No . 136 The Trusty Servant
Vox Senum
College Singing
David Woolley ( Q , 50-52 ; Coll , 53-57 ) writes in response to the Editor ’ s article about Win Co Fo :
Like you , when I read Our Game I was underwhelmed by John le Carré ’ s less than prehensile grasp of Win Coll Football notions . Since he claimed to have taken Wykehamical advice on the matter he can only have misunderstood or ignored it when he wrote the book .
Later in your fascinating article you seem to express mild surprise that College could ever win at the game . This is predictable , since it looks as if they lost continually to both Commoners and OTH from 1929 to 1957 .
When College finally beat Commoners in the first ever competitive game of Xs played on College Canvas , some pedant , whose identity is now happily consigned to oblivion , discovered in the archives that College Singing was a notion to be observed in the hour of victory . No one had the first idea what this entailed . Enquiry of both Johnny Stow and Colin Badcock , the only attainable former members of College VI , proved fruitless , so I , a wholly ignorant impresario , had to cobble together an evening of mixed entertainment at short notice . This took place in College Hall . If it turned out to be a success , it was largely due to the talents not of College , but of Do . Co . Ro .
Ronnie Hamilton and John Surrey were both stand-up comics of rare quality and they , together with liberal applications of cider cup , rescued the event from what might have otherwise been disaster . When College went on to beat Commoners again in VIs , the wise decision was taken to retire at the top , and not risk a second Singing .
Since I was Captain of College VI , I know whereof I speak .
Lviv Revisited
Peregrine Kitchener-Fellowes ( I , 04-09 ) writes :
Earlier this year , I found myself in an elderly Volvo on the road from London to Lviv alongside Giles Milner ( I , 04-07 ). If this sounds familiar to readers , it ’ s because you may have read Conrad Griffin ’ s ( I , 04- 09 ) own experience taking the same trip last year and documenting it in TS 134 .
Close behind us were Ben Sayer ( I , 04-09 ) and Dom , an Etonian in a Mitsubishi . We were travelling to deliver the cars and various supplies to The Kharkiv and Przemyśl Project , a charity set up by another Hopperite , Alex Thomas ( I , 04-09 ).
We filled the cars with everything the charity had bought , along with some very generous NHS donations . It wasn ’ t all plain sailing , however . After Antwerp , we received a message from Alex : “ How are the cars doing ?” “ All fine ,” I wrote , “ Cars doing well .” As I hit send , we had our first warning light on the dashboard and pulled over with no clue what to do . And if there ’ s a way to fix a thing , we definitely did the opposite . An hour later , after another warning light , we were stuck outside a Best Western in the Dutch town of Asten , but some welcome advice from an acquaintance back home got us through the rest of the trip , and ensured that the car would make it to its final destination and beyond .
At the Ukrainian border we were told that we needed to re-do all our customs paperwork , by hand , but luckily we had a border guard whose steely exterior was soon softened by Giles ’ s boyish charm . While that was going on , some gentlemen claiming to be from military procurement occupied Dom , Ben and me . They were keen to take everything we had brought this far , but thanks to Dom ’ s fluttering eye lashes and excellent language skills they eventually disappeared as quickly as they had appeared , presumably as bored of us as we were nervous of them . We never heard from them again – not yet , anyway .
In Lviv we delivered first to a children ’ s hospital and then to KHARPP , where we first heard a strange sound floating through the air . Between the sirens and the midnight curfew , even here in Western Ukraine , you are never far from a reminder that this is a country at war .
Should this inspire you to support KHARPP , please donate at www . KHARPP . com . If you are curious to take on a similar trip to the one described above , KHARPP are always looking for volunteers to take vehicles to Ukraine ; contact information is on their website .
a British charity which began its work on the Polish-Ukrainian border in March 2022 , supporting refugees as they fled the war .
KHARPP is a charitable company , registered with Companies House ( company no . 14080765 ) and the Charity Commission ( charity no . 1204531 ) in England and Wales .
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