JANUARY 2015 £5? INSTALMENT I THOMAS C. WHITE

A YEAR SPENT ABROAD,being detailed in twelve instalments over the course of 2015.

Shalom!, and welcome to the official and definitive newsletter of my “gap yah” of 2015. !!! Being something of an antiquated soul, instead of the Facebook or a blog, I have decided to keep friends and family and friends of family and whomever else updated with my goings-on through the use of a newsletter, the distribution of which is made wildly easier (and cheaper) by use of the internet. So, apologies for not being able to send a physical copy, but hopefully this will do. This publication will detail my gap year in England and elsewhere in Europe in twelve instalments. I hope that you enjoy reading of and seeing my adventures and travels.!!! For 2015, I am and will be based at the school at which I am working, Twyford School, the address of which is detailed above. If you ever want to get in touch, that would be awesome, and a letter should be sent to the above address (along with my name!). Otherwise an email to «tomwhiteafc@gmail.com» would perhaps attain a more expeditious response!!!! Hopefully this publication will eventually act as a good illustrated account of the year for me, so for any who wonder, I consider the time I spent making this time well spent. This instalment of my newsletter covers from the 6th of January to the 3rd of February; I realise I am slightly late in making this and sending it off. Thank you very much for reading my newsletter, and I hope that all is well with you and those you love.!!! ! –– Tom

TWYFORD SCHOOL, TWYFORD, WINCHESTER, HAMPSHIRE, SO21 1NW, ENGLAND

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TWYFORD SCHOOL,being one of the oldest Prep schools in Britain, perhaps the oldest.

I arrived at London Heathrow on the 6th of January at about 6:30am, and was picked up by prior arrangement by the Boarding Housemaster at Twyford School, Gregg, and the Residential Matron, Caroline. ! This year I am joined at Twyford by two Australian gappies, Georgia and Rachel, and the three of us were taken immediately along the M3 towards Southampton, turning off at Winchester, an ancient Roman city which was once the capital of England. Twyford is on the other side of the M3, and it is to there that we went. ! We were thrust immediately into proceedings, and after being shown our very nice house for the year, at 9:15am were required to sit through some staff inset day lectures. It is possible I was not entirely awake the whole time, something which surely wasn’t helped by the jet lag.

Twyford is a very nice private Prep and Pre-Prep school, with boarding facilities. It goes from ages 3-13, and has about 350 boys and girls in total. Years 4-8 go from 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday, with a half-day on Saturday followed by sport, so they have a six-day school-week, which I found pretty intense when I first arrived. ! We were shown around the school and told some of our duties, and what we would be doing each day, according to our timetables. It is quite a long and full-on day we work here, from 7am (waking up the boarders) to 9:30pm (getting the boarders to bed), with some breaks in between though. My main tasks here are helping with the boarding, making beds, helping run sports practices, assisting the matrons, and then doing whatever else we are asked to do sometimes. ! The jobs we do can be boring, and the hours tiring, but most of the kids are really cool, and the work very rewarding. And of course, I get to do these things on the other side of the world, and explore on Sundays. The holidays here are also very long, and there are a couple of breaks within the term itself at which time to go exploring further abroad.

Above: Twyford School as seen from the grounds; !Below: The Headmaster’s Study

Left: The Headmaster’s Study and “Court Cricket”;!!Right: The “Toast Rack” carpark, with the main building in the background

Twyford in relation to Southampton and London

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TWYFORD, SO21 1NW,being in Hampshire 3 miles from Winchester, 10 miles from Southampton.

Twyford Village is kind of exactly how I had expected an English village to be: small; quaint; old; and with a Post Office and a couple of pubs. Well, the Twyford / Shawford area actually has three pubs, but otherwise, it fits the bill. ! The highlight of Twyford is perhaps its post office, which the three of us gappies have very quickly taken to calling “The TPO”. It is something of a convenience shop, where it stocks a wide variety of items, acting as a Four Square (not that that reference would be understood here!) as well as a Royal Mail centre. It is very cool. ! The pub culture is strong here, and already we have been out to “The Phoenix Inn” twice for dins. The owner told us that one of the beers was for your typical “session”, where he meant some occasion when one might just spend half a day in the pub, which I find very weird and quite incredible. For those wondering, my tee-totalling has somewhat relaxed from its absolutism of a yester year! But I certainly can’t imagine myself having a “session” at the pub any time soon! ! The local train station is Shawford, and only a 15 minute walk. The station is on the line to Waterloo, which makes an excursion to London quite convenient indeed. ! There is a chapel in Twyford School, the Thursday morning services of which I attend, and there is also a beautiful mid-1800s church (Church Of England of course!) in Twyford proper, called The Church Of St Mary, which I intend to frequent. I have been a couple of times already, and it is a wondrous building, befitting more a city than little Twyford Village.

Twyford Village, with the TPO on the left and Georgia on the right

The Bridge Inn, one of three pubs in the area

The Church Of St Mary, Twyford

A view over Twyford Village, as seen from Shawford Downs

A view of the back of Twyford Village, with Twyford School grounds in the foreground

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!!TWYFORD AND SHAWFORD

The epicentre of Twyford Village, the TPO, standing proudly at the Twyford intersection. The TPO is one of our most frequently frequented spots.

In the distance might be seen Winchester, this photo being taken on a walk through Shawford Downs

The River Itchen, which flows through Winchester, pierces the gap between Shawford and Twyford

The road which goes from Twyford to Shawford, here seen with Rachel and

Georgia (left) just before the train station

One of the paths which leads from the Church Of St Mary to Twyford

proper and, naturally, the TPO

The domestic symbol for overground rail in the UK, with the station name

of Shawford

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It is a pleasure and a privilege to have the opportunity to be in such a good place this year, and a big part of that is being so near to Winchester. You may know that when a place name includes ‘-cester’ or ‘-chester’, it means that it began as a Roman army camp, the Latin word for ‘army camp’ being ‘castra’, so Winchester’s history can be traced back to Roman times. ! Since then, it has had an interesting past, notably being, at various times, the seat of William The Conqueror/Bastard, King Harold, and King Arthur. A facsimile of what might have been the Round Table hangs in the Great Hall at Winchester, which has been awesome to see. Winchester was also the capital of England for some time, and has some cool sights and a nice High Street, with some shopping. ! But perhaps the coolest thing about Winchester is its Cathedral, a huge structure which houses what is actually one of the longest nave in Europe, longer even than those of St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s! So I am very lucky with where I am to be close enough to bike (which I have done) or walk (which I have not yet) to this very cool city.

WINCHESTER,being a very old and historic city only 3 miles north from Twyford

The Great Hall at Winchester, wherein King Arthur is supposed to have held court

The ‘West Gate’, a gate from the original city wall

Another of the many beautiful churches in Winchester

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LONDON,enough being said. On a trip January 23rd – 26th.

On Friday the 23rd of January, I caught the train from Shawford to Waterloo Station (above). Only one song

was going through my mind there!

The London Eye, illuminated in red. Interestingly perhaps, due to unforeseen eventualities, when I arrived in London, at age 17, I was alone and had £4 in my pocket. Gap yah!

Westminster Abbey!, as seen from the west. Big Ben, and the Houses Of Parliament!

On the Tube. The London Underground was awesome. Heaps of train services––but I did have to wait

for four minutes once!––and a lot cleaner than I had expected.

I was less impressed by my hostel, but that is something I will perhaps have to get used to this year. Fortunately, a family friend very generously hosted

me for my other two nights in London.

The street of the hostel at which I stayed on Friday night, being

north-west of (and very close to) Hyde Park.

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LONDON,being the 24th of January.

Left to right from top left: Trinity Square Gardens, outside Tower Hill tube station; a tube station; St. Olave’s Church, the church of the diarist Samuel Pepys; 30 St Mary Axe, also known as ‘The Gherkin’; a market near Tower Hill; Oxford

Street; Oxford Circus underground sign; Britain’s oldest brewery, Shepherd’s Neame, with a couple of black cabs in front; below: the Shard, currently tallest building in the EU; red telephone boxes outside Hyde Park; and Hyde Park.

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TOWER OF LONDON,being the 24th of January.

A bit of old Roman wall –– a big bit.

One of the most eminent things on my checklist of things to do in England was the Tower Of London, and already have I seen it, and its awesomeness. ! It was the first actual sight I went to see in London, and is such a cool place, full of history and mystery. We had a very entertaining talk from a Yeoman Warder, who act as guards and tour guides there, and got to see the sites of not only the Crown Jewels, but also such stories as the imprisonment of Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Guy Fawkes, and the ‘Bloody Tower’, where Richard III’s nephews were kept and from where they disappeared (or as Shakespeare would have it, imprisoned and murdered).

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! LONDON,being the 25th of January, and being a tour of central London by a family friend.

Jamie, being the family friend at whose flat I stayed Saturday and Sunday nights, took me on a tour of central London on Sunday. We made our way roughly clockwise from north-east London, walking to St. Paul’s for Sunday mattins, before crossing the Thames into the South Bank, around and across the Thames again at Westminster, and making our way back to north-east London via Buckingham Palace, Harrods and Knightsbridge, Leicester Square, Soho, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery (at which place I could spend a lot longer than the two hours I was able to!), Piccadilly Circus, and Covent Garden, for a wonderful day’s exploring and seeing.

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! LONDON

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LONDON

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And being also the first time that I would spend it away from my family and Auckland. ! I spent the Saturday and Sunday nights of my Londonian adventure at a family friend, Jamie’s, flat, and on the Sunday night Jamie and his flatmates gave me a birthday cake that they had gone out and bought me especially, completely unnecessarily and wonderfully. ! My birthday (a Monday) began with a train trip to Blackfriars, at which point I walked along the Victoria Embankment, along the Thames. Making my way to Waterloo slowly, I caught the train back to Twyford and did my duties from lunchtime until the early evening, at which point I was let off, along with Georgia and Rachel and two other people my age working at Twyford School named Tim and Emily, to go to a Winchester curry restaurant for my favourite meal, after which time, in true English culture, we headed to a pub for a pint––with the others insisting I drink, and also that they pay for my first legal drink! ! I received cards and gifts from my family, and from my cousins in Yorkshire, and also from family friends in Hastings, England. I also received messages from staff and students here, and also on Facebook. And completely out-of-the-blue, I was again surprised by the thoughtfulness of others: Rachel, Georgia, Tim, and Emily had organised eighteen birthday presents for me! People I had known for only three weeks treated me out to a wonderful birthday, which was just about as good a one as I could have hoped for.

MY BIRTHDAY,being the 26th of January.

PORTSMOUTH,being a recent excursion for the sole purpose of outlet shopping.

Various sights and sites of Portsmouth Harbour. L-R from top left: Portsmouth Harbour with a restored old ship; Gunwharf Quays outlet shopping centre; and its central square; a walkway along the Harbour; Spinnaker Tower, an

observation tower to return to at a later date; and what must surely be a typical vista of an English seaside town.

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! SNOW,being, of course, a wonderful, wonderful, thing.

But after waiting with bated (and frosted) breath for a couple of weeks, yearning for snow and having received several frosted mornings, and having wanted for it to snow so badly, as I have never lived in a place where it has snowed before, to have actually gotten snow was awesome, although these Brits here couldn’t quite understand why we were making such a big fuss about it!

The delight I felt when I opened the door of our house and saw that it had snowed in the night is ineffable, and perhaps the best way to show is through photos.

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I had two snowball fights that day, the first being with Georgia on the Twyford School fields. The second one, at the Pre-Prep, in which about 30 Pre-Prep kids of ages 5-7 ganged up on me, all throwing snowballs while I ran around trying to escape the sheep, truly was the single-best highlight of my year so far. It lasted only about ten minutes, but I felt like a 7-year-old again, having a snowball fight at school, and I thought it was brilliant.

SNOW

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JANUARY 2015

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