A good day at the school on the hill

 

 

My sporting highlight of the week? …. I spent Saturday at Pretoria Boys’ High and was, as always, blown away by the beauty of the campus. It was old boys reunion day there and I saw the place referred to as “the school on the hill” several times. It is, and it’s a spectacular hill. The buildings and grounds are sprawled across it, surrounded by forests, with ponds and wetlands dotted around. Parts of that forest have been allowed to remain the way they have always been, which is special, and if you stand down by the Astro you can see the domes and rooftops of the 100 year-old buildings peeking through the woods. It’s magical.

A school is about people more than it is about grounds and buildings, however, and those are special too. I must have been greeted by every boy there and at one stage an entire stand full of spectators stood up as I walked by – you don’t see that every day.

The cherry on top of the cake was running into old friends. I met Paul Anthony back in the early 1980s when we were masters in charge of swimming at our respective schools – we once spent a memorable day together in Cairo, of all places, when we were both in transit on our way back to South Africa on Egypt Air.

It was just a few years later that I met Paul Phipps. He was coach of the Parktown Boys’ 1^st team then. We had a great catchup on Saturday and he told me he is retiring next year after 31 years at Boys’ High!

Great grounds, great buildings, well-mannered boys, good men. I hit the highway back to Joburg at the end of the day feeling uplifted.