The School House by the Lew

It’s been at best a silly week where the world has turned a bit unbelievable.

Maybe a good time to remember my old school, Skinners’ which I visited a few weeks ago during Heritage Weekend.

I am sure that this is a really good school these days, but when I went there, after a couple of years of finding it enormously stressful, I settled into seeing it, like Monty Python’s Camelot as “A silly place,” stuck in a comically misunderstood vision of a 19th century public school.

Most ludicrous of all was the school song which we had to sing without laughing at risk of a detention. Written by the immortal Cuthbert H Cronk, it contained the line quoted in my title along with so many letter Ssses that we would also risk the anger of the headmaster by lingering on them endlesssssssly

Do they still sing this, I wonder?

Now hands about, good Leopards all,

And sing a rousing chorus,

In praise of all our comrades here

And those who went before us;

For to this lay all hearts beat true,

The gallant hearts that love us,

So fortune ‘fend each absent friend

While there’s a sun above us.

Chorus

Sing Leopards Sing (Breathe)

Floreat Sodalitas.

Little matter, well or ill,

Sentiment is more than skill,

Sing together with a will

Floreat Sodalitas,

‘dalitas Pardorum.

The ivy climbs by brick and stone

About the buttressed Hall;

So memory weaves a charm to keep

Her servitors in thrall.

And whiskered leopards think with awe

Of Bab-el-Mandeb’s Straits

Where in the days of long ago

They wrestled with the fates.

(Chorus)

Then here’s a toast before we part,

“The School House By The Lew”

And may its friends be stout of heart,

Its enemies be few

So we will pledge our noble selves

To use our best endeavour,

That while the merry world goes round

The School may stand forever!