2 minute read

The Postcard

Next Article
O.P. News

O.P. News

No. 29 Clifton has now been established as a Music School, thus releasing the old Music Room for the use of Queen's. * * *

During the summer holidays a new central heating system with an oil-fired boiler was installed in the main school building. After one or two minor teething troubles, the system has worked most efficiently, maintaining a very comfortable temperature in the whole block.

* * *

As a result of a rather pathetic complaint from an Old Peterite, who brought his son for his first term in September and found that the geography of the School had completely changed since his day, we are publishing an up-to-date map of all the School buildings. This should be a subject for interesting comparison for Old Boys who have not visited the School recently. * * *

The Annual School Dance was held in The Memorial Hall on 12th January. The proceeds, in aid of the Appeal Fund, amounted to £750, of which approximately £230 were raised by a Tombola, to which parents and friends contributed most generously. A Boys' Dance on the following evening raised £30.

Great interest and curiosity were aroused early in December when a postcard was delivered at the School with the ordinary mail apparently from the Mount Everest Expedition of 1924. It was addressed to W. Jackson, who was a boy at the School in 1924 but was killed in the war, and the two postmarks were "Calcutta 1924" and "Leeds 1960". On consulting back numbers of The Peterite it was discovered that boys had been invited to send their name and address to the expedition headquarters in London, if they wished to receive a message bearing the special stamp of the expedition sent from the actual slopes of the mountain. The question now arose whether this card had actually taken 36 years to reach its destination or had been delivered at the right time and since mislaid and reposted by some helpful finder. When the story appeared in the Yorkshire Post the less romantic of the two solutions was soon provided by Mr. C. R. Yeomans, 0.P., who claimed the postcard as his property. He had been at School with Jackson and had been given the Everest postcard by him soon after it arrived in 1924; it had been in his possession until very recently, when he dispatched it with a number of other papers to a friend in the south; this parcel had disintegrated in the post and the card had been lost, only to be delivered for the second time at its original address. The Post Office would have been given an interesting task if the School had simply endorsed the card "Not known at this address. Return to sender." But it was much more prosaically returned to Mr. Yeomans.

4

This article is from: