to return to school and see the opening of Café 6 in the canteen. This is an area selling food only for sixth formers (hence the name) during break and lunch. With a rapidly decreasing amount of time left at school, I was glad to be able to sample what was on offer.
One of the activities dominating this term was the senior school production of Twelfth Night. With the complexity of the lines demanding rehearsals three times a week, it was clear that this play would be no easy task. I chose to watch the second of the final three performances and can report that it was highly enjoyable and entertaining.
The CCF contingent has been extremely busy over recent weeks, with events including CCCT at Farchynys, Biennial Review day, Cyprus camp at RAF Akrotiri, Adventurous Training, and finally UK camp at RAF Brize Norton. Cadet gliding scholarships would also have featured in this list, were it not for an engineering fault causing every glider across the UK to be grounded. Aside from gliding, I am assured that everything else went as successfully as ever and hopefully any engineering faults will have been fixed by the summer when the next round of scholarships will take place.
Open evening was a little different this time around. As well as handing out the usual information to families who came into the entrance hall, the Vice Captains and I were greeting them with Boost bars. This was part of an advertising campaign led by QM – leaflets had been sent out to primary schools promising a chocolate bar to pupils who came to the evening. It was hard to gauge the success of the campaign, but it certainly was a popular one.
As is always the case, there were a lot of house competitions going on throughout the term. However, the one I am going to talk about is the senior swimming gala which took place on the very last day. Due to coursework commitments a lot of swimmers were unable to attend but that did not stop the contest from going ahead. Some races even featured only a single house participating, simply to gain the points for coming in first place.
The final assembly saw the long-awaited awarding of Hockey colours, with the slight exception that the ties were unavailable to be handed out at the time. Nonetheless, it is uplifting to see the players’ achievements recognised for their dedication to the sport throughout their seven years at Queen Mary’s.