40s and 50s Memories
1972 I set up a UK company for a Swiss
leadership training group and became CEO.
This was a small but elite company which
was very successful in training IT personnel,
and management cadres in pharmaceutical,
chemical and electronics companies, to the
extent of winning numerous awards from the
Swiss parent group. I remained engaged in this
fascinating and demanding work until I retired
in l992.
During the subsequent years of retirement, we
moved to Sheffield Park in East Sussex. I spent
eight years on the board of our community
freehold company, five years as Chairman; but
now have once again retired!
We enjoy the company of our three sons, their
wives and our seven grandchildren. I occupy
myself with golf, gardening, and carpentry, and
we also ensure the house remains standing and
is well painted inside and outside! Languages
remain a continuing interest, French, German
and Spanish, the last mentioned being
particularly relevant as we spend four months
of each year in Mallorca, where we have an
apartment looking over the Bay of Palma. We
attend our local churches in Sussex and Spain
and are involved in regular Church duties.
M. R. GARRETT
King Alfred 1949
Malcolm Garrett began King's life in the Junior
School and moved to the Senior School,
leaving after taking his School Certificates, in
September 1949.
Of his later life he writes:
In the autumn of 1949 I entered into three years
articles with a firm of Chartered Surveyors
and Auctioneers and on completing my final
examinations I did my two years National
Service with the Royal Artillery at Larkhill.
Later, I worked briefly in East Kent and then I
joined the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food at Worcester as an Assistant Land
Commissioner.
I stayed with them working in Herefordshire,
Warwickshire and Worcestershire, until 1962,
at which point I bought a partnership in a firm
of Chartered Surveyors in Droitwich. This firm
acted on behalf of private clients.
In 1970, I sold my share in this firm and moved
to Bridgwater, where with two other surveyors,
we bought an old established firm of surveyors
and here I remained until selling the practice.
At this point I retired, although I remained a
consultant. By this time we had three sons, and
by now I have become a great-grandparent.
Retirement has given us more time for a variety
of past-times and hobbies, which include dinghy
sailing, fishing, horse racing, and, these days,
croquet, hound following and caravanning. And
with regard to memories of King's, firstly there
remains the addictive smell of the glue-pot in
the woodwork-shop behind the fives court, and
secondly, when I was sleeping out at Fullands
and having permission to have a bike, being
able to rush down to the County Ground and
watch Harold Gimlet bat.
A. J. GIBBS
Woodard 1952
Adrian Gibbs was at King's for five years where
he was a member of the choir. He was an active
member of the Scout and Rover Scout Groups
and joined the Cairngorm Expedition of 1953.
When I arrived at King's it had a most
adventurous group of young enthusiastic staff.
Science teaching was largely by experiment, as
it should be, and as I was the only sixth former
taking biology, I had the old Chapel Quadrangle
Lab to myself. The poor guy who was given
the task of teaching me HSC biology was Major
Allen, the maths teacher who also ran the
cadet force; we worked through the textbook
and learned biology together!! In the lab I
kept my collections of eggs, vertebrate brains
and parasitic worms, together with aquaria, a
mouse colony, an observation bee hive and the
6th form liqueur factory - Boris Wilson said my
absinthe was excellent - although, as my liver
introduced me to teetotalism by the age of 50,
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