tim's experiment

Went to the Institute of Education this week for the inauguration of a new show at the Museum of Education, a small but delightful few rooms which nestle in the middle of the IEd’s stunningly beautiful campus. The latest exhibition concerns Hong Kong’s village schools, which usually started as voluntary efforts by villages or groups of villages. There would be one class, the premises were often the clan hall, and the education provided was, I suppose, basic. One slightly chilling exhibit is a small cane. Apparently new pupils were supposed to present their teacher with a group of symbolic presents. The cane indicated a willingness to be chastised in the pursuit of learning. Eventually most of the schools were adopted by the government, provided with proper buildings, and then in due course closed as too small. Some of the exhibits brought back personal memories. There is one of those stencilling machines which we used before photocopiers came along. You prepared a stencil by typing on some special, and rather expensive, paper. This was mounted on the drum and the operator then wound a handle – once for each copy, which discouraged gratuitous copying quite effectively.

Then I came across a little unheralded gem. I have often wondered what happens to those sheets on which guests are invited to sign their names at weddings, openings, ribbon cuttings etc. Well many years ago (late 50s or early 60s I think) they had one of these sheets at the opening of a new school campus in the New Territories, and somebody carefully preserved it. And there it is. In the midst of a forest of Chinese names, which I could not read, there were four English ones. They are not terribly well written because the only implement available was apparently a Chinese brush. But a careful observer can distinguish the names of David Akers-Jones, Denis Bray and their respective wives. Sir David, as he now is, is of course still with us. Mr Bray, alas, is not.

This is a shame because we got on well in our occcasional meetings, and also because in rowing terms Mr Bray was an important landmark. I stumbled across this by accident. All rowing men in England have heard of a frightfully exclusive rowing club, which only admits people who have won certain events. As the mere captain of an Oxford college which rowed in the second divison I did not qualify. The club is called after Leander, a mythical Ancient Greek oarsman, and it is so old that the tie has none of the usual stripes found on club ties. It is simply one solid colour, a rather alarming shade of pink. One evening I attended the  annual Christmas drinks thing which the Information Services Department threw (I don’t know if this is still going on) for the press. Mr Bray was the man in charge of the department at the time, so he was greeting new arrivals. He was wearing a conspicuously pink tie, so thinking that he had been at Cambridge and would understand the joke, I said, “Hello, I see you’re wearing your Leander tie.”  And it turned out that in fact he was wearing his Leander tie. He was immensely chuffed that someone had recognised it, and seems to have spent the rest of the evening talking about it. Because I received a succession of visitors who wanted an explanation of what was so special about The Tie and why Mr Bray was chiding colleagues who had not recognised it.

You can find the whole story behind this in the Bray book, which is now on-line and a good read. During the first half of the 20th century British rowing was divided into two hostile camps. There were the Orthodox, who sought men of a standard shape who were taught to row in a standard, geometrically efficient way. Then there were the followers of a coach called Steve Fairbairn, who propounded the view that this was all unnecessary nonsense, and the coach should concern himself only with what happened at the end of the oar which went in the water. The Orthodox people had science on their side. A good Orthodox crew also looked good. Fairbairn crews sometimes looked a mess. People could do different things as long as the eventual result was the same. On the other hand people who were too small or oddly shaped for Orthodox crews often more than made up for their physical shortcomings by trying harder. The great stronghold of the Fairbairn school was Jesus College Cambridge, and their greatest triumph was the crew from that college which won everything, up to and including the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, in 1947.

And Denis Bray was a member of that crew. So when they’ve finished with his autograph in Taipo they might consider sending it to Cambridge.