What Bishop Cotton School means to me…..
The Year: 2009
Echoes of the past constantly enter my head, from the young squealing little five year old entering Linlithgow to the little chump and later teenager. Having finished my ISC at the tender age of 15 I left school in the sixth form wearing a rag of a Lefroy shirt, a rusted metal badge and my roll number that could have well been tattooed on my arm…forever. Forever 123.
Its Sunday the 8thof March 2009 and the time 20:27 hrs UTC* as I sit here in Weybridge Surrey. Outside its windy as though the ‘winds of doom just howl and moan’** A shiver runs through my spine and a feeling of melancholia envelopes me. I am not sure at this moment if it is sadness or remembering something from the past that flashes by and the echoes return. Its been 37 years since I left…singing…’we sing of days now past and gone, we sing of days to be’.
I seem to connect everything to my days in School..my life, my work, my friends, someone winning a golf tournament…the birth of my children….someone in hospital..in anguish, in a dilemma, upset…the happy, elated, overjoyed and all the good stuff that goes with it….
Then I realise what it feels to be an eagle flying high in the sky with 6/6 vision…
Down there on terra ferma..the land may look parched…but I can see these tiny little creatures emerging from all nooks and crannies of the earth….they arrive as little boys and as they approach the pearly gates they have matured. Some clean shaven, some clean shaven heads, some beards..full, some with goatees, some having wigs, some walking with sprightly energy and some lumbering up and then down, some on old walking sticks and some with burberry umbrellas…some in Blazers and Flannels and school ties…They all congregate in large numbers….from the parched earth, from the hills and the valleys, from across oceans, from neighbouring borders, some from roof tops and some from next door. The eagle in the sky accepts this moment of truth…nah…he ain’t going to stoop down with claws and flaming beak….no not this time. He knows what it means when a reunion of such great significance means to these men. They are coming around full circle…..He stretches his wings even more and shoots even higher..heading for his zenith. …
Its time for Bishop Cotton School to celebrate…150 years……its time for the Boys to worship the ground, the flats, the dorms, the chapel, the classes, the bogs, the short cuts, the memories and much much more.
For all you Cottonians, Big, Small, Tall, Straight, crooked or bent..remember we are Blessed that we are HERE! We must give back what we received and let the world know the meaning of Bishop Cotton School. Par Excellence!
Yes, its time for the Boys to come home.
Vivek Bhasin
Lefroy
1961-1970
(08th march 2009)
*UTC= Universal Time Coordinated/ Greenwich Mean Time
** No Quarter-Led Zeppelin