Alan Garner, the Weirdstone and the Blackden Trust

Old Mancunian writer Alan Garner has lived all his adult life at Blackden, in the shadow of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Holmes Chapel in Cheshire. All of his writing is deeply rooted in north Cheshire, extending from the area near Crewe to that near his birthplace in Alderley Edge. The Edge is the setting of his 1960 novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which this year on a magical date (10/10/10) achieves the rare distinction of 50 consecutive years of being in print. To celebrate, a series of special events is planned, details of which can be seen at http://www.weirdstone.org.uk/. You can even visit the mine workings on the Edge.

Alan and his wife Griselda have, with others, formed The Blackden Trust (http://www.theblackdentrust.org.uk/) to preserve the unique qualities of their house and its site, which shows evidence of human occupation for over 10,000 years. The trust offers a number of courses, led by experts, which provide insights into the history and archaeology of the area. It's a magical place: if you can possibly visit, do. You can see details and reserve places here. Some courses are designed specifically for younger people and can change lives: a number of those attending have already gone on to archaeology-related courses at university. The courses are inter-active, and some of the writing done by current MGS boys who have attended in the past can be seen here. After Easter this year all of our Year 8 pupils will have form trips to Blackden - how lucky they are!

Mufti, and more OM awards

Visitors to school today will be baffled to see a uniform-less community. As a reward for their fundraising hard work, the High Master has approved a Year 13 students' plan to charge pupils and staff £2 today for the honour of attending in 'own clothes'. We shall divide the income half and half between our in-house charity, the Bursary Fund, and the external groups we support, notably an up-country school in Uganda.

Oddly, clothing has been something of a Development Office theme this week, as we are arranging to purchase a new supply of Old Mancunian ties - sourced, inevitably it seems, from the Far East (what do they make of Old Boys ties there?). Silk not polyester, existing wearers will be glad to know. Julie is also helping the Year 13 leavers with their orders for 'hoodies' - a relatively new MGS tradition by which the leavers have their school nickname and 'MGS Class 2010' embroidered on a navy-blue training top. They're worn on their last day at school and thereafter as a memento. Meanwhile Jane appears to be running an accommodation agency from her desk as the OMs coming to the Reunion on May 8 gradually fill up all the hotels we know in south Manchester.

I had an exchange of emails with Mike Atherton to congratulate him on his double award of Sportswriters' Columnist and Writer of the Year (having won the Specialist Correspondent award last year). As he proves in The Times and his books, Mike can not only write stylishly but can reliably come up with interesting and original material. My mind goes back to an earlier existence as an English teacher here when I had the good fortune to teach a Middle School class in which Mike, Mark Crawley and Gary Yates sat together - all of them going on to first-class cricket careers.

Looking forward - a week on Monday we are hosting an 8-a-side Chess match between some of the best MGS players of today and yesteryear. Peter Webster has again worked hard to put the OM side together, persuading them to take time off and travel north (in most cases) to test our younger generation of players.

Blazers, blues and wellies

On Tuesday to Heaton Moor to see retired Maths teacher Gordon (Tweedy) Harris. My first memory of him is as the non-teaching supervisor of 3a in 1964/5 when the introduction of the 6-day cycle produced a Day 6, period 6 lesson which was an empty slot, and therefore a private study session, for my form. Not sure we made very good use of the opportunity to get any real work done. Gordon trekked, played the organ and officiated at Prizegivings as well as teaching Mathematics. He keeps in touch with school through the 20/30 Club and a number of friends.

Then to Didsbury to see an Old Manc now in his 80s who is being cared for in a nursing home. Macular degeneration has left him with very little sight, but what a wonderful memory he has of his time at school and in particular of a form tutor who took him under his wing, 'Haffie' Field. I was there to receive a donation of two blazers for the MGS Archive - a discreet, navy, colours blazer and a garishly striped Old Mancunians one in black red and gold - both in perfect condition and a great reminder of 1940s fashion. I was also lent a lovely silver lapel pin-badge - a small owl above SAPERE AUDE, which we are going to investigate having copied for sale to 21st century OMs.

Haffie was for years at the centre of MGS lacrosse (as well as teaching Physics and writing comic poems for Ulula and Punch) and would be pleased to know that the game has had something of a revival at school in the last few years. Indeed, we have two OM Cambridge half-blues at lacrosse this year, Sam Spurrell, the Cambridge captain, and Michael Lipton, man-of-the-match in the victory over Oxford.

Bursary fundraising by our senior sixthformers continued this week with the Superstars competition (basketball skills) and a highly entertaining welly-throwing competition organised for our Junior Section boys. This was keenly contested, both for athletic honour and for the prize of a box of chocolates.

So will the next thing be half-blues for welly-throwing? MGS boys will be up there with the best.

The sixthformers' plans for further fundraising via running the Blackpool half-marathon on 11 April are now well advanced. Many of them have pages at http://www.justgiving.com/ - search for the MGS Trust as the beneficiary.

What a varied week!

We've had plenty going on this week, ranging from liaising with the youngest people we work with - our pupils - to the oldest - the OMs who joined MGS pre-1951 and who are gearing up for their Reunion Dinner at School on 8 May.

Youngest first - this week the Sixth Form Bursary Fundraising Committee got their Superstars competition off to an exhausting start in the Sports Hall, with some of our fittest pupils taking on staff members Messrs Lawrence and Batchelor in the first of 5 weekly contests.

You can see that some of the keenest spectators (paying £1 for the privilege) were members of our Junior Section.

It's been a great week for team sports, too, with our Under 16 footballers winning their quarter final of the English Schools Cup, the most prestigious competition open to boys of their age, played against Corpus Christi Sports College, Preston. The match was a thrilling 3-2 victory after MGS had been 2-0 down. The winner was scored in the last minute of the match and capped a fine performance from every player. The boys are eagerly anticipating finding out who their opposition will be in the semi final, to be played sometime in March.

The Rugby Club was not to be left out. We congratulate Marcus Webber on being selected for the England U16 Squad. This news, together with notification of David Madden's third consecutive Oxford Blue for hockey, got us talking about some of MGS's great sporting heroes and achievements. Why not include your favourite(s) in a comment on this blog?

And now to OMs. Watch out next week for Aaron Neil's appearances in Five Days (BBC1, Monday to Friday). Aaron was recently directed by fellow OM Sir Nicholas Hytner in a play at the National Theatre.

Lastly, our older OMs. Invitations to the May 8 Reunion have been posted out to all pre-1951 joiners for whom we have contact details. If you are of this generation, we hope to see you in May. Please have a look at the Lost Owls information on the Old Mancunians website (http://www.oldmancunians.org/) and tell us if you know the whereabouts of anyone listed there. We like our contacts database to be as full and accurate as we can possibly make it - it's the lifeblood of our links to Old Mancs.

Back from half-term

The six o'clock alarm was a bit of a shock this Monday morning after a relatively light week when school was on half-term. I was on call as the Manchester contact for a trip to Poland, but completely unneeded as everything went to plan. A far cry from last half-term when I was kept pretty busy as the staff and boys on Desert Trek near Marrakesh suffered from unexpectedly high temperatures and keeled over with worrying regularity.

It's a good thing that the Dev Office staff can be involved in many of the pupils' and teaching staff's activities - soon we'll be sorting out the arrangements for Activities Week in the summer term when all teaching stops for a week and everyone goes to camp or takes part in a fantastic range of Manchester-based activities from rowing to cooking.

We're hoping to add Sir Ben Kingsley to the growing list of Old Mancunian stars of stage and screen who will help us to celebrate the opening of the new Drama Centre in the autumn. There can't be that many OMs whose appearances are managed by a New York-based publicist! We're now in touch and trying to make the diaries match. Sir Ben was last at MGS for an acting masterclass in 1998, following the launch of the Foundation Bursary Appeal.

For news of a successful young Old Manc entrepreneur, Jonny Goldstone, follow this link:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article7034889.ece

If you have news of Old Mancs' achievements, please let us know at oldboys@mgs.org.

Just back from an interesting lunchtime meeting of our A level and International Baccalaureate students of Economics. They have been competing in a share-trading competition organised by Old Mancunian Marc Duschenes, one time City trader and now Chief Executive of the Braemar Group, based in Hale. When he was at MGS (in the early 90s) Marc used the payphone by the Refectory to arrange his trades, using his father's account.


The present competition involved both simulated trading and writing a market report. The best entrants, Marc said, had achieved a standard that a stockbroker would have been proud of. Members of the winning team will have the opportunity to complete a week's paid work experience at Braemar.


An Old Manc a little older than Marc was at MGS yesterday. John Crawley, ex-Lancashire, England and Hampshire cricketer, has taken up his post as the Marlborough Association Director at Marlborough College. He was interested to look round school again, not having been here since we built our Sports Hall, extended the Art Department and introduced the new Junior Section in Bexwyke Lodge. We talked over how different schools follow very varied patterns with their networking, charitable fundraising and ex-pupil associations. I was reminded once again of how lucky we are at MGS to have been able to integrate these links through the Development Office. We have professional staff to manage our ex-pupils database, which is available to the Executive Committee of the Old Mancunians' Association and the Recorder of the Old Boys' Dinner. We also have weekly visits from Peter Ainsworth, the Secretary to The MGS Trust, so that funds raised through this office are passed promptly to the Trustees for investment.


Yesterday we all (Jane, Julie, Simon and I) worked late as 6 pm is the chosen time for our quarterly OMA Executive meetings. Our chairman, David Walton, took us pretty briskly through our wide-ranging business (reunion plans, 2015 forward planning, accounts, production of OM tie in silk not polyester) - grateful thanks to all (the professionals and the volunteer committee members) who give up their time to keep things ticking along.

Just another week?

Plenty of variety this week. A great start, with a further donation of £78,000 from a regular benefactor (worth £100,000 to us with reclaimed tax under the Gift Aid scheme) - the sort of gift which encourages the MGS Trust trustees to be generous when looking at future grants based on the income generated from their invested Bursary Fund. Investment income in the current markets is a little difficult to predict, but we still recognise each £100,000 of gift value as likely to provide an additional bursary place for ever.

If you are an Old Mancunian or ex-member of staff, you should receive your New Year copy of The Old Mancunian next week. It's out a little later than usual, but offers the usual wide range of articles. If you qualify but aren't receiving one, it's because we don't have an up-to-date postal address for you - please send details including your years at school by email to oldboys 'at' mgs.org.

Unusually (see last blog) I was in London again this week for a couple of days. First, courtesy of an Old Manc season ticket holder, to a highly entertaining Intelligence Squared debate at Central Hall, Westminster on the motion 'Public Schools are a blight on this country'. Lots of Harrow-bashing (Barnaby Lenon, the Head, was opposing) and lots of reminders of how far away the MGS tradition is from that of the mainly southern, public boarding schools. The pros and cons of academic selection weren't mentioned at all.

Then to meet the Chief Executive of the Lords' Taverners to see if MGS and they can work together on improving our cricket and pavilion facilities with a view to our being able to offer cricket courses to local children throughout the summer holidays. Discussions to be continued, next time on site in Manchester.

The trips to London are a reminder of the extent to which this country is capital-centric. How few organisations have their national HQs outside the capital! At least my trips don't cost much in expenses - we buy discounted Charity Line rail tickets and my daughter provides me with a Finsbury Park boxroom to sleep in. It's not luxury, but it keeps our costs down!