Regrettably, it can hardly be his younger brother - (whose Christian name was on the tip of my tongue until a moment ago, but now suddenly eludes me - must be either old-age or this superbly youthful, sparkling Hungarian pink, which is cheering me up no end as i write).
Sadly, Aczel minor, a charming boy as artistic and articulate as Peter was mathematical and morose, was suddenly abducted by Moonies or some other vampirical sect, and was never heard of again. At least, not by me. If you have some news of how he fared in the end, I would not be unhappy to hear it.
Glass - would that be the elder Duncan - or the younger, Alastair - or are they both up on that board?
Fletcher - Hmn - a stocky, little fellow - not unathletic, but chiefly remarkable for a surprising ability to play the flute - or, perhaps, the clarinet. By no means a twit.
House - Dennis - an aggressive, seriously-quick wing three-quarter in a truly superb First XV. A fine figure of a youth, how did he fare in later life?
What about the other wing, Marriott - every bit as dangerous given half a chance? Or the great outside halves, Brian Workman and, later, Coutts. Or an earlier wing - the flying Pole, Kutz - even quicker than either House or Marrriott - but, perhaps, a bit light. Especially, in defence.
What about centres? Reliable Tom Davies - big, muscular Allan George (when he wasn't playing in the back row) - and steel-springed Ian McCullough - (a truly destructive tackler).
Or Bunny Warren - a deceptively effective scrum-half? No, no, I must rein in, hold my horses - (It's this impudent pink stirring up the memories) - if I get into the Woolverstone Rugby and Cricket teams there will be no end to this Email. (Though alas, our Cricket XIs - (despite Brian Workman being a seriously Bradmanesque opening bat) - were by no means as good as our Rugby XVs. Do you realize, that in my time - I cannot remember our First XV, 2nd XV or our Colts - and I played in quite a few of these matches myself - ever losing a match?
Mind you, for quite a long time, we had quite a coach - Evans, a saturnine Welshman of excruciating sarcasm - (you really don't want to hear the kind of thing he had to say when you missed a tackle.) Very un-PC. But he sure as hell knew his Rugby, the old bastard. And we all benefited from that every single day. As did the boys who came after us. I'll never forget the utter ecstasy with which those hordes of "Noogies" watched our mighty First XV trample some luckless visiting team - Wymondham or Woodbridge, or whoever. Only R.G.S. Colchester stood a chance - and then only while their players were much older than ours. Once we caught up with them in age and size and muscular development, we took even them to the cleaners.
Ah, well - let us leave such gossip for another day.
I am particularly taken by your account of how this Woolverstone Old Boys thing germinated and took root and flowered. An old boy in Japan heaving to within a day! Quite remarkable! Despite the fact that my own relationship with the school was by no means cloudless & my memories of my days there are far from gold unalloyed, I must take my hat off to you & your colleagues who - somehow - found the flame - and kept it alive - and fanned it - and made it grow.
There is something quite Hungarian - (indeed, even, Magyar) - about the way you have brought something that was really gone - back from the brink of oblivion. (At some later stage, I may explain quite what I mean by this.) The whole thing is so intriguing - and so unforeseeable - that I would fain hear more, if I ever get the chance.
Apropos - "gatherings at Woolverstone" - Hmn.... could one from a distance such as mine take part in such a thing? If so, how? When do such things come to pass? You must be a mine of information on such a matter - I am all ears.
Former masters - are there any still with us? Surely not the infamous Headmaster Smitherman - but what about Warren, the Music? Or handsome - and intelligent - Ian Bell, the English? A Redgrave manqué, indeed! - Or olive-skinned Johnstone, the Latin? Curt Corner must surely be long gone? Halls - cannot be with us still - Mudd, no - Hanson, the Woodwork? No - Mayes, the cricket? - alas, not
Certainly not apple-cheeked Matthews, last Sailor of the Royal Navy to learn his Seamanship on Tall Ships of Sail - one of the first crewmen to take to the air in the R101 dirigibles - one of very few men to have been wrecked & swum in the shark-infested Indian Ocean for 3 days & to have survived - At the age of 70+ he kept pace with our strongest swimmer for one length of Ipswich Public Baths - after that he left whoever it was for dead and spent the entire afternoon swimming length after length at the same relentless pace - He also knew by heart hundreds of poems - (some of them very long - viz: "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"!) - He had learned these during hundreds of quiet hours before the mast in every quarter of the globe - He had a book in which every poem was entered by number and first line - we called out a number to him - he turned to the appropriate page - read the the number & first line or title - and then recited the entire poem word-perfect without the slightest hesitation or demur - They really don't make men like that any more.
Then there was the Art Master - what was he called? - Wolfenden - the rat!
Udor ("Udi") Eichler - as he was before his BBC reincarnation as "Gerald" Eichler. A maker of Current Affairs programmes, actually, rather than documentaries - he was, in fact, a year or two after me - born in Austria of a truly traumatic Austrian mother - well, well - died 15 - 20 years ago, you say? - I knew the Eichler of Woolverstone well - not so much the Eichler of his bizarre marriage & quite unexpected career at the BBC - You will, of course, understand that my Eichler is very far from being your Eichler - so let us not dwell unduly on his memory for now. RIP.
Regrettably, I have not really been in contact with any Woolverstonia. Victor found your kind references to me when he was trying to build some sort of a Web Site or page for my books posted on a KINDLE shelf in some forgotten corner of Amazon. For the rest, nowt - & by the sound of it, the rest is far from nowt.
Franco-era North-West Spain - Galicia - very humid, very fertile & almost equatorial, if memory serves me right. My grand uncle, Sándor - [pronounced, Shaandorr - Hungarian equivalent of Alexander] - fought with the International Brigade through the entire civil war all over Spain without getting a scratch - (on the Government - communist - side, of course) - another grand uncle, András = Andrew got a bullet in the head there as soon as he stepped onto a battlefield to deliver a message to his elder brother, Alexander, from their parents in Czechslovakia.
I went there quite a few times before Franco died & quite a few times after - so I can clearly see the difference that you are talking about. Spanish Spain & EU Spain are 2 very different kettles of fish. Much to talk about there.
At about the same time you were ploughing with a cow there, people in this part of the world were probably still using water buffalo. In fact, there is a Hungarian village not far from here - (in Outer Hungary, regrettably) - which still has a large herd of water buffalo, would you believe.
We don't farm in quite this way. But that's another story for another day.
No autobiog, yet. Have a few things to write before we get to that. Doesn't really fill me with enthusiasm, anyway. Speak a few languages, but I'm no Sir Richard Burton.
Very glad to hear that you might be willing to give a book of mine a read. However, none of the 2 extant tomes exist in hard copy except in Swedish. I don't expect you'll really want a crack at that. Both my books exist at present in electronic versions to be downloaded to Kindle Readers - of one sort or another. However, I was not really expecting you to actually pay for a read - especially, as I am hoping for a recommendation from you that I can post on my "Web Site" - (if I can ever find the blasted thing again!) - So, really, the best that I can offer you is that I send you a copy as an attachment to an Email. You can then either peruse it on your PC/LapTop or print it out onto paper. That would then be free of charge apart from the paper - and ink, of course. Sending you a package of about 200 A4 pages by post would, however, be much more expensive. (What a rip-off that is!) So - take your pick.
I suggest you read the shorter book - (the other is a Viking Saga twice as long) - which will also fill you in with quite a lot of things about Hungary. It is called, "Epitaphs For Underdogs".
No, I did not add an "S" to my name! I had an "S" taken out of my name. In Hungarian, the double "s" - followed by a "y" is the equivalent of the German "von" or the French "de". It denotes aristocracy. My grandfather, who was a lapsed-Catholic aristocrat, atheist, libertine, communist-of-the-heart - (once upon a time such beasts did exist) - found his name somewhat of a disadvantage in the Party & dropped an "S" - presumably, to be less provocative to more proletarian comrades. Under the Czechs, more orthographic editing occurred - in England, I at least, ended up with most of the name, but only one "S". (My aunt hid under the logo, "Sepesi".)
On my way back from living many of the stories in "Epitaphs....", I caught up with my Grand Uncle Sándor in France. Somehow or other he noticed the spelling of my name. Despite having been a very violent Communist all his life, he blew a fuse and ordered me to spell the name properly asap & for the rest of my life. So I went back to being "Szepessy" at the earliest possibility. Especially, in Hungary where everyone knows the difference.
Baranyai, I knew. Big, heavy lazy 2nd row. Not a bright spark. Gabriel Barta - (Barta Gábor) - no. Must have been after my time. There was a Wiener, just a few forms below me. Also a Hungarian. From the name, you might have thought he was a German or an Austrian.
As for the genome - you realize that after the depredations of the Mongols - (Golden Horde, etc.) & the Turks & the internicine civil strifes & the Hapsburgs & 1848 & WWI & WWII & 1956 & all that, there really is not much left of the original genome that came into the Carpathian Plain with the leaders of the 7 tribes & Big Chief Árpád & all that. Even less of our close relative Attila, who came that way about 400 years earlier. Whatever there might once have been, has been thoroughly diluted by all sorts of ethnic infusions & intrusions.
Whatever it is that produced - (and still produces) - Hungarian-ness - the thing that fired Liszt & Bartók & Kodály & Vasarely & Joseph Kozma & Michael Curtiz & Gearge Cukor & Capa & Bela Lugosi & Emeric Pressburger & Alexander, Vincent & Zoltán Korda & Rubik & Biro & Szilard & Wigener & Teller & von Karmann & Koestler - just to skim over those most familiar to Anglo-Saxon ears - cannot be something biological - that must be long gone, several eras ago - of course, during the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries good schools & centres of higher education were established all over Hungary - (a country more than twice the size of present day Magyarország) - but even so - that would hardly account for the profligacy of talents to have burst from the unlikely cradle of, apparently doomed, Magyardom. It cannot stem from something simply concrete & prosaic - it must be something of the spirit - something of the heart & soul - something that remains when even the stone of Ozymandias - is gone.
Rather like your Woolverstonia, perchance?
Tennis - well, even if one is not a tennis fan - this year's Australian Open really was something else. What an amazing drama! Either one would have made a great Champion - and Nadal will surely come again!
Richard Ingrams - yes, that will certainly be he - both of us were at University College - though he was a couple of years ahead of me. He always seemed much older than the rest of us. I do hope he is still alive. (I shall check on Wikipedia tomorrow.)
Well, that's the last of the sparkling pink down the hatch, so I shall have to leave you for now. Don't forget to tell me of any masters still alive - nor how one might gather in Woolverstone - nor how you would like to get hold of "Epitaphs For Underdogs" - farewell for now .....
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