Development Office

Whether you have made the transition to Old Churcherian, are a Churcher’s parent, a former member of staff or a friend of the school in another capacity, the Development Office exists to connect the school community and to encourage a longlasting relationship with Churcher’s.

Despite disrupting our best laid plans, the pandemic has also highlighted the importance and potential of a network of Churcherians, the school, family and friends.

2021 will be a very busy year for us as we develop new initiatives and start to fast-track our plans for the 300th anniversary in 2022, which promises to be hugely exciting celebrations for all of us connected to Churcher’s.

Mr N Smith

Events Even though the traditional events calendar was cut in half, there was a great turn-out at those that did take place from all generations of OCs, former staff and other friends and supporters of Churcher’s.

HHH Drinks On a fine September evening, the Headmaster welcomed back recent leavers to drinks in the garden of Heath Harrison House. OCs from 2017, 18 and 19 took advantage of the annual event to catch up with each other and staff and share their stories. Always a popular event, the sun was shining before everyone disappeared off to university and gap year projects. 1722 Society Christmas Lunch Members of the 1722 Society, who have pledged a gift in their will towards the Richard Churcher Foundation, and their guests, gathered in the Assembly Hall at the College on 10 December for a Christmas lunch where they were joined by current Upper Sixth students and entertained with some fabulous piano playing by A Level Music student, Gus Tranter. It was a great way to kick off the festive season and a chance for our legators to reminisce and compare stories of Churcher’s with their Sixth Form hosts. Stay in touch To stay in touch with Churcher’s please update your contact details and communications preferences at www. community.churcherscollege.com.

You can also contact the Development Office at any time – community@ churcherscollege.com / 01730 236 833.

Old Churcherians in Lockdown

Katie Strick (11) – Petersfield

Staff writer at the Evening Standard, Katie writes daily features for the newspaper’s Life & Arts pages and regularly contributes to the comment pages as a columnist.

Around Christmas, my mother announced she was taking my childhood desk to the charity shop. It’s a happy twist of fate that she never got round to it. Little did either of us know that weeks later I’d be moving home for an extended summer holiday, but when lockdown was announced in March, I knew where I’d be spending it. My flatmates were away and I’m bad enough at a morning home alone, let alone weeks, so I fled the Big Smoke for leafy Hampshire and did what I’d prided myself on avoiding since graduation: I moved back in with the parents. Like most people privileged enough to have a family home to retreat to, my fourteen weeks at home felt like a strange throwback to study leave. My sister and I dug out the toastie maker we lived off during revision; my parents asked about deadlines over dinner; my Churcher’s mates stopped by to coax me out on walks. Talk of brunch spots and Tube delays were replaced with farm shops, Strava segments and reminiscing about prepandemic results days. At home, apparently I turned into my parents: within the family, we experienced a strange kind of role reversal. “It’s like a hotel!” my mother would rejoice as I called my parents to dinner and told them it’s rude to be on their phones at the table. They binged Normal People past midnight one week (I went to bed at nine) and it seems every day is a lie-in now they no longer commute. Of course, there were frustrations with moving to the countryside. The NHS clap was a lot quieter when houses are more than two metres apart; you couldn’t swing by the pub for a takeaway cocktail; and popping to the shops under London’s great cover of anonymity was impossible. Apparently half my mother’s book club moved into Lidl for lockdown. That said, I was in no rush to get back to my top-floor flat in London. Funnily enough, you don’t crave the gym when you can work out in a big garden, and it’s hard to miss Pret when there’s free food on the table. In fact, my Monzo account has never looked healthier. I’m back in London now and grateful to have a taste of my pre-lockdown life again, but I’ll always look back at those fourteen weeks with a fondness for the family time we had and the freedom of the countryside. Never did my Churcher’s gang think we’d return to the days of picnics on Petersfield Heath and retracing old D of E walks on the South Downs. My teenage self would probably have hated me for saying this, but moving back in with the parents really isn’t so bad after all. Twitter: @katie_strick

Emily Robins (08) – Australia

Senior Registrar, Accident & Emergency Dept. Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth, Western Australia.

I work in a large inner city hospital in Perth, Western Australia which is one of the most remote cities in the world. This isolation has given Perth an inherent advantage in regards to the global pandemic. The Australian international border was closed midMarch with the Western Australian state border following shortly after, on 6 April.

As with everywhere in the world, the initial fear of the unknown surrounding COVID led to an immense amount of learning, preparation and training being crammed into a very short period of time. There was a feeling of ‘the calm before the storm’ as we nervously watched what was happening elsewhere in the world. In the beginning, as with the rest of the world, we had an initial rise in cases. This was short lived and we have not had the number of cases to the same degree as other places. There are a huge number of healthcare workers from the UK living and working in Perth with many having overriding feelings of helplessness, uselessness and guilt after our initial rise in case numbers had declined. It was horrible watching what was unfolding back in the UK but being powerless to help from so far away. A lot of people felt that their skills could have been better used elsewhere in the world. As WA has remained closed off and Australia has remained divided by state lines, life locally is effectively back to normal; national and international life and relations remain strange and fragmented. Although I am very grateful that I am fortunate enough to live somewhere that has been far less damaged by COVID, I feel guilty that I have been able to get back to living my life normally whilst people have been so badly affected back at home and am in admiration of the hard work of the NHS staff and all that they have done and continue to do.