Letters
Sid Pask remembered
Dear Jeremy, What a pleasure to read Barry Cox (1945-50) on Sid Pask (Master 1928-66) in Atrium. I was five years junior to Barry and two below the Miller/Korn/Sacks generation, but remember the young Jonathan Miller (1947-53) horsing about in the playground doing Danny Kaye impressions, and his wonderfully surreal contributions to the Colet Club’s Review with Eric Korn (1946-52) and later John Minton (1948-53). ‘A knoblick is a long stick, heavily weighted at one end with antimony, and used for hitting squirrels’. Did he ever use this line? – I remember him trying it out on us in the tuckshop. I was another of Sid’s students, and vividly recall the thrill of meeting for the first time the amazing littoral and sublittoral plants and animals at Millport, and the traditional haggis-hunt on the final day of the course, with Sid and senior students identifying haggis-nests (sheep hollows) “still warm”, and half convincing the first-timers that it was for real. I have sometimes wondered whether our generation was unusual in its habit of composing songs and verses about the masters. Probably not; but two relating to Sid perhaps merit recording. First, to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’: There’ll be no more cricket, rugby, boxing at St Paul’s There’ll be no more cricket, rugby, boxing at St Paul’s There’ll be no more cricket, rugby, boxing at St Paul’s When Sidney becomes High Man. They’ll do away with blazers, and we’ll all wear battered tweeds Etc. The concept of the unconforming, atheistic, sport-deriding Sid as High Master was gloriously absurd. And, to the tune of ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’: There is an aged schoolmaster, And starry are his eyes A bush beneath his nose he grows And stuttering through this growth he shows The right way to tell lies, The right way to tell lies. Alas, poor man, he little knows How little we believe him For how can we who hear his song Of catfish half a furlong long With s-seriousness receive him? With s-seriousness receive him? Sid, who stammered, had taken part as a student in an expedition to Lake Tanganyika, and would frequently regale us with accounts of the giant catfish to be found there. With best wishes, Robin Wootton (1950-55) Honorary Fellow (Insect Biomechanics) University of Exeter
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