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www such that he is now one of the trustees and is involved in setting up similar holidays in other boarding schools. He has always insisted that the young guests are the focus of the holidays, but one also acknowledges the deep and lasting effect that Robin’s example and commitment has on the Oundelians who volunteer their time to help. I have witnessed the passion and care that they demonstrate year on year as they return and can vouch for the selflessness and effort that each person makes. Robin’s legacy will be felt in many parts of School life, but perhaps here it is felt most deeply.
On returning to Oundle to teach in 2008 after life in the ‘Big Smoke’, Robin often opined that the typical Oundle teacher was too conservative, too traditional, too rural and, in essence, far removed from the urban existence of those working in London, from where he had come. He would mock our chinos, our wellies, our dogs, our Volvos, our 2.4 children and claimed he would never conform to such a lifestyle. In one sense Robin has become the thing he hates, but in doing so I know he feels that life is richer. Much of this is down to Louise, who Robin married in 2011
and who currently divides her time between being Housemistress of Kirkeby and managing Robin. With their two children, they will continue to live in Kirkeby whilst Robin embarks on a new career as a police detective. His friends in the Common Room will miss him of course, but we hope that he finds the next chapter of his career challenging and rewarding. In the meantime, Robin reported for duty as usual at the end of July for Mencap. You will have recognised him by his pink rabbit costume!
Brendan Deane, Head of Religious Studies
STAFF FAREWELLS
Hattie Hopper
English teacher
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an English department in possession of a
spare classroom must be in want of a Hattie Hopper. Oundle was. Norwich Girls now is. Our loss, their gain. Hattie arrived in 2009 from Coloma Convent School – a world away from Oundle: day, state and a religious foundation. Her signature florals must have burst upon that sober ambience even more vividly than they did upon ours, but she was soon firmly planted. In the past, a Jill-of-all-trades and an “accomplisher of a myriad of tedious office jobs”, Hattie brought to us both her organisational skills and her newly-burgeoning teaching expertise, vigour and verve. With delicacy and vision, she set about nurturing pupils and tutees alike, making herself an indispensable cog in the machineries of both the English department and of Dryden, where she tutored until 2016, when she moved to Laxton.
For what will we remember Hattie? What will we celebrate? What will we miss as she turns this new page? The question really is what will we not?
There is neither world enough, nor time, nor pages to do her justice.
Perhaps bees...it is not everyone who considers the humble bee, goes
on a beekeeping course, eschewing insect training, with turgid grammarians in favour of the language of speaking to these most indispensable of creatures. Perhaps shades of her university specialisation in Anglo Saxon, Celtic and Norse led her into this most historic of traditional pursuits? Be that as it may, so began Dryden’s beekeepers and later the wider Wednesday Activity Group. Hives went from one to three with alarms and excursions in between as bees, like the weather, are temperamental creatures. Honey, lip balm, forays into medieval honey cakes, soaps and candles all followed. Each year the beekeeping coterie designed new labels for their produce and pored over their hives with anxious solicitude under Hattie’s supervision, for in these days of ‘bee scarcity’, colonies command a premium and theft is not, alas, unknown. So, ours remain hidden – I am told – buzzing in happy seclusion and, like an Italian fraternity, the secret is vouchsafed, but to the initiates. For the rest of us, a jar bought in the annual honey sales must suffice
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THE OLD OUNDELIAN 2017 –2018