A huge THANK YOU to the Chief Pelican for so calmly and charmingly making the Friends of KHS Barn Dance such fun last week. Around 70 people enjoyed a terrific five-piece band play live music and lead us through twists, turns (a few wrong ones of those!), animal impressions whilst promenading, stars, do-si-dos all combining sufficiently aligned to create what could certainly be called dancing! A hog roast from Pyne’s was enjoyed and many supportive hands made for pretty light work. There is no doubt, however, that Donald and Bea Rice made the whole thing trip along so smoothly.
There was more live music on Wednesday when we had a visit to Chapel from Bruce Izzett and his Christian Band. They were loud and tuneful and powerful and diverse with people from Zimbabwe, different areas of the US, Canada, India as well as more locally. Bruce himself has palpable but understated presence and the sheer energy of them all was a very uplifting opening to our day.
We had no music on Monday for assembly as the piano was still hidden following the visit of the Rural Living Show over the weekend but it did not detract from a really terrific talk from Roger Neale, our Head Groundsman, about trees. We have been taking down trees and clearing bushes recently. Now everyone knows that trees are an important part of our ecology and efforts to combat carbon emissions, don’t they? Roger explained to the school that we were not doing it for fun but that the trees removed are all diseased and hence unsafe and the bushes are mainly laurel which puts toxins into the ecology and hinder other growth.
Even better, Roger went on to say that his application to the Woodland Trust for trees to plant was granted and we have 470 new trees to plant. Some – Year 3 today, in fact – will be planted by the children but all of them will have a number and be associated with a child or someone who works here. We’ll have a record of location, species and name of person. Everyone then can check on their tree over the next 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 years. We have about 7000 trees on site plus the parkland and ponds meaning we more than offset our carbon usage but we will continue to make this an agenda item not only for us operationally but in our education of the children.
Other trees that have appeared around school are in preparation for future festive fun and I see Roger’s team have also been putting up some outside lights.
There are also trees to be seen as part of the brilliant senior play as we travel to Narnia. Here, too, there is more live music with the band having a current and past member of the school in its midst as well as some excellent singing. I have peeped at snippets here and there of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe but I will witness the complete production tonight and I’m sure I will see a good many of you there.