Where did November go?

Well from a personal point of view I'm glad to see the back of November, which has been full of family illnesses, but we did round off the month with a great Robert Powell evening in the new theatre.

Robert and Liza Goddard, assisted by friends on piano and flute, presented Silver Screen, a brief history of the movies.  From silent films to Spielberg, lots of great quotations and extracts provided ample opportunities for a wide range of voices, amongst which Michael Caine was outstanding.

Robert reminisced, too, about his previous appearances on the MGS stage, including his King Lear, when he starred with Michael Wood's Cordelia.

Our evening ended with a gala supper in the Refectory, and produced more than £1,000 towards the Drama Centre Fund.  thank you, Robert and friends.

We're open!

We had a fantastic opening night of our new theatre last night, when we hosted a concert given on behalf of Life for a Life Memorial Forests, one of our partner charities, to help launch a campaign to install in Manchester a bronze statue of Chopin, presented by the Republic of Poland as a gesture of friendship to a city known for its hospitality.

It was great to see the new theatre work so well - there is plenty of hospitality space in surrounding studios for the audience at the interval, and the new seats really are comfortable.  The new stage accommodated just a wonderful pianist and soprano in the first half, but after the interval we loaded it with members of two military bands and a corps of drummers.  The acoustics were excellent, and a good time was had by all.

I've been asked by many people when 'the opening' of the new facilities is to take place.  The truth is that we are having a number of openings.  Next Tuesday, a panel of distinguished Old Mancs will conduct a Question Time event with a capacity audience comprising those of the hundreds of our donors who have been able to accept our invitation to attend to accept our thanks for their help.

On 27 November we have a performance by Robert Powell, Liza Goddard and friends which will be our first visiting professional production.  Details at http://www.mgs.org/.  Our first big student show will take place next year, when we hope that Sir Nicholas Hytner, Director of the National Theatre and Chairman of the campaign which raised the funds for the drama centre, will be able to attend.  Happy days!

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.