1 Place: 2 Perspectives

The Warden

Among the many ways I imagined I might start my time as Warden of Glenalmond, I had never imagined the current circumstances or entertained the possibility that I would be headmaster to a school in absentia. Recent weeks have certainly required much agility as schools and, indeed, wider society have responded to the Coronavirus as well as the restrictions rightly put in place to prevent its wider spread and protect the welfare and well-being of those whom we love and care for. While we are fortunate to be on holiday, we are all undergoing various restrictions to our normal way of life and some of these are doubtlessly unpalatable, but like the peach-flavoured penicillin of my childhood are destined to do us good. The social-distancing measures we are currently experiencing do encourage us to consider two things: first, the different ways in which we occupy our time when not at work – the long-neglected novel, the chores left undone which ought to have been done, music practice, yoga, or even P.E. with Joe [if you are yet to discover the home workout, do give it a try!]. The second, and perhaps more important, is to remember that for most of us the sense of incarceration we feel is a fiction created by our own imagination and that our response to the current restrictions, just as anything else we cannot change in our lives, can be modified by our attitude – or, as Viktor Frankl said of the worst conceivable circumstances, ‘everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way’. Adopting a positive attitude is the very least that we can all do while others face much harder tasks.

I trust that wherever you are that you and your families are safe and well, and that you are enjoying your time together.

MPA

The Dog

If dogs could talk …

Man’s best friend but as any archididascalian companion will tell you, I and my ilk are, in fact, a headmaster’s – or Warden’s as he now insists on calling himself – greatest vulnerability. The perfect embodiment of the steadfast, disciplined, and loving quadruped complements any introduction, but in a single whiff of the air, I can be an obdurate miscreant who delights in a random act of disobedience [a.k.a. the RAD], ideally timed for the greatest public embarrassment, notably his and not mine.

My new environment looks pretty exciting, a veritable paradise for the knee-high plodder. Well-manicured lawns, luscious wide-open spaces with oodles of clean air, and a good representation from the mammalian classes – smelly things with pointy heads [‘leave it’], a few of the little jumpy things [unworthy of a response], and some little red fellows with bushy tails [‘LEAVE IT’], but my swag tally so far encompasses 8 tennis balls, 5 lacrosse balls, 3 golf balls, and rugby ball x 1 [deflated]. All in all, a promising start but desperately need an audience [see above].

Angus