FROM THE HEADMASTER

I generally commence the Leavers’ address by alluding to the Roman mythological figure Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions, who is usually depicted as having two faces glancing in diametrically opposing directions, one towards the past and the other towards the future. For each generation of boys leaving the School at the conclusion of their Form VI, there is the crossing of a metaphorical threshold which juxtaposes the excitement inherent in their new adventures ahead with a deep fondness and nostalgia for the experiences of this wonderful school.

For me, Grammar has been my past as a boy here at the School for eight years from 1987–1994, and now as Headmaster for eight years since 2017. I have adored my time as Headmaster. It was always my dream job as a younger teacher working through the ranks, so to speak.

Pictured: Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions

Pictured: Dr Malpass at Edgecliff Preparatory School Class 5-1 1987 (front row second from the left)

I will admit that it has been a considerable thing for me to take the next step from the school I was raised at and have run for eight years, and the question my family and I have had to consider chiefly is ‘when is the right time to take on the next adventure’. When is the right time to take that Prufrockian ‘dare’? I think the mid-20th century American novelist Richard Yates, in his 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, describes well the (very natural) human need to have deterministic control of our lives:

Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort. “Synchronise watches at oh six hundred” says the infantry captain, and each of his huddled lieutenants finds respite from fear in the act of bringing [those] two tiny pointers into jeweled alignment while tons of heavy artillery go fluttering overhead: the prosaic, civilian-looking dial of the watch has restored, however briefly, an illusion of personal control. Good, it counsels, looking tidily up from the hairs and veins of each terribly vulnerable wrist; fine: so far, everything’s happening right on time.

The notion that “everything’s happening right on time” can be important to many. Its mercurial antithesis can be exciting as well. Of course, we crave the ‘illusion of personal control’ but my family’s experience has been that transformational opportunities can leap from delightfully unexpected corners.

My mind also goes back to 2002 and to Donald Rumsfeld, who at the time was US Secretary of Defense, who gave a news briefing in which he distinguished between facts that we know (‘known knowns’), and things that we know we don’t know (‘known unknowns’). He then went on to draw attention to the existence of ‘unknown unknowns’ – the things we don’t even know we don’t know, adding, “if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones”. Rumsfeld was mocked at the time for what sounded like pseudo-profundity. I don’t think his profundity was in doubt. To be honest, only a few months ago I hadn’t a clue about the next role. Still, such unknown unknowns for my family became so marvellously apparent when we least expected them. And whilst any of us might like to consider ourselves the occasional beneficiaries of a serendipitous sliding doors moment, perhaps Thomas Hardy describes it better as “the persistence of the unforeseen”.

Pictured: Classics lesson