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Old Bordenian Association Annual Reunion Dinner 2008

Old Bordenian Association

Annual Reunion Dinner-2008

To all Members of the Old Bordenian Association -

The Annual Reunion Dinner was held at the School on Saturday 29th March 2008

Original details of the dinner follow – a separate report has now been published:

Please note the NEW time of 6:30pm for 7pm. (The Bar will be open from 5:30pm)

The President of the Association, Harold Vafeas , Headmaster of the School, will preside.

The toast to the School and the Association will be proposed by Marion Minhall , who joined Borden Grammar School in 1984 and retired in July 2007. During her time at Borden she has served the school in the English department, as librarian, PFA staff representative, Head of Year 9, Head of Year 7 and finally as Assistant Head Teacher responsible for Lower School. For many years she ran the Senior Debating Society. During that time teams took part in regular school debates and successfully represented Borden in national debating and public speaking competitions. She also established the Borden Uniform Shop, which over the years has raised over £50,000 for school funds.

The usual delicious meal will be available. Lounge suit required.

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Down Memory Lane: 1950s – Chapter One

By John Macrae

This is the first in a series of articles that you have probably been reading about in the Maroon for some time.  Well, I have finally got round to it in this run-up to Christmas 2007.  I have just finished helping Graham Barnes put the 2008 Maroon to bed, attended the Sheppey Dinner, completed the minutes for the AGM and the recent Committee meeting and organised the mailing of the last Maroon to the Leavers of July 2007.  So with some spare time on my hands I have begun searching the archive for photographs of the School and Old Bordenians.  There is surprisingly little considering there should be more than a hundred years of evidence.  What I have found is a box containing some photographic records that have been collecting dust for some years and the consequent deterioration of the prints.  It was with a matter of urgency that I started photographing this evidence and storing it digitally.  This project alone is time consuming so I decided to combine this work with my Memory Lane chapters to show how Borden has changed and to recall some of the characters who have lived and worked therein.

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1997 Wide School Photo

Below is one of the infamous wide shots of the entire school, this time taken in 1997.  I haven’t spotted any duplicate faces this time!  The image has been split into four parts.

Borden Grammar Cricket Team 1981

Cricket 1981 – we were in the Sittingbourne Evening League.  Note some Old Boys playing for Borden – Alan Boyns, John Hartridge, Paul Dutnall.  Traitors or unable to make the Old Boys team?

A Trip Down Amnesia Lane

This is a guest post by Old Bordenian Graham Barnes, who attended Borden Grammar School between 1937 and 1944.

Recently there was yet another call for a higher ‘usefulness’ content in the school curriculum.   I say ‘yet another’ because this has been going on since my boyhood – and that’s a very long time ago indeed.  This time, the suggestion was that 10-year olds should be taught, amongst other skills, how to repair a motorbike, if you please!

In my day, Latin was always a prime target for the utilitarians.  “Of what use is Latin?”, the cry went up.  “It’s a dead language, and of no value at all, unless you are going to be a doctor”.  I was always puzzled by that proviso.  When did a medical practitioner last tell you that you had a sexually-transmitted disease in Latin?  And if he were to commit this information to paper, you wouldn’t be able to decipher his hand-writing anyway.

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Welcome to the new OBA site

Hello fellow Old Bordenians!

Welcome to our new website.  We have been working hard over the past few months to redesign the site and bring it up to date.  As we progress into the 21st century and the Internet is now the easiest, quickest and most popular way to access information, we need to provide our members with a website that reflects this.

The main aims of the Old Bordenian Association website are:

• To provide a central repository for information regarding the Old Bordenian Association, Borden Grammar School and related events
• To allow OBA members to reunite over the net and communicate with each other
• To provide a platform to electronically distribute The Maroon

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