Old Ruymians Mailing List

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Old Ruymians Golf Day 15th April 2011

The second Old Ruymians Golf Day will be held at the Westgate and Birchington Golf Club. Ex-pupils from both Chatham House and Clarendon House and their partners are invited. Last year a good number of non-golfers joined us for lunch. Cost will be £35 for golf and lunch, or £10 for lunch alone. Arrive at 8.30am for 9.00am first tee, lunch will be around 2.30pm. Contact honsec@oldruymians.co.uk to reserve your places.
Get your name on the coveted trophy and win enviable prizes.

Winter Lunch 20th November Oak Hotel Ramsgate

Cost £17.50 includes wine. Contact honsec@oldruymians.co.uk to reserve places. Partners + ex Clarendon House people are invited. Arrive 12.30pm.

ORs V School Cricket Match 3rd July 2010

If you think you can still swing a cricket bat, bowl, catch, field or drink tea, please contact cricketweek@oldruymians.co.uk where the organiser Ian Flower will be delighted to hear from you.
Details of the OR cricket week can be found on the Old Ruymians facebook page.

Annual Dinner 3rd July 2010

Annual dinner will be held on 3rd July 2010, as will the AGM for those many enthusiasts of meetings the latter will start at 5.30pm, and the former at 7.30pm. Contact chairman@oldruymians.co.uk to register your interest and you will be updated with details in due course. The OR v School cricket match also takes place this day.

Where did Ruym come from?

I have to say that this one always baffled me. Thanks to the wonder of Google I have discoved that "Ruym" was in fact an ancient name of Thanet - It was Anthony John that put me on to Ruym as a place name. And of course gate comes from the ancient Egyptian "khet" meaning gate, in particular gate to the sea (as in Margate), or in fact gate to Thanet as in Ramsgate.
"Our word gate is the Egyptian khet, which, in relation to the water, is a ford, port, or harbour; khet, a port, to navigate, go, stop, be enclosed. This supplies the water-gate as in Margate and Ramsgate. Mer (Eg.) is the sea and also a land-limit, the boundary of a region on the water. Mer-gate (Margate) is the gate at the limit of Thanet at the north-east extremity of the isle. Ruim or Ruym[5] is an ancient British name of Thanet. Ramsgate is the gate of Ruim. Ru (Eg.) is an outlet, waterway. Ima or im is the sea. Ruim is the mouth or outlet to the sea. The gate in Ramsgate is a repetition of the ru in Ruim; according to the reduplicative mode of compounding the later names, Ramsgate, the sea-gate of Thanet, is already expressed by the ancient name of Ruim or Ruima." This quotation was taken from "A Book of the Beginnings".

A Gem in Ruym

Having modified my standing order to pay the Old Ruymians Club £15 per annum from 1st June 2010, I finally took delivery of the Spring 2009 edition of Ruym. Flicking through the pages one might be forgiven in thinking that very little had changed. An interesting backdrop for what will happen under the auspices of the Federation of Ramsgate Grammar Schools. Anyway, mindful of not wanting to sound like one of those "it ain't what it used to be in my day" types (we would only consider losing a hockey match to Kingston Grammar for example) I set off in search of something to catch my eye. Finally, on the last page of the magazine I found an article by Andy Mair, Archivist and Head of Design & Technology which referred to a website of archive materials for the school. Definitely worth a visit! It dates the history of the school back to 1797 and describing the typical school day it quotes: "day-boys had to be at school at 5.40am and would not leave until after prayers at 8.20pm". It has many photographs including two pictures of Chatham House rugby teams from the 1880s.

Old Ruymian Golf Day

It is proposed to have an eighteen-hole Stableford competition on 16th April 2010. A course will be chosen in the Thanet area. The competition will be followed by dinner and drinks at the clubhouse; non-golfers will be welcome to join the evening event. More details nearer the time.
If you haven't done so already, why not connect to the Old Ruymian Facebook page and "become a fan" (not my words).

Old Ruymians on Facebook

The Old Ruymians are now on Facebook. Take a look there for the latest news. Become a fan and you will get the latest information as it is published.

Old Ruymians in Civil Contract with Internet

Who would imagine that the Old Ruymians and the Internet would make a happy marriage? I can't say that I am too sure myself. It has to be said that the Old Ruymians are all that modern isn't. Old "Boys", well there are girls now, but we're not gonna call them Old Persons, Old Children, or Old Young People are we? So that's our first problem. Secondly, as well as being Old Boys, we are Old Boys of a Grammar School. Now the Grammar School is a dying breed whether you like it or not, if the concept ever returns, and I am sure given the likely readership I would be controversial in suggesting that perhaps it should not, it would surely be called by another name, but would it smell as sweet. So why get involved as the Secretary of such an anachronistic organisation? I'm still not sure, but I think that underlying it all is the view that other young people should have the opportunities that I enjoyed, and which allowed me many privileged choices in the years to come. I would love the Club to become more successful, today its membership is paltry in my opinion. I would also like any money raised to be spent more democratically and not in a manner chosen by a few; I also hope that such monies would be directed towards encouraging a broader education for those who are less able to afford it. For the time being the URL www.oldruymians.co.uk points to this blog, in the coming weeks I will redirect it to its new facebook home subject to the approval of my fellow OR Committee members. It will be interesting to see whether my blog continues to take pride of place at the top of the Google listing!

Important Update

A lunch has been organised for Saturday 21st November at the Sir Stanley Gray. The lunch will be accompanied by films and pictures of early Ramsgate. Time is 12:30pm for 13:00pm start. Cost is £13 per head for hot and cold buffet. Those wishing to attend should email chairman@oldruymians.co.uk as soon as possible to reserve their places and receive their booking form.

There will be an informal gathering for drinks at 19:30pm in the evening.
RSVP on the Friends Reunited reunion event so that others can see who plans to attend.

Social Event Saturday 21st November @ Sir Stanley Gray

The headline says it all. Details of the evening yet to be concluded. If you plan to come along, it would be great if you could do an RSVP on the Friends Reunited reunion event. Thank you in advance for your support.

No such thing as a free lunch

As if the idea that "there is no such thing as a free lunch" needed any further evidence, I agreed, after a rather well prepared roast beef dinner at North Foreland Golf Club, to take the mantle of the Honorary Secretary of the Old Ruymian Club in partnership with Tony Taylor the Treasurer and Tony Carpenter the Chairman. I have been assured that this role will take "almost no effort at all". My first action was to claim the URL www.oldruymians.co.uk and to link it, atleast temporarily to this blog. There is a social event planned for Saturday 21st November in the evening at the Sir Stanley Gray Pub in Pegwell. The next OR Dinner will be held on Saturday July 3rd 2010 (first Saturday in July). I believe the subscription for the ORs is £10 per annum; please contact Tony Taylor if you would like to make this modest annual contribution. You can link up to the Friends Reunited Old Ruymians group by clicking on this link; this is probably the best place to make any comments or make pleas for long lost friends to contact you. Go to the "Old Boys" section of the Chatham House School Web Site to put your details into the OR database.

Easy Route to Old Ruymians @ Friends Reunited

You should be able to find the Old Ruymian Friends Reunited link by clicking here. Well it worked for me! PS. Judith, we would be delighted to hear from your, or any of your friends!

Friends Reunited

What have the internet and insomnia got in common? Well one of the answers is Friends Reunited, and another is blogging. I started blogging in October 2004, a bit late some might say, but still in the days when the wave was small. In fact, my fetish at the time was meta-blogging, or blogging about blogging, but that is a story that belongs elsewhere (see my personal blog).
Having been rather critical of the OR pages on the Chatham House website, I went to Friends Reunited and set up a group called "Old Ruymians" so that there would be an easy place for ORs to share communications. I checked the number of people (claiming) to have attended Chatham House on Friends Reunited and it came to an impressive 2282, then I did a dodgy search on the Chatham House web site to discover that there were 899 ORs registered there (I was expecting about 5 given the quality of information that was provided about ORs there). Now unfortunately to invite people to join the aforementioned and erstwhile group the "Old Ruymians" the invitees had to be not only friends, but friends in the "Friends Reunited sense". So I duly took on the task of inviting lots of people that I knew from school to be my "Friends Reunited" friends: I do hope they don't think of me too sadly when they get the inevitable pleading email. Tonight would have been totally bereft of sleep if I had not managed to break the "Friends Reunited" invite-a-friend function by making far too many invitations. No doubt there is some buffering and processing problem. Well, in any case, I will continue my modest democratic, if not democratically elected, efforts to further conversation between Old Ruymians.
Before I close, I must note that one Judith Ruback professed herself to have attended Chatham House Grammar School. I happen to know, as do most of my contemporaries that this was not in fact the case. Judith was, and indeed I hope still is, a rather attractive lady and well acquainted with us Chatham House lads. Sadly, being a year older than myself she was beyond the cast of my feeble net, but I am sure that better men than I were more successful

OR Section Disappoints

No, it's not just an ongoing desire for alliteration that informed the title of this short article. It was motivated by a visit to the Old Boys section of the Chatham House web site, save your energy, don't go there until the new head has had a few months to settle in!
Before I get too excited, let me say that to go to the OR Dinner on 4th July 2009, or to join the ORs you need to contact Tony Taylor (his email address is ataylorconsult@hotmail.com )
In C21 a serious point has been missed. What is something like the Old Ruymians about? Let me tell you what I think:
1) It is about meeting up with people years on and realising that perhaps they were ok after all (joke, everyone I knew at CHS was a good bloke); ok, what I meant was linking up with old friends.
2) Drinking copious amounts and convincing yourself that it could never be as good as it used to be
3) Occasionally bunging a few quid in the pot to help the school further its infinite potential
What should we do?
Firstly any ex-CHS person (now that we have had ladies for some time) should have free membership of the Old Ruymian Club (that saves accounting and treasurer etc).
The Ruym Magazine should simply be published on-line so that all can enjoy and savour the on-going successes of their house and favoured pastimes.
There should be sensible database of people - what's wrong with Friends ReUnited? - and events like dinners, new issues of ruin, OR cricket and why not hockey and rugby matches.
There should be a place where any OR can publish a little news item or whatever...
It's clear that this is something that needs to be discussed over a beer or two, preferably at Bugsy's, but the Belgian Bar or even the school hall might do for a starters.

OR Dinner 4th July 2009 - Make it a good one!

I have to say that after an initial bout of enthusiasm I rather gave up on the Old Ruymian blog. Blogger didn't help, I had to click show full list of blogs (personal greed means I have a number), before the Old Ruymian blog appeared in the list. I was delighted recently to take a look at it and find 5 comments on my first posting; bit like catching a fish of Margate pier really! So I thought I better get my tackle sorted out and ... enough of that metaphor.
If you want to join the old ruins, or to come to the dinner then the man to contact is Tony Taylor (if you click on his name it should set up an email for him, if this doesn't work then his email address is ataylorconsult@hotmail.com )
A lot has happened since 2007 when I made my last post. John Matthews has left the post as Prime Minister, sorry, Head Master of Chatham House and we have a new Executive Head, David Smart, reponsible for both Chatham House and Clarendon House (can't really understand why they don't just merge them and be done with it, but perhaps we'll find out at the dinner??). Paul Birchley, a contemporary of mine in 6Sc1A and 6Sc2A, is now the assistant headmaster at the school [I have to say I am sure that this is a fine choice], and I am a trainee maths teacher about to start a new career at the Marlowe Academy in Ramsgate. Should you hazard across this article I would urge you to link up with the Old School once again, having just past 50 years myself, I think we are ready to bring out the orange segments and discuss tactics for the second half!

Dinner July 7th 2007

The next Old Ruymian Dinner is planned to be held on July 7th 2007. The last one was on 1st July 2006. It was reasonably well attended. Thanks to a powerboat racing event, Ramsgate Marina proved to be lively into the early hours of Sunday morning. You do not have to be a member of the OR Club to attend this dinner. But if you were not, and you had not stumbled across this blog, there is very little chance that you would have found out about it.

Old Ruymian Club

This blog has been set up to allow Old Ruymians, that is former pupils of Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate Kent, to share news with each other and to make contact with old friends. Unlike Friends Reunited, you do not have to pay to be a member. Just add a comment to this article which includes your name, years at Chatham House, email address and any other contact details that you want to disclose and I will configure the blog to allow you to post articles. All that I would ask is that you make your Amazon purchases through the links on this blog, and that will contribute to the maintenance fund for the site. Thank you