Old Harlovians

Very late at night. Here I am, sat in the very nice bedroom in the Kings Manor hotel in Edinburgh. I am almost half way through my week's work in Scotland. I must admit, I am becoming a little bored with it now and I am looking forward to the conclusion of the work, which will be another week or so away. Hey ho such is life!

Harlovian

Sat in a branch of PC World, having done some training on this little gadget that I am using to record this post. Shortly I wil be heading off to Aberdeen ready for tomorrow. It took me 7 hours to drive the 369 miles from Southport to Inverness yesterday, so 104 miles to Aberdeen should be a piece of cake!

Bye for now.

Harlovian

I hope you all had a great week. I am off to Scotland today on business for a week, so may not be able to add any posts until I return.

Quick update on stats for you. Since March 20th, we have had 436 visitors to the site and 1505 page views.

Will try and find some more interesting news to add, but would encourage you to contribute with comments etc, as and when you can!

Best wishes

Harlovian

This is more our style chaps!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqfFrCUrEbY

Fortunately, we had a get together with some friends to watch the National and then barbecue, drink, get the guitars out etc...and ran a sweep and guess who picked Silver Birch out of the hat? I won £50 so it made up for all the ones I backed that fell, pulled up, walked round etc.

The weather has been fantastic this week-end and Everton have just beaten Charlton 2-1 so I am a happy boy.

Hope you all had a great week-end.

Harlovian

Well chaps, who is going to win tomorrow? I have heard "Idle Talk" is a good bet and also "Joe's Edge", so I will be having a bet on those two.

| live about 6 miles from Aintree race course, but I won't be going. I will spend Saturday with about 15 friends and we will have a sweepstake and get very drunk and then have a barbecue (which will be nice).

I hope you all have a great day tomorrow and that you back the winnner!

Regards

Harlovian

Walking to Harlow New Town on a Saturday exeat going to the cinema or the bowling alley.

Fighting off the "town kids"

Harlow Swimming Pool on a Sunday, but earlier than that we used to go a college pool in Bishops Stortford and had to swim in the nude if we had a woollen costume! (Some of the teachers of dubious sexual orientation thought this was fantastic and couldn't keep their hands to themselves!) I remember fighting off a PE master who shall remain nameless!

Pinching "bricks" from the kitchen and toasting them on a portable toaster and selling them for 3d a slice, dripping with melted margarine.

Working in the kitchens washing up on the week-end for 2/-d.

Listening to radio Luxembourg on the crappy headsets and crystal radios.

Purgavie ringing the bell at 07:10 each week-day.

Masters and mistresses names - Pollington, Harvey, Overton, Luckhurst, Langley, Murphy, Stanley, Haigh, Pedro Stevens, Edwards, Perrin, Baillie, Werung, Stapleton, Collier, etc, etc.

Breaking bounds, getting caught, getting the cosh!

Smoking in the outside bogs and the lower playing field.

Kissing town girls behind the gymn and drinking Bulmers cider with them!

The mobile tuck shop.

Twinco plastic cups.

The dumb waiter that used to bring the food up from the kitchen.

The school library.

Getting hit in the mouth by a piece of broken slate thrown by Roger Isaac (unintentionally I may add) - still got the scar!

Dorm raids!

Sadistic prefects - (Miller springs to mind).

Saturday morning school. Sports Days and football and cricket matches.

Good old memories!

Just received this picture with Happy Easter greeting from Mr A. Thought it amusing enough to post for you!

Life changed drastically for me when I was about 14, having met a girl from Harlow New Town called Lynne. She was my first serious girlfriend and she became my first serious love. In fact, I returned to Harlow to live with her and her family in 1965 when I also spent a lot of time coming back to the school to see McCready, Buckley, Christian, Bowman, Hardacre, Lehan, Williams and others.

When it was decided to close the school down, there was talk of relocating and I remember going to visit the proposed school with Roy Purgavie and some of the other boys; nothing came of it though and HC closed down.

In January 1966, my sister got married and Lynne and I went to the wedding in Liverpool. My fortunes had deteriorated slightly as the potato business with Roger Beck was not going as well as expected and my income was next to nothing (so nothing changed there then!). My Father took one look at this emaciated 18 year old, with long hair, a battered old Morris Minor, with 4 bald tyres and not a decent pair of shoes to his name and said: “You have got 3 weeks to sort yourself out and come home!” So that was that. You didn’t mess with your Father in those days. (Well I didn't with mine, he was 6ft tall and weighed about 20 stone!)

I returned home to Liverpool in February 1966. My relationship with Lynne lasted about one more week and I was dumped. Funnily enough, I met up with her and her 2nd husband in the early 90’s and I am still occasionally in touch by e-mail with one of her daughters. Lynne is now on her third husband, so I guess I can consider myself lucky!

Gentlemen

On behalf of Old Harlovians Blog, may I wish you all a Happy and Peaceful Easter.

Since starting the blog on 20th March we have had over 290 visitors to the site and in excess of 1200 page views. Pretty impressive I would say!

Once again gentlemen, I would encourage you to leave your comments and try and catch up with old school friends and if you have any interesting stories, memories about HC or indeed, your life since HC, then please send them in.

Kind regards

Harlovian

Hello Roger, wherever you are! (last known whereabouts, a paper broker in Wiltshire, I believe).

Please make contact and I hope you enjoy the blog.

The photo was taken by me on Lake Geneva in 1961 on a school holiday to Montreaux.

Hello and good morning to you all.

Back in UK after a week in Germany visiting my son who works out there. It was our first visit to Germany and we had a great time. We stayed in a village called Weilerbach near Kaiserslautern (about 100 + kilometres from Frankfurt).

We visited Luxembourg and Heidelburg, which was particularly beautiful and famous for its' imposing castle built high on a hill overlooking the city. Here is a photo taken from the castle.