Old Princethorpians

Earlier in the summer it was a pleasure to show OP Matt Garff, his wife, Nicole, and three children around the College.

Matt is a car dealer in the States and on this short trip to England he and his family took time out of their busy schedule to see the school where he boarded for a couple of years.

Matt described the experience as 'comforting and uplifting' as he walked the corridors for the first time in many years. The family left laden wih Princethorpe sports kit and goodies as souvenirs of their visit.

It was great to hear that Matt is still in touch with many of his peers from the 90s, including Angus Shillinglaw, Mark Wilson, Mikey Knapp, Jonathan Scoble, Matt Morgan and Timothy Morffew.

Since leaving Princethorpe, Chris went up to Nottingham Trent but also played and subsequently captained Bedford Blues Academy, where as scrum half he was awarded Player of the Year.

Chris has trained with Bedford Blues 1st XV all summer and has been given a professional contract with neighbouring club Ampthill. Ampthill is in  the third tier of Rugby in England and has close ties to Bedford Blues and Saracens.

Chris was the only Princethorpian of his year that represented Warwickshire for four consecutive years.

While at Princethorpe he pursued his ambitions at club level and captained Rugby Lions where he captained the Colts. At 17-years old he was called up to the senior Rugby Lions 1st XV to assist in their Junior Cup competition and scored a try in the defeat in the final at Twickenham

Chris' ambition is to concentrate and pursue his professional Rugby career to the highest possible level.

He has commented that the move from Academy to the professional game has been immense and the level of commitment required is demanding.  We will watch his progress with interest.

In September I went to Leeds College of Art to study illustration. For the past year I’ve been developing my style, selling my artwork and doing commissions.

I love to combine my love of football with my art. In March I did an illustration depicting the many hairstyles of David Beckham. It went viral when ‘The Sport Bible’ shared it to their 6.8 million Facebook followers and was featured in an article on the ‘Bleacher Report’.

www.bleacherreport.com/articles/2414016-illustrator-documents-the-history-of-david-beckhams-hair-in-cool-new-artwork

It was great to get so much exposure for my work, my inbox has been busy ever since! This also led to getting involved in a feature in the Nottingham Forest F.C. match-day programme; ‘The Art of the Game’. I did a couple of illustrations for the programme of midfielder Henri Lansbury and manager Dougie Freedman. I was also invited to visit the City Ground for an interview about my work as well as a tour of the stadium.

My website is www.benfarr.wix.com/artist.  I'm always happy to do commissions, my email is ben.farr94@gmail.com.

My work can be bought from www.redbubble.com/people/benfarr.

I am currently in my second year at, Birmingham City University, studying Sound Engineering and Production. The course includes aspects such as live sound, studio sound, coding, acoustics etc. I have started my final year dissertation, and I will be pursuing acoustics.   

I am going to study the characteristics of reed pipes by different organ builders around the world, specifically, the oboe. Everyone has researched the acoustics of flue pipes, but reed pipes are a lot more complex. In terms of collecting the data, I would make small recordings of each individual pipe. I would also gather information such as the scale, tongue thickness and shallot construction. This information is difficult to obtain, as pipes should not be taken out of the wind chest unnecessarily. This means that I would have to get specific details from restorers and organ builders. If I am successful in my research, it will help organ builders around the world.

Last time I wrote for the OP Newsletter I was about to go to RAF Cranwell for my Initial Officer Training.  As anticipated, this thirty weeks was a time of physical, mental and intellectual challenges. After endless drill, inspections, exercises and a lot of lost sleep, I was commissioned into the Royal Air Force in the rank of Flying Officer in June 2015. I was now through to the next phase of my training to be a pilot.

This started with a two week survival course in the North Yorkshire Moors. This was designed to train our small group of student pilots to survive in a “permissive” environment (ie crash landing on land or sea whilst not on operations). The main focus was on ensuring that one could build a shelter, a fire and collect food and water in order for us to survive and be rescued. It was a particularly sobering reminder of the realities of military aviation. The worst bit was the squirrel gravy!

The next stage of my training was Ground School back at Cranwell. This was where we were taught the theory of flight. The course was very varied, including the physics of lift, the complicated systems of airways and air traffic control zones that cover the busy UK airspace and the theory of sortie planning and navigation. This course was six weeks long and particularly intensive, with regular exams that usually had a 90% pass mark.  That being said, any mistakes in the air could be extremely costly.

I recently moved into my new accommodation at RAF Wittering and will soon begin flying a light aircraft (the Grob Tutor) where I will be assessed on my flying ability and aptitude. After about 25 weeks, I will be streamed onto a specialist aircraft type based on my performance. The three streams are Fast Jet (Typhoon, Tornado and F-35), Rotary (Puma, Chinook, etc) and Multi-Engine (Hercules, Sentry, Voyager, Atlas etc). My current aspirations are undecided but I am certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that I have an exciting career ahead of me.

Old Princethorpian, Felicity Hannah, Fliss King-Evans to those who were at Princethorpe with her, scooped a national journalism award this summer.

At an industry event chaired by the BBC's Jeremy Vine, she was named Household Money Journalist of the Year, seeing off some pretty tough competition. Felicity is a consumer rights journalist and now writes for the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian and the Mirror.

I left Princethorpe in 2012 and I cannot believe that I have just completed a three year combined honours degree in Philosophy and Ethics and Christian Theology at Liverpool Hope University. In July, I graduated with a First at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral, or "Paddy's Wigwam" as it is commonly known, and at the same time was honoured to receive the Sir Netar Mallik award for 'outstanding achievement over three years in Theology and Philosophy'. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Liverpool Hope and was privileged enough to have been taught by many leading scholars in my subject, who ultimately drove me towards reaching my full academic potential.

I am particularly proud of my 10,000 word dissertation that I was required to undertake during my final year and was concerned with whether it was possible for humanity to achieve perfection as God is perfect. I found the whole process fascinating and grew to actually find essay writing rather enjoyable! Waking up to discover I had achieved my highest mark in my dissertation was a very pleasant surprise and I hope to expand on this subject further in a Masters course at some point in the years to come.

I had always been anxious about going to university and I was certainly very reluctant to leave Princethorpe behind as I didn't want to lose the inclusive and familiar atmosphere. I soon found that Hope's ethos was incredibly similar to Princethorpe; priding itself on the close ecumenical community it has established and valuing the importance of students not getting lost in a crowded lecture hall. It was always a pleasure to walk into class being well aware that the lecturers knew exactly who you were and what you wanted to achieve and would do whatever they could to make sure you got where you needed to be. I believe I owe much of my degree success to the care and attention my tutors offered me.

I am now set to begin a PGCE in Primary Teaching at the University of Warwick from September. I am very much looking forward to getting started and I cannot wait to see the rewarding results at the end of such an intensive year. In the meantime, I have been keeping myself busy as an assistant in Princethorpe's Uniform Shop and it is very nostalgic seeing all of the new Year 7s trying on their school uniform for the first time, 10 years after I experienced the same nervous excitement. As I enter the world of work I know I go with the values both Princethorpe and Hope have ingrained in me both in my work ethic and as a person, and I will be forever grateful for the tremendous support I have received up until this point.

Rory Rooney and Sacha Galloway (2004-2011) headed down under on Wednesday 16 September. Flying into Sydney, they intend to stay with friends and family but also to travel the East Coast of Australia and maybe pop into the outback and visit Uluru. As both are keen skiers they would also like to see what the New Zealand ski season has to offer.

Sacha comments on their trip, “Our main purpose for the journey is to relax, take in the sights and experience as much as we can that Australia has to offer before Rory heads off to University and I transcend into the world of work. We’d like to thank everyone at Princethorpe since 2004 for your support, friendship and the fantastic education we have had.”

Both have been familiar faces around Princethorpe since they left in 2011, Rory staying on as a GTA and then working with the Estates Department. On his return from Australia he will go to The University of Sheffield to study Product Design. Sacha, who has just obtained a First in Information Technology Management from Sheffield Hallum University, returned to Princethorpe in 2013 to complete a year long work placement. On completing his degree, he has spent the summer in the Princethorpe Estates department earning his travel money.

We wish them well on their fantastic trip.

Lexy Neal

I just graduated from the University of Exeter with a 2:1 in a BSc Psychology. Proudly achieved a First Class dissertation when conducting research into the link between parental depression and child guilt, shame and self-esteem.

In September I will be starting a job at Birmingham Children's Hospital as a Clinical Support Worker in their Parkview Clinic. This is a hospital for young people aged 11-18 who have a range of different mental health problems. I am soooo sooo excited to start! 

Laura Newitt

Congratulations to Laura who graduated with a first in Physiotherapy from Cardiff University in July. She's now going on to do medicine at Southampton University. Click on the gallery to see a picture of Laura.

Congratulations to all the OPs who graduated this summer.

Martin Gallagher recently got in touch to let us know of a great night he and a small group of OP friends from the 80s had in July at The Almanack in Kenilworth. Martin left Princethorpe in 1986 in Year 11 and some of the other guys stayed on until the end of Sixth Form in 1988.

Comments Martin, "It was a fantastic evening, catchig up with some of my old school mates - some I haven't seen for 29 years. We were only a small group om the night but we vowed to meet on a more regular basis & increase the numbers.

He added, "There were some great stories shared. Please let Mr Darkes know we haven't let him down!!"

If you'd like to join Martin and Co the next time they meet up email oldprincethorpians@princethorpe.co.uk and we will put you in contact.

Image shows from left to right: Steve Doherty, Paul Maudis, John Reading, Mark Brennan, Nick Bennett, Martin Gallagher, Martin Cakebread, Philip Kedward.

Old Princethorpian and best selling author Mark Woods published his latest book 'Planet Parent' in June. 

The book aims to find out who are the world's best parents. A unique and entertaining journey to gather together the best parenting techniques from across the globe, Planet Parent takes you through the highs and lows of raising children with the world itself as your wise guide. 

From morning sickness and fussy eaters to iPad addicts, education dilemmas and tumultuously tricky teenagers, the core challenges facing parents are strikingly similar the world over – but the way in which each country and culture deals with them is often astonishingly different.

In Planet Parent, Mark Woods looks in every corner of the globe to find the very best parenting tips and from the lowdown on early potty training success in China, which countries still co sleep and exactly why French kids eat their greens rather than throw them. The world's best school systems are also given a thorough going into with the wildly differing but equally successful Scandinavian and SE Asian models compared. Then there's the small matter of what former Apple boss Steve Jobs thought about the screen time his own children should be allowed! 

The result is a funny, fascinating book, which will be an invaluable source of wisdom and advice for parents everywhere.

Inspired by the birth of his first son Mark wrote Pregnancy for Men which soon became an international bestseller translated into multiple languages with the Chinese version in particular becoming a big hit with parents. Now Mark has taken this international perspective one step further and unearthed the best global perspectives on everything from fertility, pregnancy, sleep and feeding to learning, discipline and much more - all covered in the humorous, accessible, concise style that has already seen his books so well received by mothers and fathers alike across a host of different countries.

Available primarily in English, Planet Parent is published by White Ladder Press and is already being translated into Chinese, with many other translations expected.