The School

Mary Hare Grammar School is - and has always been - the only grammar school for deaf people in the United Kingdom. When I was there, in the years 1969 to 1976, it consisted of a secondary school based at Arlington Manor near Newbury, Berkshire; nowadays it also caters for primary education at another site in the area, while the Arlington Manor site itself has expanded considerably. For more information, please visit the official Mary Hare website. For a brief history of the school, see Tilak Ratnanather's Mary Hare page; a more detailed retrospective can be found at Kreb's Mary Hare History site, which also hosts an excellent forum for ex-pupils and staff members.

The Weblog (this site)

Thanks to the magpie-like nature of both my parents and myself, I have in my possession a large quantity of written, photographic and other material relating to my school years. Knowing that I had such a wealth of material to draw upon, for many years I have toyed with the idea of writing a book about my time at Mary Hare. However, I have always concluded that the likely readership would be too small in number to make it worth the effort and expenditure. Books have indeed been written about the school, such as Anthony Boyce and Elaine Lavery's excellent Through Eyes Not Ears (ISBN 1-902427-20-3), but their remit is generally much broader than the mere seven-year window I am able to provide.

A few years ago, I became aware of web logs (or "blogs" as we usually refer to them); what caught my interest particularly was an attempt to publish the diaries of Samuel Pepys in blog form (see here). Not only does this contain the writings of Pepys, but it also displays background articles and contributions from readers, which serve to make the whole enterprise much richer and more informative. I was immediately taken with the idea of creating a "historical" blog based on my Mary Hare material, plus (hopefully) contributions from other people connected with the school.

Now I have finally summoned up enough motivation to do the necessary research into blogging, to buy myself a web domain (bigwool.org.uk), and to start typing. I apologize for any factual errors - not only is my memory imperfect, but you can be sure that I was just plain wrong about many things at the time I wrote those letters! I also apologize for the style of the writing. Please bear in mind that my letters at that time were the childish scribblings of a small boy (whereas my recent efforts are the childish scribblings of a middle-aged man...).

In passing, I would like to pay tribute and give thanks to my late parents and brother, whose own letters are used here to provide another perspective to this story. Reading these letters again, I feel their loss more keenly than ever.

If you haven't already done so, I recommend that you read the Frequently Asked Questions page; hopefully it will answer your own questions before you have to ask them (if not, please ).

Anyway, here it is, for better or worse: a genuine snapshot of "bottom up" history, straight from the horse's mouth. Hopefully, with comments and contributions from other people, it will become a living resource, gradually building up to a fuller picture.

Q: Can anyone access this site?
A: For all sorts of reasons, it is restricted to people with some connection to Mary Hare Grammar School, particularly alumni and staff members (past and present). If this includes you, please read on...

Q: How can I sign up for a Reader Account?
A: By clicking on "Create an Account" (look at the left hand side of the screen; it's under the Login section). Then simply follow the instructions. The Display Name can be anything you like. The email address you supply should be a valid one, as you will be sent an email (usually straight away) containing a web link to click on to complete the registration process. The password, of course, is confidential (I can't see it), so choose whatever you like. As for the Username, again it's up to you, but if you subscribe to the Mary Hare History Forum it would be helpful for me if you could use the same username here as you do for the forum - this helps me to identify genuine alumni or staff members from Mary Hare, and thus helps me to keep the spammers out. Please note that you will not be able to access the site straight away, because after you create the account I have to manually activate it; if I am not at my computer, I obviously can't do this, so it may be a while before I get around to it!

Q: I'm having problems getting a Reader Account. Help!
A: Please .

Q: OK, I've got a Reader Account. How do I log in?
A: Where it says "Login" at the left hand side of this page, enter your User name and Password, and click the Login button. If you click the "Remember me" box, you won't have to do this every time you visit this site.

Q: I'm in! Where on earth do I start?
A: If you carry on and read the rest of these questions and answers first, it should start to make sense. If you just want to get started at the beginning (September 1957, when I was born), please click here. (You must be logged in for this to work!)

Q: How do I find my way around?
A: The posts are ordered by year and month. To locate a month, just follow these steps:

1. At the left of the screen are some yellow folder icons. Click on the words "Mary Hare Diary" next to one of these icons. A list of years will be displayed.
2. Click on the year you require. A list of months will be displayed.
3. Click on the month you require. The posts for that month are now displayed (in reverse order, with the oldest at the bottom of the page).

Q: Why are the posts in reverse order, with the more recent ones at the top?
A: Because that's the way blogs are meant to be read. They are essentially a journal, with new entries being added frequently. People logging in each day to read the latest post don't want to have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find it. It's a right pain wading through months of posts when you first arrive, but once you've caught up it'll make more sense.

Q: What's a blog?
A: It's short for "web log". It's like a journal or diary, and people use them for all kinds of things, such as keeping friends and family up to date with their activities, or for sharing their thoughts about their favourite footie team, etc. In this case, it's just my way of telling the story of my years at Mary Hare.

Q: What does "Search" do?
A: You can use this to find all posts containing a certain word or phrase. For example, if you enter "Christmas" into the white box and click on "Go", the page will display a list of all the posts containing the word "Christmas".

Q: How can I submit comments to a post?
A: By clicking on "Leave Comment" beneath the post in question. You must be logged in to do this.

This blog wouldn't have been possible if my parents hadn't kept all the letters that passed between us during my years at Mary Hare; these letters form the framework around which all the other material can be put in place. If you're watching: thanks, Mum and Dad! Thanks, too, for writing to me in the first place (this includes my brothers, Jonathan and Philip, and various other correspondents). I certainly appreciated your letters all those years ago, and now I'm appreciating them all over again.

Thanks, Dad, for writing and keeping your diaries, which also play a large part in telling the story.

Thanks are also due, of course, to all who took part in the story itself. I may not have got along with all of you, and (obviously) didn't mix with everyone who was there (we tend to form friendships mostly with people our own age, after all), but you all added to the atmosphere of that unique institution.

Finally, a big thank you to all the inhabitants of the Mary Hare History Forum. Your reminiscences are reminding me of events I'd long forgotten about, and informing me of things of which I was never aware in the first place. Cheers, guys!