LIFE as head of a boarding school doesn’t allow for much spare time. Many live on site and their weekends and evenings merge into the working week. The job is all-encompassing. However, despite these restraints, most recognise the importance of carving out time for themselves. ‘When I became deputy head, I bought a set of golf clubs,’ volunteers Mark Lauder, headmaster of Strathallan School in Perthshire, ‘but when I became head, I bought a cement mixer.’ Mr Lauder grew up in a family that built things, so when he bought a 17thcentury parsonage in Cumbria, he decided to set about the renovations himself, including laying paths and repairing drystone walls. ‘Working on your own house is both an investment and therapeutic,’ he explains.
‘It’s totally different to being a headmaster. It’s more physically demanding and provides a different set of problems to solve and new practical skills to learn. It has its own rhythm and gives time to think away from the tyranny of the diary. I get to experience real learning, which sometimes includes failure,’ he adds, ‘and this reminds me what pupils contend with day to day.’
Unsurprisingly, many hobbies are physical. Ruth Sullivan, headmistress of Sherborne Girls in Dorset, describes herself as ‘the most ungainly runner’ and was once told that, when swimming, she looks like a drowning moth. This has not deterred her from taking on intense fitness challenges in the form of marathons and Iron Man events, however. Her enthusiasm is compelling, citing the atmosphere, sense of achievement and community as her drivers.
Esta historia es de la edición February 22, 2023 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición February 22, 2023 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
