The phrase 'hitting the ground running' comes to mind in relation to my first week back at School. As well as making the final arrangements for the annual dinner, there has been the next edition of The Gazette to complete and the first edition of the School's Citizen newspaper to produce. I am also involved in liaising with the Parents' Bursary Committee, who are organising a fundraising concert by parent and world-renowned cellist, Robert Cohen, in February, so I've been busy on that front also. Meanwhile, I help organise our major Gala Dinner at the Tate Modern in June, which is our biennial fundraiser for the School's Bursary Trust. The early months of the year are spent preparing materials for our table hosts, selecting menus and organising the evening's entertainment.

As always, we have a packed programme of networking events for Old Citizens between now and July, and a number of excellent school productions, to which you are all most welcome to attend, so I hope to see some familiar faces and plenty of new ones too in the next few months.

I wish you all a happy and healthy 12 months!

Last week was a particularly exciting one for the school, with the visit by HRH The Princess Royal, whom I was fortunate enough to meet, in my role as a member of the CLS25 anniversary committee. While her visit marked one of the high points of the School's anniversary year, there are more events to come, including two further Old Citizen receptions, the Tate Modern bursary fundraising dinner, and a number of visits by authors and Old Citizen Ben Haggarty (CLS 1972 - 76) in February. There is also, of course, the JCC Annual Dinner on Tuesday 14th February, which has deliberately been planned to take place at the current school to coincide with the anniversary celebrations.

The week prior to HRH's visit  I enjoyed the school production of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' which featured some excellent performances by CLS boys in the main and supporting roles.

This week promises to be equally exciting with tomorrow's Christmas Concert and Thursday's Carol Service at Temple Church, where I hope to see some of you enjoying the best CLS has to offer in terms of musical entertainment.

It was great to see many familiar faces and some new ones too at the AGM and dinner. Hopefully those Old Citizens who attended for the first time will be encouraged to return to some of our forthcoming events. The actual business of the evening was very brief, which meant an earlier than anticipated start to the networking over drinks on the concourse. During dinner, the two Davids - Walker and Levin - spoke briefly about the good health of the JCC and the school respectively, followed by Head of School Nicholas Hulbert, who gave an eloquent introduction to his 'team', the five 'wise men' and the sports captains who'd been invited to attend.

Last night was my second late finish this week, the first being (not so late) the law careers workshop after school on Tuesday. Ten Old Citizens formed the expert panel for the workshop, which was attended by 30+ fifth and sixth formers, contemplating law as a profession.

The alumni encompassed a wide range of experience within the legal profession, including barristers, tax partners, in-house legal professionals, and a solicitor specialising in providing legal aid for asylum-seekers. 

One of the key messages which came out of the question and answer sessions was that boys should ‘study a subject they enjoy at degree level and do it well at a good unversity.’ It is not necessary to do a law degree to pursue law as a career. About half of the Old Cits attending had read history, classics or international history and politics, among other subjects, at university, and then took a law conversion course. 

One Old Citizen said that analytical skills, commercial awareness and problem solving are all skills which law firms look for when recruiting, regardless of the degree subject studied. 

Many thanks to those Old Citizens who attended. Your participation is greatly appreciated.

      

 

Old Citizens past and present were remembered at this year's Prize Day, held on Monday, when the 21 JCC Junior 6th form Prizes were awarded during the ceremony. Each prize bears the name of an eminent Old Citizen, renowned in a particular field, such as Steven Isserlis for music and Sir William Perkins for chemistry.  Head of School, Nicholas Hulbert, made a great speech in praise of John Carpenter, and it was heartening to see so many boys receive prizes, despite having sore hands with all the clapping!

The week before last we held the first of our three Old Citizens' receptions in celebration of the School's 25th/175th anniversary. More than 100 OCs who left CLS in the 1960s and earlier arrived for the drinks reception, followed by a talk about the history of the buldings from Terry Heard, tours, and exhibition and videos. Thanks to those of you who wrote in saying how much they enjoyed the evening. Here are some of your comments:

Nine Old Citizens participated in the panel, addressing a packed room of boys, eager to hear their experiences in this competitive field. The Old Cits represented a broad range of areas including forensic psychiatry, organ transplantation, healthcare regulatory agencies, paediatric surgery, neuroscience and general practice. They included two former pupils who had left School as recently as 2007 and 2006, and others who left in the 1990s, 1980s and 1970s.

Topics that cropped up a number of times included the pros and cons of a non-clinical initial degree course, such as that offered by Cambridge, the importance of keeping an open mind when deciding in which area to specialise, the opportunity for travel within the medical profession, and the importance of looking at the detail of course offerings when choosing a university.

Many thanks to all those Old Cits who gave up their valuable time to attend the workshop and give the boys the benefit of their experience.

The next workshops coming up are in law, engineering and finance.

  

The final touches are being put to the exhibition created by Terry Heard, OC, former teacher and now archvisit at the School, in celebration of City of London School's 25th anniversary at Queen Victoria Street. More than 100 Old Citzens have already registered their attendance at the first of the School's anniversary receptions on 19 October, where OCs will be treated to a talk by Terry about the history of the school, and given the opportunity to tour the school with prefects, and watch the videos recorded last summer of OCs talking about their school days. There will be two more receptions this academic year, aimed at OCs of different generations so you will all be given the chance to visit for the first time or revisit the School.

Our finance/legal dinner on 7 November is almost full and on 23 November OCs are invited to attend the AGM and supper, which is always a sociable evening. Interspersed with JCC events this autumn we have the usual school events, including the drama production 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', the Autumn concert and the carol service.  

In February we have the JCC Annual Dinner, this time in the Great Hall of the current school, and then in June the Tate Modern Bursary fundraising gala dinner, a glittering event with a high profile speaker and wonderful views of the School from the Tate's top level restaurant.

I hope most of you can attend at least one of these events to help the School celebrate this double anniversary.

This year is no different and as well as events to organise, an Autumn Gazette to produce and emails and letters from Old Citizens to respond to, I hope to communicate with some of our professional groups to find out their new ideas for forthcoming gatherings.

I am also on the look out for a new gap year leaver to keep up Jake Pittman's wonderful efforts on the travel blog front, so if anyone out there would like to volunteer for this role, please get in touch.

We managed to secure summer work experience placements for a number of CLS boys this year and I hope to include some of their experiences in a forthcoming Gazette. These placements are an extension of our career workshops, held in the Autumn term, at which Old Citizens give Fifth and Sixth Form boys the benefit of their knowledge and experience in the legal, finance, medical and engineering professions. The school's Head of Careers will have emailed a number of you already about these workshops and if anyone would like to participate and hasn't been contacted, do get in touch.

On the musical front, Old Cit Brian Day, has asked me to let you know that if anyone wants to attend the Lord Mayor of London's Charity Appeal Concert 'The Bear Necessities' on Tuesday 4 October, at which CLS Fifth Former Zizhou Zhang is performing a piano solo, they can download details and a booking form here.

It was great seeing those of you who could make it to the two recent reunions - the 2004-8 leavers' gathering on 26 May and the reception for 1980 - 86 starters on 9 June. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the speeches and tours went down well. Many thanks for leaving your business cards and sending me email addresses of old school friends not currently on the alumni database. This sort of information is invaluable in ensuring email communications in particular are relevant.

Next school year we will be having three main reunions, one per term, for different leaver groups and they will have a slightly different format from the usual, in that Terry Heard, former pupil and teacher at CLS, and now part-time archivist, will be giving a brief talk about the history of the school, by way of introduction to the exhibition of photos he will be bringing together as part of the School's 25th anniversary celebrations, which also encompass the 175th anniversary of the School's opening at Milk Street.

If anyone interested in the School's history would like to buy a copy of 'Carpenter's Children', the 1995 edition of the school's history, written by Thomas Hinde, they can do so via Amazon. And don't forget we have watercolour prints of the old and new school available from the JCC shop.

We are hoping to hold the JCC Annual Dinner in the Great Hall of the new school, as part of the anniversary celebrations, at a date to be confirmed, probably in February. School concerts and drama productions will be embracing the celebratory theme throughout the year and as always, Old Citizens are most welcome to attend these productions.

Professional gatherings will be taking place as usual in the Spring term of 2012 and we hope to attract some guest speakers to these. Meanwhile relevant Old Cits will be invited to our careers workshops in the Autumn term.

Many thanks again to all of you who have offered work experience placements to CLS boys and undergraduate Old Citizens. Your assistance is greatly appreciated by boys and parents alike, particularly by undergraduates in these challenging times.

The Schools' 25th/175th anniversary celebrations, provisional details of which will be revealed at the reception on 9 June, are taking shape and will include receptions with tours of the school for Old Citizens in the three terms of the 2011/12 school year. Our current thinking is to divide these up into three leaver groups (1950s/60s and earlier, 1970s/80s and 1990s/00s). Terry Heard, Old Cit, former CLS teacher and School Archivist is planning a special anniversary exhibition, which Old Cits can also view during each reception.

The Summer issue of The Gazette is gradually filling up with stories but we need more so any Old Cit who would like to send in a contribution please feel free do so. I didn't receive very much feedback about the new design of the magazine but those who did offer opinions were very positive, which is encouraging as it suggests that we struck the right balance in terms of content and design.

Less positive was the feedback in relation to the insert in The Gazette that went to some members suggesting their subscriptions were due. There seems to have been a lot of confusion about membership status and I can only apologise on behalf of the JCC. It seems that the membership status records have not kept pace with the new database and as such the latter was not as up to date as it should have been. Hopefully most of your queries have been resolved now.

There has been lots happening in the school in the last few weeks - notably the school inspection, which they seem to have passed with flying colours, and last night's piano recital by renowned pianist Joanna MacGregor, which I was fortunate enough to attend. The recital was to mark the arrival of the school's Steinway grand piano and what a way to celebrate! Ms MacGregor played four sets, the last of which comprised four tangos by the Argentinian composer Pizzolo. She showed her true skill and versatility as a virtuoso pianist when she played keys inside the piano as well as on the keyboard during the last tango, which produced an extraordinary sound.

I am looking forward to the school's production of 'Animal Farm' on June 21-23 and then before you know it, it will be the school summer holidays and time to catch up on all those things I haven't had time to do during term time.

As some of you will be aware, there have been some cancellations, mostly from Old Cits called overseas on business, so the top few on the waiting list have now secured places. Unfortunately there are still an unlucky 13 on the reserves list who look increasingly likely to miss out on the big event.

This week I am attending another black tie dinner - this time in the current school - the Senior Prefects' Dinner on Wednesday evening, so by the time the weekend arrives I shall be looking forward to a quiet few nights at home.

Last week I went to see 'The Witch of Edmonton', City's Spring drama production, which was an interesting, relatively little-known play written by contemporaries of Shakespeare. Despite the challenging dialogue, there were some fantastic performances, most notably by the boys playing the devil-dog and the local jack-the-lad Cuddy Banks. I also enjoyed  lunch with our President, Cliff Hampton, and our four JCC ambassadors for this year. One of their number, Orestes Nicolaou, has now become an administrator, along with myself, for the City of London School for Boys - Class of 2011 Facebook page.

The Spring issue of The Gazette is now with the printers, awaiting publication and distribution towards the end of March. This is the first issue in the new format and quite different from the old magazine. It is relatively short at 16 pages but I plan to increase this to 20, allowing four pages for sports reports, in the summer edition. In order to increase the magazine's appeal across all generations of Old Citizens I have tried to keep the articles relatively short and improve the balance of JCC/School/Old Cits news.  I welcome your comments after publication.

We still have a number of events coming up in the summer term, including the JCC Sports Dinner and Entrepreneurs Dinner, both in April, a medics professional gathering and 2004-8 leavers' reunion in May, and a finance dinner and cocktail reception for 1984-89 CLS starters in June. Remember to check the events section to see what's coming up.

I have had a flurry of requests from boys for work experience during the easter and summer holidays, and a number of you have come forward with offers of placements, which is great news for the boys.

I've been busy editing and laying out my first Gazette magazine recently, which is due to be published at the beginning of April. It will include JCC, OC and CLS news, as well as an archive section and events listing on the back. You will notice that the magazine has been redesigned, to reflect the new website.

JCC committee member Alan Willis has done a fantastic job liaising with our web developers to produce the new website which is a great improvement on the old site, making navigation much easier. Those of you who log into the members' area will notice a new addition to our 'Old Cits Talking' videos - Patrick Lawrence - whom I visited a couple of weeks ago. He has fond memories of his school days at City of London School and still has his old school blazer, cap and pencil box.

Last week myself, the Headmaster and Head of School, along with some recent leavers, attended an open JCC Lodge meeting at Mark Mason's Lodge. We listened to an explanation of what the lodge was all about, what the various roles meant and the importance of symbolism in the masons. This was followed by a splendid reception and dinner.

Term time is always a busy time for me with events to organise, magazines to edit, updates to the website and, of course,  responding to your many, varied enquiries. I am also part of the team responsible for organising the School's 25th anniversary of moving into the current premises in 2012, which coincides with the 175th year of the opening of the School in Milk Street. We are planning a range of events during the year, at least some of which will include Old Cits. So watch this space!

It's all systems go at School as the staff and pupils make ready for the various festive activities taking place from now until the end of term. One of the highlights for me this week was the musical production 'Anything Goes', which was marvellous - I didn't stop smiling all evening. Last week I attended the Chairman of the Governor's annual dinner at Merchant Taylor's Hall - a splendid setting for a pleasant evening - followed later in the week by the JCC AGM and Supper. I was pleased to see more than 50 Old Cits attend the latter, including a number from the 1970s and '80s. I spent the evening in the company of Chris Tizard, former JCC President and an extremely affable conversationalist.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Old Citizens Brent Johnston, a Canadian citizen who attended CLS for two years between 1970 and 1972, and  Richard Graham (CLS 1952-57), both of whom came for a tour of CLS. Brent also took the opportunity to look at some photos from his school days in our archives, assisted in his search by David Rose, CLS's Librarian.

As you may have gathered from the notice on the home and events pages, the Annual Dinner in the old school on 24 March 2011 is now fully booked. As this is a one-off opportunity to see inside the old school again, I am pleased to say that the vast majority of those who have booked are former pupils and their wives/partners. I will keep a reserve list for any Old Cits booking from now on and I should be able to let you know in February if you have managed to secure a place or not.

Don't forget you are most welcome to come along to the School's Carol Service at Temple Church on 16 December, and keep an eye open for alumni events taking place in the New Year.

Your booking forms for the Annual Dinner on 24 March 2011 at the old school have been coming in thick and fast, and we are now more than half full. So if you want to come to the Dinner, please send in your forms as soon as possible to secure a place. AGM Supper attendance also looks good this year and I look forward to meeting some of you there later this month.

I attended the School's Prize-Giving ceremony at Guildhall last week, which was a splendid occasion in a marvellous setting. It was great to see some of last year's leavers with whom I have become acquainted, return to receive their prizes from Old Cit Lord Levene, who was standing in for the Lord Mayor.

The careers workshops are now over for this academic year - the engineering workshop took place last week - so thanks to all of you who participated and shared the wealth of your knowledge and experience with our boys. A number have come back to me asking to be put in touch with Old Cits for work experience placements.

I am thoroughly enjoying my role on The Citizen, the School's weekly newspaper, particularly the interaction with boys at the Friday editorial meeting. There are some real characters among the group of reporters and editors, and I always come away from the meeting with a smile on my face.

Having taken on the additional responsibility of being Deputy Editor of the School's weekly newspaper, The Citizen, a few weeks ago, I am at last beginning to feel part of the School rather than being in limbo-land some where between current and former pupils. There are many knock-on advantages of this for my current ARO role- such as becoming more aware of what is going on at CLS so that I can identify any areas where alumni could be of assistance or activities that Old Cits might like to read about in The Gazette.

An added advantage is having to use the desktop publishing software on a daily basis, which should make laying out The Gazette next year very much easier than originally anticipated.

This week I attended the inaugural meeting of the 'CLS25' group of teachers and support staff tasked with coming up with ideas for celebrating CLS's 25th anniversary of moving to its current premises, in 2012. Coincidentally that year also falls 175 years after the opening of the original school at Milk Street, according to Old Cit, former teacher and School archivist, Terry Heard. 

As well as the mandatory Royal visit (CLS was opened in 1987 by Princess Anne) other potential activities planned include an invitation to all Old Cits to tour the 'new' school and assemble for refreshments and an address by the Headmaster in the Great Hall, the publication of a commemorative book providing an easy-to-read outline history of CLS, and 25th anniversary themed events throughout the year.

Last week saw the first of four careers workshops for 5th and 6th formers, attended by Old Cits. Medicine was the career choice in quesion and I am pleased to report that a total of 10 Old Cits participated in the workshop, ranging from undergraduates still studying at university to established consultants and specialists in their field. Topics of discussion included the merits or otherwise of spending an initial three years studying a primarily theory-based course, such as that offered by Cambridge, as opposed to a much more ‘hands-on’ course provided by some of the London teaching hospitals where students come into contact with patients in their first few months of study.

I'm pleased to say that you can now view videos of four Old Cits talking about their school days, in the members' area of this website, and there are another four in the pipeline. Spanning the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the range of topics covered has been quite varied, and the personal reflections combined with anecdotes make interesting listening. Copies of the videos will be retained in the School's archives for posterity. 

This video project prompted some of you to produce photos and artifacts from your school days, some of which will be appearing in The Rogues Gallery and/or kept in the School's archives. Many thanks to all of you who have sent in photos and participated in the videos.

As the school year swings into action, the first JCC/School collaborative activities we have lined up are the careers workshops, which take place in October and November. Planning is also well underway for professional gatherings of Old Cits, including undergraduates and CLS sixth formers for the Spring term.

Mindful of the 200+ Old Cits and guests we would like to see filling the Great Hall at the old school on 24 March 2011 for the JCC Annual Dinner, we are holding year group reunions in the Autumn and Summer terms only. Please keep an eye on the events page of this website for details.

Well, after a few false starts, several terse emails to our website/database support teams, and hundreds of emails waiting to greet me after my week's annual leave, we finally seem to have the members' area of the website working - we think! Alan Willis has been a star, responding to Old Cits in my absence and dealing with our database developers. Over 400 of you have managed to log on and change or check the details we have for you on file and hopefully many more of you will follow suit and give it a go. You can also search the database via the Members' Area as well as look at old photos in the Rogues' Gallery and listen to the first of our video memoirs from Old Cits.

All is quiet in the School now that the teachers and pupils have disappeared on their summer holidays, and every day is a 'dress down' day, which is a boon for someone like me who cycles in to work.

Thanks go to those Old Cits who've agreed to participate in our video project. I now have six of you whose reminiscences about old school days and events from your lives, will be recorded for posterity over the coming weeks. I have also had some response to my email to leavers from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, asking for contact details of 'lost' Old Cits - please keep them coming in. I shall be repeating this exercise with 1970s/80s leavers in due course.

Our Web Connect facility on this website is due to go live next week, allowing Old Cits to update their details online. Bear with me while I issue usernames and passwords to all of you who are contactable over the next week or so.

Our newest blogger, Jake Pittman, a recent sixth form leaver, introduces himself on the travel blog page, so please take a look, and Gary Griffin's last blog of this school year is also well worth a read.

We're planning three year-group reunions next school term, starting with the 1990 leavers' 20th anniversary dinner in October - details will follow on the events page. And don't forget to mark 24 March 2011 in your diaries when the Annual Dinner returns to the Old School.

Last Thursday's (10 June) CLS Bursary Trust Fund Gala Dinner is over for another two years and having been heavily involved in the event's organisation, I can breathe a sigh of relief that all seemed to go well and judging by the feedback so far, everyone enjoyed themselves.

The Dinner raised a fantastic six-figure sum  - almost three times that of the 2008 Dinner, so I'm told - which will pay for a number of Bursary boys to go through the school. Many thanks to everyone who supported, donated, attended and otherwise assisted at the dinner, including teachers, pupils, Old Cits, parents, past and present, and of course guests. A special thanks to Sam and Michael Akinfala and Bernard Silverman, all former pupils and bursary boys, who kindly agreed to speak at the Dinner.

Tonight's reunion of 2000-2003 CLS leavers is the last event of its type this school year and we are anticipating more than 60 Old Cits to attend. Watch out for the photos in the gatherings section of this website, over the next week or so.

The School summer holidays are approaching, which is when I have time to take stock and plan next school year's events, continue updating the database and hopefully visit some of you to record your memoirs on video for the archives. Any Old Cits who would like a visit for this purpose, please give me a call or send an email.

I just wanted to say a big thank you and welcome back to the 50-60+ Old Citizens who have contacted me recently with their email addresses and other details, following my Friends Reunited message I sent out yesterday. I am delighted with the response and hopefully will receive more emails over the coming days.

Apologies if some of you thought you'd missed a reunion - the only way I could get round the extremely time-consuming exercise of sending 2,886 of you individual messages on Friends Reunited was to use the reunion messaging system - and it seems to have worked!

Last weekend I attended the annual conference of AROPS, the Association of Representatives of Old Pupils' Societies, hosted by Dean Close School in Cheltenham. I was one of about 100 AROs at the conference, which proved a great opportunity to exchange ideas and do some informal benchmarking. I'm pleased to report that we are probably among the more enlightened alumni associations, in terms of the quality and breadth of communications channels we use, although there is always room for improvement.

This week I sat down with Terry Heard, the School's archivist, to go through some basic training on how to use our second Donor Strategy database, for capturing data about deceased Old Citizens. Terry entered data relating to the first few of an estimated 20,000 individuals, so he has his work cut out for him!

It looks like we may soon have a gathering of Old Cits in New York, as David Dwek is trying to organise a get-together of our estimated 15+ OCs in the Big Apple.

The School's Bursary Trust Dinner at Tate Modern looms large, so I have been putting my (basic) design skills to good use producing 'scrolls', personalised menu cards and table plans for this event, which looks set to raise a signifcant sum to fund a number of bursary boys through the School.

Very many thanks to all those Old Cits who responded to my request for work experience/placement opportunities for our sixth formers this summer. I received 12 responses, all of which have been passed on to our Head of Careers, who has notified all of our sixth formers.  

The latter are very much in our thoughts at the moment in the build up to the 'A' level examinations.  It was interesting sitting in on an advice session given to sixth formers by three undergraduate and one postgradaute Oxbridge Old Cits last week. Simon Hodge, Tom Morley, Rob Leadbetter and Alex Reut-Hobbs all came in to School to offer the benefit of their experience studying History, Medicine, English and Classics respectively at Oxford and Cambridge.

Questions ranged from 'Do you enjoy university?' and 'What's the most difficult part of the application process?' to 'Is studying at university like a beefed-up version of 'A levels or very different?' and 'How much are they looking for you the person as opposed to you the scholar?', among others. Many thanks to Simon, Tom, Rob and Alex for their time and words of wisdom.

   

Once the exams are over, in July, eight upper and lower sixth form pupils, accompanied by two teachers, are cycling the 420 miles from London to Edinburgh for the School's Malaika Kids charity appeal, which aims to help orphans in Tanzania. Please support our boys by donating via www.bmycharity.com/CLScycle. The boys will wear corporate sponsors' logos on their jerseys.

I also attended the 1972/3/4 leavers' reunion last week, organised by Nigel Primmer and Koolesh Shah, at Hotel Indigo, Paddington (see photos in gatherings). We only managed to attract about 20 Old Cits across the three year groups, partly due to the absence of contact details for many former pupils from that era. On that note, I am having some success contacting 'missing' Old Cits via Friends Reunited. It is a laborious process as I have to send a message to each person individually, which is very 'clunky' using this site, and I am regularly blocked temporarily for sending too many messages! It is worth it, however, and I have received lots of nice messages from Old Cits saying how pleased they are for someone to have got in touch with them again.

Refreshed from a week's holiday in glorious Pembrokeshire I am pleased to say I am back in harness at ARO headquarters in sunny London. Easing my way back into the working week was my full email inbox, which I spent most of the morning going through and responding to various requests. Communications were as varied as usual, including one from a Canadian Old Cit coming over in May with the Canadian National Rugby 7s, who would like to get in touch with any of his former classmates who left CLS in 1972. Another was from a second year undergraduate Old Cit seeking a summer placement in the oil, gas or utilities sectors.

My treat for the afternoon was having a chance to visit what remains of the old City of London School, along the river just the other side of Blackfriars Bridge. The grand entrance and lobby with his sweeping staircase remain, along with the magnificent Great Hall upstairs and the library, headmaster's office and various other smaller rooms downstairs.  We are hoping to obtain permission from the current occupiers, JP Morgan, to hold some events there in the future.

This week all Old Cits on email should receive a slightly revamped version of our regular alumni communication, the graphic elements of which will look very familiar as our database has resolutely refused to accept all my attempts to redesign the template, throwing out an unformatted mess of text. All comments on the more e-newsletter like content are most welcome.

A 'very good event and definitely worth repeating every year!' is how one Old Citizen described last week's social evening at Mahiki nightclub, attended by well over 100 OCs and guests. Well done to Isaac Livne, Sam Spring and Tim Levene, who organised the event, which attracted largely positive feedback. It was the first JCC event ever attended by some OCs, so the choice of venue clearly worked in drawing in those who have previously not engaged with the JCC.

I was scheduled to attend the Senior Prefects Dinner at school that same night but in the interests of social responsibility I stayed away to avoid infecting everyone with my cold virus. I did ask Nigel Baglin, the School's Head of Careers, to take some photos for me, however, some of which you can see here:

  

   

These are among the first of many photos I hope to post on the CLS Class of 2010 Facebook fan page, which I'm pleased to say now has a following of over 90 upper sixth formers, as well as an administrator from the upper sixth.

Following my appeal to sixth formers via 'The Citizen' newsletter, to come and see me if they were looking for work experience or gap year placements, a number of pupils have paid me a visit and I hope to find something suitable for them with a little help from our Old Citizens.

The School was buzzing with activity yesterday as the annual CCF parade and inspection day swung into action. As well as the parade itself, there were demonstrations on the concourse and in the courtyard of various CCF-related activities such as map-reading, camouflage, life-saving techniques, among many others. 

           

        

In the afternoon I went to see the matinee performance of 'The Winslow Boy' which was, as always, very professionally produced with some great acting and tasty themed interval refreshments of cucumber and salmon sandwiches and cakes.

        

         

Following a successful Annual Dinner at the House of Lords last week, I have been looking into a change of venue for next year's event. The venue we have booked is Armoury House, a splendid, historic building in the City, with an oak-panelled Long Room looking out on to its own grounds.

Our social event at bar and nightclub, Mahiki, takes place next week and I have been busy compiling the list of almost 100 Old Cits (and still counting) who are coming along. The organisation of this event has been left to our younger JCC committee members and I am quite relieved that my presence will not be required (I can't remember the last time I was in a nightclub!). As it is, I shall be going to the senior sixth form prefects black-tie dinner at the School that evening.

I've had a mixed bag of alumni requests over the past few weeks including one from an recent Old Cit's father looking for a JCC contact in India where his son is teaching cello at a music school near Calcutta, and assistance with a 1973 leavers' gathering being organised by another Old Cit.

The fledgling JCC entrepreneurs club, instigated by Simon Cummin, now has more than 70 potential members and the first 'under-40s' Old Cits social gathering is scheduled to take place later this month. I've received lots of positive feedback from last week's creative industries gathering, despite not as many undergraduate OCs turning up as hoped. Thrill of the week for me was meeting and having a quick chat with Michael Apted, Old Cit and well-known movie director.

        

On the sporting front I had my first taste of fencing as a spectator and photographer at a match between Old Cits and current boys, which will be featured in the next issue of The Gazette. 

Yesterday's gathering of Old Citizens in the finance profession saw OC undergraduates from as far afield as Durham coming together for the evening to network with former pupils already established in the finance sector. More than 50 OCs attended the event and, judging by the feedback, the evening was a success. 

All of the undergraduates I spoke to were really pleased to have been given the opportunity to make contacts from within the School's alumni who could one day make the difference in helping them secure gainful employment in their chosen sector. The established OCs found the evening worthwhile as it gave them an opportunity to see the school and teachers again or, in some cases, for the first time, as well as enabling them to give the benefit of their experience to our younger OCs.

Our next professional gathering is for OCs in the creative industries on 25 February, which I imagine may have a slightly different feel to it but which, hopefully, will be equally successful.

A new decade has dawned and I am looking forward to a busy 12 months when hopefully the development of alumni relations at CLS will continue to move onwards and upwards. I was greeted by hundreds of emails on my return to work, most of which were positive, relating to forthcoming events, new contact details, or enquiries about getting in touch with former class mates.

Some of the new ideas I touched on in my 7 December blog have already come to fruition, with the introduction of a blog by the School's Second Master, Gary Griffin, which will give Old Cits a flavour of what is happening in the School. Next on my list is setting up groups for at least some of our main OC professional groupings on the LinkedIn networking site.

As promised, I did set up an experimental YouTube channel to give OCs an idea of what CLS OC 'talking head' videos might look like, the idea being simply to use the YouTube video footage on our own JCC site, as it allows us to stream the video straight from the website. A few OCs have already said they would be happy to either be videod or provide video footage taken by family or friends of them talking about their school days or other incidents which might be of interest to other OCs.

If anyone would like to be recorded on film for posterity and the JCC archives, please email me at aro@jcc.org.uk, giving me an idea of what you'd like to talk about. I plan to do most of these over the quieter summer months.