The Roasting

For weeks I was on tenterhooks. I had no idea what to expect.  Everyone was tight-lipped and giving away nothing.  If I ever raised the subject with Larry Moser and Jeanette Muller about what the intended format at my farewell was, a quiet and secretive smile would play around their lips.  All very unnerving.  They did tell me that Bruce Probyn was in charge of proceedings - which did not fill me with confidence as it meant that anything could happen.

Bruce and I were sitting on stage, while the audience of parents, Old Boys and friends entered the hall accompanied by the emotive sounds of the school pipers playing Auld Lang Syne on the bagpipes. I could not help but notice that a number of folk were continually glancing in my direction and grinning.  A remark was passed to Bruce to ‘roast him well’ and then the realisation that I had been well and truly set up, struck home. 

On Stage: L-R Derrick Fine, Jan de Waal, KCR. Bruce Probym, Greg Brown, Chris Luman and Neil Crawford

Couches were arranged on stage and I was duly instructed to sit down and to keep quiet.  The right of reply was denied. During the evening, there was no shortage of roasters who gleefully dredged up dubious and totally fictitious anecdotes of past incidents. As ‘Roastmaster’ (in 1937 Russia he would have made a good prosecutor in the notorious Moscow Show Trials), Bruce jubilantly latched onto every slanderous statement urging the ‘Roasters’ (state witnesses?) to expand on what was clearly libellous. Neil Crawford, current Rector of Grey High School, who used to be numbered in the ranks of my friends, was shameless in his scurrilous and totally trumped-up fabrications which he delivered from stage.

‘It serves you right,’ he said to me later without any mortification or embarrassment. ‘It is small recompense for what you have said about me in public over the years.’

He had a point.

Bruce Probyn

Appropriately, like Caesar’s Gaul, the evening was divided into three parts, with musical light relief provided between the sessions’ relentless character assassination.  An Old Boys’ Ensemble gave a superb rendition of ‘You will Never Walk Alone’, which was negated only by the fact that it bore no relation to what was happening on stage. I was totally alone - squirming in the limelight.

Bruce introduced the first witnesses who were part of my early days of teaching – Derrick Fine and Greg Brown of my Latin classes; Chris Luman, a history pupil; Neil Crawford (an ex-friend) and Jan de Waal, both colleagues at the time.  Bruce spoilt the effect somewhat by introducing Jan de Waal, incoming Head of Wynberg, as ‘Jan le Roux’.  Alerted by audience laughter, he immediately compounded his faux-pas by lamenting that Jan hadn’t even started at Wynberg yet and he was already forgotten.

Listen to Bruce Probyn introduce the panel on SoundCloud.com

Descriptions about those early Latin classes came pouring out.  How on earth those two ever passed matric if their tales were even 10% correct, beggars belief.  Why didn’t Larry Moser ask Owen Rogers, currently a judge in the Cape High Court, to speak? He was in the audience and he would surely have acknowledged my role in his classical education.  The fact that he taught me more than I taught him is incidental to this story.

Fortunately the Roastmaster had to bring these fictional narratives to an end eventually and the school vocal ensemble restored sanity with their rendition of ‘The Man in the Mirror’ which would have pleased Rowan Algie no end as that was a theme he punted endlessly in his tenure as Headmaster of this school.

KCR and Bruce Probyn

The verbal barrage continued when Jacques Kallis, Aubrey Martyn, Andrew Wiley, Fritz Bing, Chris Hyland and Paul Revington were invited to come on stage and talk about their sporting memories in various cricket and hockey teams. Apart from Fritz, who played in the same era as WG Grace, all the others were members of sides which I had coached.

Andrew Wylie retold the story of our game against Northwood, some years back, in the Alexandra Week. We were thoroughly outplayed in this match and when Aubrey Martyn, future Protea, came in as the last batsman, he needed to play out 59 balls to save the game.  This he did competently for 57 balls and then for some inexplicable reason, he chose the 58th ball to have a go.  He struck it superbly and it sailed over the ropes.  The rest of the team cheered lustily (for what reason?  We still needed more than a hundred to win…).  I shut them up tersely – but it was too late, the adrenalin was running and the inevitable occurred. Anyone who has coached schoolboy cricket could predict what would happen next.  Aubrey repeated the shot on the 59th ball of the match.  This time the result was different.  He was clean bowled on the last ball of the match, reminiscent of Rob Drummond at Newlands in 1977.

I was on the square before Aubrey had taken two steps.  I was still remonstrating with him two hours later back in the boarding house.  Eventually Captain Andrew Wylie came to see me to tell me that Aubrey was crying on his bed. ‘Tough luck,’ I said without any sympathy. ‘He must learn to put a price on his wicket.’

The incident had a sequel though. Many years later Aubrey invited me to his wedding, held on a farm deep in the Elgin mountains. We were thoroughly lost and arrived at the wedding well after it had started.  He was standing at the altar and had a clear view of the latecomers.  He stopped the ceremony.

‘What is this, then? Late again!  What would you have said if I had come late to a cricket match?’

What goes around, comes around….

Jacques Kallis recounted the story of how things were tough back in the day. At one Cape Schools’ Week, he had just scored his 3rd duck of the week, this time against Selborne, and, by his own admission, it was a shocking shot.  What made it worse was that it was caught by Mark Boucher who, when the circumstances are right, never ceases to remind Jacques of his debut match against his old school.  Jacques’ Dad was so irritated by another lapse in concentration,  that he drove off without him, thus making the future world’s best all-rounder walk back to Lakeside.

This gives another meaning to walking when you nick it.

Paul Revington had a sheaf of notes filled with anecdotes – not all of which (fortunately) could be read out.  He told me later that he had wanted to repeat the story of what happened after one tour game in Maritzburg where I was, again, allegedly somewhat grumpy over an inept performance from the cricket team. Dennis Bowditch decided to rectify matters by putting a note on my bed, purportedly from one of the attractive young matrons in the boarding house where we were staying.  Revs maintained it worked because I was all smiles the next day.

No, Pippa, there is no vestige of truth in that story. It is entirely the product of adolescent fantasy.

I am often asked what the highlight of my teaching career has been.  There have, of course, been many – but one involves Revs himself.  In 2004, I was at home watching on TV the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games.  Revs was coach of the SA Hockey team and I beamed with pride as the hockey boys marched into the stadium behind the South African flagbearer, Mbulaeni Mulaudzi.  A few minutes later, my phone buzzed with an SMS message from Revs standing in the middle of the stadium.   ‘This  amazing experience of walking into the Olympic Stadium in South African colours is all because of Wynberg and my hockey coaches there. I will always be appreciative of where it all started for me.’

What a special moment!  To remember on an occasion like that where it all started, was quite extraordinary.

While Jacques was on stage, Charles MacGregor signalled another special moment.  A school friend from the age of six, he came on stage with the most generous presentation of a magnificent cabinet consisting of Kallis Memorabilia, which he had acquired on auction at the recent Jacques Kallis Tribute Dinner.  He said it was only right that a cabinet of such stature and importance was housed at Jacques’ Alma Mater. 

The sentimentality was soon over and the roasting continued in the last session when Shirley Harding - Principal of WGHS during my entire tenure, Barry Jessop – former Chairman of the Board of Governors and Peter van Schalkwyk, currently on the teaching staff all took up their roasting duties.

I was disappointed with Barry Jessop as I had been hoping to take advantage of his legal expertise later in order to serve writs and summonses for defamation of character on some of the roasters.  I wonder if Owen Rogers is now available to help me out in this department?  In a manner unbecoming a member of the legal fraternity, Barry proved to be a man of straw as he lowered himself to attacking me in my weak spot – my dog, Sandy. He besmirched the good name of the Head Dog as he strove for cheap laughs.  With scant regard for her advanced years and ailing alimentary constitution, he ridiculed Sandy by accusing her of disrupting important meetings by rumbling her discontent. I maintain that she had every democratic right to express in a canine way what everyone else was thinking.

Shirley Harding also went off on a tangent by repeating a long forgotten story of yesteryear when I had once asked her to pour the tea. As WGHS had emanated over a century ago from the School of Industries, I would have thought that this was a perfectly reasonable request.  It was not taken in that spirit and as she clearly cannot let go of this incident, I will not be asking her to tea again.

Of all the roasters, only Peter van Schalkwyk spoke sense. Perhaps it had something to do with an end-of-year bonus.

'Man in the Mirror' - KCR and The Portrait

The roasting ended with flattering words from the Chairman of the Old Boys’ Association, Arno Erasmus.  He thus remains on my Christmas card list as does Ryan Van der Vyfer, whose sympathetic portrait of me was unveiled by Pippa on stage.

As the applause for the portrait was dying down, my son, who was also on stage at that point, remarked, ‘Is that really you? It can’t be. You are smiling.’

This proved the point yet again - that at no stage in this job of headmastering is there ever any chance of acquiring a swollen head.