Forest of Dean

The area is characterised by more than 110 square kilometres (42 sq mi) of mixed woodland, one of the surviving ancient woodlands in England. A large area was reserved for royal hunting before 1066, and remained as the second largest crown forest in England, the largest being New Forest.

Ali has cousins who live there. The idea of an ancient forest appeals to me. But, above all, this particular forest, the Forest of Dean, has struck a resonance in me solely because I had a friend at school called Nigel Dean. He was a year or two below me and our paths crossed because he attended the Christian Union. I remember a school trip I organised, with the help of our RE teacher, to see a Christian group called the Forerunners perform in Southampton. They sang a re-hash of Bridge over Troubled Water which meant nothing to me at the time, having been brought up to eschew pop music. After the event I remember how Nigel was quick to identify Simon and Garfunkel and I was impressed with his superior knowledge - perhaps that was the beginning of my interest in their music.

Wyke Lodge Internees - Sept 1967 to July 1968

Peter Symonds was part border and part day student. The borders lived in a number of houses of which Wyke Lodge was one. Whilst browsing an old boys forum I found this picture where I recognised my best friend at top right, but would not have known Nigel in the front row, third from the left, had the forum not given a list. The very poor resolution doesn't help.

Strange how association with a name, a surname at that, should turn my attention to a particular swathe of woodland. But so it has and, at last, I have seen a bit of it when we stayed with one of Ali's cousins in Cinderford on the way home from our recent UK trip.

And so I grabbed at our host's offer of an early morning walk through the forest that starts just behind his back garden and here is my GPS track. Nice as it was to take a morning stroll, this bit of woodland did not appear to be majorly different to any other woodland I have walked through which was a tad disappointing. I must explore more of the Forest next time...

Apart from trees which one kind of expects in a forest, the only feature of interest was this tower, complete with pulley, which we supposed was once over coal mine shaft: there is apparently much coal beneath the forest.

School days - Peter Symonds 3

Be warned - you might find this blog boring! I found some school reports and other memorabilia:

Apparently my first form was 1c and not 1b as I said in an earlier blog. But later on I was transferred to the 'b' stream. The form master and maths teacher "PWG" is Mr Gale, aka Breezy.  Note the lie "good" for history!  So as not to ultimately bore I omit the intermediate reports so here is the last:

I may have mentioned that I grew up in a Christian home.  Naturally I rebelled against this for a part of my teenage years so was apostate in my 5th year when I was approached by an older boy who was apparently the leader of the C.U.  He was about to graduate, and had somehow found out my credentials so informed me that there was no-one else and if I didn't rise to the challenge the C.U. would cease to exist.  My days of apostasy were numbered.  Starting with about 2 people, we learnt the hard way (after half a year of drudgery) about prayer. That is another story - for now let this C.U. report (my typewriter!) suffice:

Of particular interest (well to me) is the entry "Pot or Not" - after meetings with attendance of 2 or 3, this talk attracted perhaps 30 or 40 boys!  I remember making a large psychedelic poster for the occasion.  Also the outing to hear the "Forerunners", a gospel music group who did, amongst other tracks no doubt,  a very passable rendition of "Bridge over troubled water" and thus introduced me to S&G.  I instantly loved this track but until then I had never heard of S&G (my parents did not approve of popular music).  It took a younger boy to identify the original artist after the event.  And note the proud comment that the Head (Ashurst) was "happy".

My last boring picture is of an invention of mine.  I developed my "musical slide-rule" whilst in my 5th year to help me with music theory for O-level.  Readers who are ignorant about the slide-rule check here. The version, for which the image shown is a template, was a revised version which dealt with the C# / Db ambiguity.  In construction the lower image is taped around some plastic tube (waste pipe) and the upper part is photocopied onto clear acetate and wound around the tube and taped so that it can both slide length-ways and be rotated.  The device calculates the correct notes of any major or minor scale, the key signature of same, and calculates the correct name for the interval between two arbitrary notes.  The design is, of course, copyrighted.