Caught in the act: The OBA’s hon secretary Chris Laming snaffles some carbs at a lunch stop during the Demelza 101, a charity cycle ride from Sittingbourne to Paris in aid of the Sittingbourne based Demelza Hospice Care for Children charity. One hundred riders took part for the one cause and between them raised more than £200,000.
We have been contacted by James (Jim) Connelly, who now lives in Canada, asking for anyone who remembers him to get in touch. He says "Greetings from Canada. I was briefly a pupil at BGS (Form 1 East) in 1953-54 before my family moved away. Like many in the school in those days, I travelled each day by train from Sheerness, a journey which yielded immense scope for mischief of various sorts. If anyone from those days remembers me, I would be delighted to hear from them." If you would like to get in touch with James, please email him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Graham Barnes mentioned the journey from the Island to school at the 2011 Annual Dinner - see a transcript of his speech starting on page 15 of the 2011 Website Digest. If you would like to share your stories of the journey to and from the island, send them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
We have again produced an easily accessible and printable copy of all the articles posted on the website over the past year, similar to the Maroon, which was discontinued in 2009. It includes all material suitable for printed format from January 2013 to December 2013. To access the digest, click this link: Website Digest 2013
David Palmer
OBA Website
The OBA Website team are well aware that there are no facilities available to notify our regular site visitors of new postings on the site or details of any planned (or unplanned!!) website downtime. To address this, we will be providing such a facility in the New Year. We will be keeping this simple – you register your name, email address and the type of information you would like to receive and we will send an email to you when appropriate!
I think I should start by making it clear that what follows is not necessarily the official view of the Association but the thoughts of just one very, very Old Boy.
In trying to answer the question, my first instinct was to draw up a list of the benefits that any Old Bordenian can get from Membership of the Association, but in some ways to do this is to miss the point. I found myself returning to that old President John F. Kennedy exhortation : “Ask not what your Country can do for you. Ask instead what you can do for your Country”. The fact is that the tangible advantages are somewhat vague or insubstantial, and at the end of the day the Association exists as much for the benefit of the School as for its Members.
To ensure access to articles / posts from the old OBA website, I have added the Website Digests for 2009, 2010 and 2011 here - the 2012 edition has already been published on the website. To access the Digests, click the relevant link below.
David Palmer
OBA Website
Now that the Website has continued its evolution by becoming firmly attached to the school website, it seemed a good time to remind Old Boys of how our news used to be distributed by way of the Maroon.
This article by Charles Harris appeared in the 1968 Maroon. Charles was a printer in Sittingbourne and a keen supporter of the Old Bordenians as his article explains. Always one to offer advice on how to put the world to rights, Charles also kept the rest of the Committee on their toes with his deadlines for printing the Maroon. Without Charles and the line of excellent editors that produced the Maroon, news and information about Old Boys would just not have been produced.
Now of course we have moved forward, perhaps at our own pace, but we can distribute news instantly around the world on the website. Costs compared to printing the Maroon are minimal, so that means that a greater proportion of Old Boys' subscriptions can be passed to the school for suitable projects.
Any news media needs articles, information and news, so please support your website by putting fingers to keyboards and pressing the "Send" button.
Peter Lusted
We have again produced an easily accessible and printable copy of all the articles posted on the website over the past year, similar to the now discontinued annual publication – the Maroon. It includes all material suitable for printed format from January 2012 to December 2012. To access the digest, click this link: Website_Digest_2012_v1.0.pdf.
David Palmer
OBA Website