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www concerts at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. His wisdom and leadership brought the different arms of the co-curriculum together, and enhanced the pupil experience. He also took responsibility behind the scenes for managing numerous essential and challenging compliance issues with utter reliability, remarkable good humour and always without complaint. Always measured and insightful, his intelligent, wise counsel was invaluable in his role as a key member of the Leadership Team and supporter/advisor to a succession of Heads.
A well-respected Biology teacher, Simon also coached junior cricket, then the hockey 2nd Xl and latterly “the mighty U15 C team”. He managed trips with considerable care and a necessary emphasis on the safety and protection of the pupils and staff who led them. He also participated in many trips over the years, assisting on rugby/hockey tours to South America (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) and to Australia/New Zealand, not to mention Biology trips to Wales, Honduras and numerous diving trips. Intensely creative and practical, he was a regular in the workshops over the years and is enormously skilled at making and mending things (not least his three trailers). His quiet ‘let’s just get on with’ approach saw him cycling around local reservoirs annually dispensing lollies to the Third Form on their sponsored walk. He is also a keen photographer (memorably starting one Independent Schools Inspectorate inspection briefing to staff with an appeal to them to look out for a temporarily lost drone, which subsequently turned up in a tree on Bramston paddock).
Simon completes 32 years of diving this year, with 3,000-4,000 dives completed and approximately 700 qualified divers taught to dive by the Oundle School Sub Aqua Club (OSSAC). Under his leadership, the club was hugely popular and always over-subscribed, and those pupils who were members often singled out their experiences in it as highlights of their schooling.
Norman Brittain recalls: “Simon
and I were lucky enough to be able to run OSSAC together for 22 memorable years. From Wednesday CCF afternoons spent plumbing the murk of the brickpits east of Peterborough to holiday expeditions exploring the splendours of the Scillies, the Longships, St Abbs, Mull, Harris and Lewis, St Kilda, Scapa Flow, the Blaskets, the Skelligs, Malta, Menorca, the Red Sea (one could go on..), what a time we had of it! No scallop, no crab, no lobster was safe from Simon's eagle eye. Didn't we eat well! If we were wreck- diving, that meant salvage. Down he would go, armed with lump hammer and spanner, and, on one notable occasion, diving a recently- discovered wreck in the Sound of Mull, up he came with a magnificent brass lamp and porthole. What a pleasure it was to see our trainees master the skills and grow in confidence, to the point where many of them took on the task of teaching new trainees themselves. Time after time, Simon's patience, unbounded good humour and wonderful sense of the absurd ensured that even the most nervous novices, shivering in their wetsuits as they gazed glumly upon the grey and grim prospect of Gildenburgh Water on a Wednesday afternoon in February, came away from the experience enlivened by their sense of having mastered a demanding skill.”
Adam Langsdale pays similar tribute: “Simon has been responsible for most of the kit maintenance, training schedule and being the general dogsbody for OSSAC for nearly 35 years, and in that time he has overseen the training of hundreds of Oundle pupils. I cannot think of a single moment when he was anything other than completely switched on to total professionalism and the significance of what we do as dive instructors. A long time ago he told me that a frivolous attitude to most things is the way forwards in this world – try not to take things too seriously. Simon knows when to take things extremely seriously and I have seen him swing into action at a moment when time and the right call really did matter, but his default setting of gentle humour and
appropriate ribbing is never far away and this makes him such a fantastic colleague.”
Simon’s service to the CCF culminated in the presentation of award of a certificate by the Lord Lieutenant on 24th May. Extracts from the citation read as follows:
“Captain P.S.C. KING has been a stalwart of Oundle Combined Cadet Force for the last 31 years. He has been on 25 Adventure Training Camps, running an annual overseas dive trip to the Red Sea. He has also completed 60 Field Weekends, taking cadets to dive off Portland to gain open-sea experience. Perhaps most impressively he has planned and run a varied dive training programme for cadets on Wednesday afternoons, whatever the weather, for the last 31 years. He is faced with considerable challenges: limited time, few qualified instructors, poor weather, cold winter temperatures and limited training facilities. In spite of these challenges, Captain KING has delivered a varied, challenging and constructive programme that develops cadets’ confidence, skills and personal qualities. His contribution has been selfless, considerable and sustained and, accordingly, he is worthy of national recognition.”
Simon gave time and energy to the community for 37 years, and the respect and affection for him as he leaves is palpable from many, many quarters. A mentor and a friend to more staff than can be mentioned, a provider of inspiration and fun for the pupils in equal measure, a polymath and a dynamo, he changed lives for the better with the minimum of fuss, the greatest of humility and, almost always, with a flicker of humour. He and Henny, whose contribution as Housemaster’s wife and, more recently, as Relief Matron must also be noted, will be sorely missed. We wish them well in their new home (which no doubt Simon will have largely rewired and refurbished before we come back in September) and we hope that all seven Kings will be back in Oundle whenever possible; it simply won’t be the same without them.
Daviona Watt, Deputy Head
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THE OLD OUNDELIAN 2017 –2018
STAFF FAREWELLS