Newsletter for alumni of The
Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 14 of March 2020 No. 958
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Dear Friends,
News from Nigel Boos.
------------------------------------
Gastric Cancer
Nigel Boos
Thu, 27 Feb,
22:25
Dear Gerd and Martina,
Thank
you very much for your kind concern and your good wishes for an improvement in
my medical condition.
It’s
been a long haul ever since the operation on December 10th, and I’ve lost 26
pounds since then.
I
have very little appetite and it seems that most of my foods have lost the
tastes with which I previously associated them.
I
believe that my 9 days of intravenous feeding after the operation might have
affected my taste buds, and I’ve been told that it’ll all sort itself out after
a few months of a “normal” diet.
I
hope!
Jackie
is doing yeoman’s service by trying to anticipate my dietary needs every 2
hours-or-so, but I’m really not a good patient.
I’m
maintaining a stout defence against her petitions that I should eat, eat, eat,
but I’m just not enjoying her good attempts to keep me full of high calorific,
high protein foods, to try to rebuild my muscle mass before my chemo program is
tentatively slated to begin - perhaps by the third week of March.
That’s
what you can do for me, if you’d really like to know.
I
could use some prayers to St. Peregrine Laziosi, Patron Saint of cancer
patients, to ask his help in regaining my appetite.
To
Saint Peregrine
O great St.
Peregrine, you have been called "The Mighty," "The
Wonder-Worker," because of the numerous miracles which you have obtained
from God for those who have had recourse to you. For so many years you bore in
your own flesh this cancerous disease that destroys the very fibre of our
being, and who had recourse to the source of all grace when the power of man
could do no more. You were favoured with the vision of Jesus coming down from
His Cross to heal your affliction. Ask of God and Our Lady, the cure of the
sick whom we entrust to you.
Aided in this way by your powerful intercession, we shall sing to
God, now and for all eternity, a song of gratitude for His great goodness and
mercy. Amen.
Thank
you again, everyone.
God bless you.
Nigel
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Date: February
12, 2020 at 8:24:51 AM EST
Dear Nigel,
We
are thinking of you often and we told Timon and Kristiann to greet you and
Jacky very warmly from us!
Perhaps
you are prepared for the chemo or the radiation therapy in a while and we hope
it will help you.
We
can imagine the situation is very hard for you because of all the
circumstances.
We
hope for you and wish you all the best!
Love
Martina and Gerd
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Esmond Lange <esfran@poppie.com.au>
Tue, 28 Jan,
21:38Ladislao,
I managed to run down contact
details for John Thavenot….. Good luck with contacting him as I gather he is a
bit of a “ghost man’!!!
Mobile:
+61 (0)432 606 388
E-Mail:
trinijohn004@gmail.com
I
have other feelers out for McCartney and De Pass and will let you know if I get
anything; however, no one seems to know Peacock…….
Cheers,
Esmond Lange
Mobile: 0414711082
Home: +61894579570
Email: esfran@poppie.com.au
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Esmond Lange
<esfran@poppie.com.au>
Tue, 28 Jan,
02:15
Ladislao,
Thanks
for your email but and sorry for my delay in answering but I was trying to “run
down” a couple leads on the missing old boys.
I
am afraid that I am a very poor source as far as stories about MSB are
concerned as I only attended as a “small boy” and from memory it was 1954-1958
when I was a pre-teen.
The
leaving date is definitely 58 as I went to England in 59 and did one year at
Presentation in San Fernando before going to Douai in Berkshire.
With
regard to Brian Lewis I have not seen or been in contact with him for well over
50 years!!!
Lange,
Lewis and Lloyd followed each other on the roll and we were friends at MSB plus
Brian and I both went to Douai in England but after leaving there our paths
diverged and we have never been in touch since.
Ed
Lloyd as far as I know still lives in Aberdeen or at least that’s the last
place I met him.
I
really do not have any contact with any MSB old boys as I left Trinidad in
1970!
The
only old boy I can definitely help you with is David Johnson who lives quite
close to me (davewendy@ozemail.com.au).
I
understand John Thavenot is still in Brisbane and I am trying to get a contact
email through one of his cousins.
I’ll
also do some scouting (no pun intended) as to the whereabouts or contact
details of Richard McCartney and Harold De Pass and revert if I find anything.
Ian Peacock, I have never even heard the name but will ask those older than me
if they know about him.
Warm regards,
Esmond Lange
Mobile: 0414711082
Home: +61894579570
Email: esfran@poppie.com.au
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Andres LARSEN <larsen.andres@gmail.com>
Tue, 14 Jan, 16:26
Jumbled and at times inaccurate
recollections from my 5-year stint (1964 - 1969) up in MSB.
Things
that I vaguely recall from MSB some 51 years ago.
We
slept first in the dorm over the chemistry lab and then in the other dorm in
the main building up on the fifth floor. After the earthquake in Caracas in 1967,
either in 1968 or 1969, there was a strong tremor one night and we all raced
down the five staircases. I was the
first downstairs.
A Venezuelan schoolmate of ours
who had experienced the Caracas earthquake and who was living in the dorm over
the chemistry lab, karate kicked the door to get out of that dorm and almost
unhinged his foot at the ankle.
In the dorm upstairs we had
something like 50 double bunks and a cubicle in the corner where Father Bernard
or Father Cuthbert or Father Theo would stay. They would pace the dorm reciting
their rosary beads or reading from their Missals until the lights were turned
off.
In the refectory below the
assembly and movie hall we would always have jugs filled with watery cocoa.
Things I remember from the refectory were cheese from New Zealand, local dark
water buffalo meat (if I’m not mistaken) and jobos for dessert (jobos looked
like mangoes, green on the outside and yellow pulp in the inside - their seeds
were white with spikes which would get stuck between the teeth).
Unless my memory plays tricks on
me, we also had honey from the MSB bee hives down below (by the way, excellent
honey that could also be bought at the MSB shop).
Another recollection is standing
in line with our towels around our wets in our bathrobes to take a shower at
4:00 pm everyday. There were something like 6 shower stalls on each side and we
had a certain allotted time to shower, maybe it was something like 3 or 5
minutes.
Up the stone wall next to the
basket / volleyball court, there refectory kitchen and above that, the library
which was on the same level as the assembly and movie hall.
With Mass I no longer recall
exactly if it was in the chapel above the chemistry lab (next to the ground
level downstairs dorm) or in the assembly and movie hall above the
refectory.
The one teacher who stands out
the most is Mr. Chow Fat who would say in a very measured tone when he got
upset: "Wash your mouth with soap and water". He excelled at ping
pong and would take on anyone who volunteered downstairs in the room with the
ping pong table, rackets and ping pong balls.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------.
Attila GYURIS <gyuris@yahoo.com>
Tue, 14 Jan, 20:30
Wow, Andres,
LOTS of great memory triggers for
me in that list.
I was at the school exactly the
same years you were there from start to finish.
I will add some of my own
memories also to the list as soon as I get some free time.
Attila GYURIS
Abbey School 1964-1969
-------------------------------------------------------------------.
From: Glen Mckoy (mckoy43glen@hotmail.com)
Sent: Sun 11/23/08 6:38 PM
Dear Sirs,
I read about government
etc.
We were a private school, and
some people in Trinidad segregated us, as a rich boy school, so I expect no
feedback from the government of Trinidad.
However my class mate who I knew
and sat in class with, Mr Colm Imbert, is the only person in that government,
who may be sympathetic to the cause, but may have to keep away from making any
comments on the matter, the small minded people who sit in our country as
leaders, could not afford to go to mount, and will resent anything for a school
that many believe, was for the elite of our country, and it’s true, we could
thank the Austrian people for their citizen Kitty, who served the needs of
students in the West Indies.
We can do it all by our selves,
as we are on top of that mountain by our selves, during the black power
uprising, we were a target of great ransom, those of us who were there,
remember how serious that moment was, I would never forget that time, the day
we stood as one.
We are not beggars, we could
request as some suggest, we can make a big thing about it.
We have writers; we have boys in
the media in Trinidad. We must think Big, we are strong on our own.
We can do whatever we want for
this woman, and we could let the whole world know, it could be in the reader’s
digest, a woman 91 yrs, I think it’s a good story.
Just one brother comments on this
matter.
The year us coming to an end, I
just wish we can have some closure on this project, I cannot understand, we
have donated funds for the project, should our brothers need any assistance in
Trinidad, I could have anything done for them in Trinidad today if necessary,
from right here in Nova Scotia.
So just tell me, O.K.
Best regards to all my brothers
as go through organizing pains, we will succeed, as we never give up, as Kitty
is even going to write us a letter once a month, I look forward to hearing this
lady's comments.
Have a wonderful day, gentlemen,
I try not write so others can comment on matter, but I have a big mouth, and it’s
hard to keep quiet.
Thanking you all for you time,
Glen Mckoy.
-------------------------------------------------------------.
Let me take time and remember my
classmate Wayne Vincent Brown (1960), through his writing done in 2002.
The
year was 1958, and the denizens of Form 3, Mount St Benedict, Trinidad, were 13
going on 14, a pack thundering sweatily over the first fence in the great
steeplechase of the Puberty Stakes; and, just at the point when we were at our
most bridling and throttled, our most belligerent, our most confused, here had
come Elvis to tell us who we were!
"I
know that you've been told
It's
not fair to tease,
So
if you come on cold
I'm
really gonna freeze!
Don't
you ever kiss me once, kiss me twice!
Treat
me nice."
I
learnt to play the guitar -- and a bunch of us Form 3-ers actually formed a
group (electric guitar, strum guitars, cuatro, piano, duhdup) -- just to play
that song.
That's
not a lie. I learnt to play the guitar -- and a bunch of us Form 3-ers actually
formed a group -- just to play that song.
It
wasn't the words, oh Lord, the words were so corny! Even then, I want to
believe, we knew they were corny. Certainly, Elvis knew they were corny. How
often, in live performances, he purposely amended cliches into downright
rubbish, "But I learnt a lesson when she broke my leg" (instead of
"heart") and so on. He had a clown's mistrust of words, did Elvis;
they seemed to him chiefly fertile in their potential for unmeaning. On more
than one track of this CD collection you can hear him assuring his audience
that this or that song is highly popular "in parts of Africa" -- the
little hillbilly boy catching and tossing back the indignant slur of the early establishment
critics, that rock-'n-roll was "jungle music".
So
it's ironic that today, 45 years on, I still know by heart the words of dozens
of those original songs. Because it wasn't the words, it was the music. It was
the sudden, driving new crash-'n-roar, the souped-up percussion and electric,
wailing whine-and-twang, the violent syncopation and blare five-chord
progression (C Major, E Major! A minor, D7th! G7th; and when in the world
before 1955 could you have justified those exclamation points?!); it was the rock-'n-roll!
In
that music, when Elvis made it, musically primitive yet emotionally so
streetwise and riddled with a kind of transcendent laughter (and let the reader
not slight the teenager's dying yearning for transcendence), there was that
which told us loud and clear that we were changelings - not really our parents'
children anymore but a brand new human grouping, teenagers, a word which had
not existed before us, nor the new social class it designated: a class with
limited but real disposable income (aka pocket money), created in the mid-50s
by the novel paraphernalia of juke boxes, cars, bikinis, back seat necking,
45s, LPs, hit parades, 'stars', the portable radio, the transistor radio -- and
rock-'n-roll.
And
you know, they really didn't know we were coming!
On
the night of May 5th, 1956, in the sold-out Robinson Memorial Auditorium in
Little Rock, Arkansas (a town whose name resonates for us today for quite a
different reason, though the two experiences were in fact furiously
intertwined), the character who in those days would not have been called a
Deejay introduced that historic evening to his radio audience like this:
'Presley
just walked out onto the stage. We're gonna have to wait and see what his first
number's gonna be. We're going to broadcast the rest of this show. We had
originally intended to play some of the records he put out, but we decided it
would be a much better idea if you could hear them directly. So, Elvis Presley,
just walking out on the stage...you can hear bits of applause from the
audience...["bits of applause" my foot! What you can hear is
teeny-boppers screaming. WB]...He's fumbling around with the microphone right
now...he's giving his cues to the boys...[and cutting across the Emcee's intro
there comes at this point the by-now-so-familiar, imperious, hectoring,
"Well, since mah baby left me!"]...he's winding up his legs, and here
he goes with -- Heartbreak Motel!"
Which
has to be the first and last time in the history of the world that the great
ballad of the 50s, rock-'n-roll's The Sun Also Rises, got called by the wrong
name!
But
I am out of space and at 58 not yet old enough to have the cojones to give
Elvis what I'd really like to give him, which is a month of Sunday columns in
the land of reggae.
But
the day last month that She gave me that birthday present, "Elvis, Today,
Tomorrow and Forever", I retired feloniously, at two in the afternoon on a
working day, and lay in the airconditioned gloaming of my upstairs bedroom,
listening to my young life -- to all our young lives -- come leaping and
dancing and crooning and bawling 'out of the blue', and back into my startled
soul, and I thought:
For
someone whose life has turned so many corners, I'm glad the road led back here.
------------------------------------------------------------------.
EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz, kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or
any old boy that you would like to include.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Photos:
65UN0003UNKNOWNS
54DG0001CGODGO Christopher
Goddard and Donald Goddard
72UN0001AQUALADS, Swimming sports
17LK2350FBSBUFAM, Stephen Bushe
and family
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