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Concordia Winter 2022

The OMT Society: Past, Present, and Future I am now halfway through my year as President of the OMT Society and it is exciting to have such a close association with the school again 45 years after leaving in the summer of 1977. be true to suggest that such visits back then were for the Head Master to commend me for my academic performance.

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However, on closer inspection, it is readily apparent that the school has developed impressively, with modern facilities in the classroom, a range of excellent sporting facilities and even an indoor swimming pool. Indeed, my most recent visit to the Head Master’s office proved to be a pleasant experience. While reminiscing on my time at Sandy Lodge I should probably touch on what I have been up to in the intervening 45 years between leaving school and this year. As President of the Society, I have had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with many old (in both senses of the word) school friends. As I lived overseas for the years after leaving MTS, I had not seen many of my classmates since leaving school. At first it is hard to recognise each other, but as we have reintroduced ourselves, the years disappear and the 17-year-old that I knew becomes highly recognisable. In most cases, I am greeted with “you were the golfer”, which was indeed true at the time. While I thoroughly enjoyed my days at Sandy Lodge, my passion was golf and by the time I left the school I had represented my country at schoolboy level. In 1978 I went to the University of Texas on a golf scholarship and spent the next four years playing golf against many future

My overarching impression is how much has changed over this period and yet how much has stayed the same, both in terms of the school and in many ways the critical issues that we face in the outside world. In 1977, we were facing high inflation, a cost of-living crisis, industrial unrest, and geopolitical tensions between the western world and the then Soviet Union. In the intervening years, many of us believed or at least hoped that these were well in the past and yet 2022 has been a stark reminder that history has a way of repeating itself and that boom-and-bust cycles and wars in Europe have not been consigned to the past. In terms of Merchant Taylors’, the school in so many ways appears similar to how I remembered it in my days there from 1973 1977. One could be accused, driving down the Long Drive with the School ahead and the magnificent playing fields on the left, of believing that time had stood still. Indeed, when I went to the Head Master’s office in March to discuss my upcoming year as the incoming President of the OMT Society, the memories of my visits to the HM’s office came flooding back, and not in an entirely positive way! It would not