Stop the Clocks

Headmaster’s Routh Assembly Address
Monday 10th February 2020



Excerpt from THE TIME MACHINE by H. G. Wells

"I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion.

For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived.

One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch -- into futurity.”
 
Good morning
Welcome to the final days before Half Term Break. A holiday that is supposed to be one week long. Only it won’t be this year. Whatever your plans, you should know that Half Term will be a different length this year.

Some of you may be going on holiday, skiing perhaps. Some may just be going home; others may wish that they could. Some of you may plan to draw the curtains, curl up under the duvet and hibernate for a week. Those returning to face Mocks on the first Monday back will hopefully be revising. Whatever you plan to do though, the time available will be different for each of you. Or at least, it will seem that way. Like the Time Traveller in the reading just now, some of you will get to the end of half term feeling as though you have hurtled forward in time, arriving back at School before you know it. For others, it will seem as though you were stuck in a time warp, an endless week where time went backwards.

On the calendar, Half Term still shows as being a week long. You didn’t really think I was going to lengthen it, did you? Still one week; nine days to be precise, counting weekends. But how you experience those 216 hours will differ for each of you. You are taught in Physics that Time is a constant. That may be so, but your experience of Time is anything but constant. When it comes to how you feel it passing, it varies enormously. Time is like a rubber band when you are living in it. Sometimes it stretches out endlessly, sometimes it snaps past, often hitting you in the face as it goes by.

My theory is that your perception of Time is related to the level of stress you are under. When I was 17, I was travelling in a car that crashed into a lorry at high speed. I would like to point out that I wasn’t driving, not that it would have made any difference as the lorry driver was completely at fault. When he suddenly pulled across directly in front of us on a highway, there was nothing my friend who was driving could do.
We T-boned straight underneath the trailer unit. The flat steel deck literally peeled the roof off our car and we folded under it. Amazingly we walked away with only cuts and bruises. Later, the Police concluded that, judging by the skid marks on the road, my friend had only had six seconds to respond and brake before we hit.

Six seconds. To this day, it seems so much longer. More like six minutes. In those moments, it felt as though time crawled, everything happening in slow motion. In remember experiencing every detail clearly, seeing each tree on the roadside, the paint peeling on the lorry, the weight of the book on my lap. I swear I even saw the windscreen bending inwards before it exploded. I wasn’t particularly scared, just amazed that everything was taking so long. By the time we collided, I felt as though we had been skidding for ages.

That’s because the brain perceives the passing of time differently, in different situations. In moments of high stress, like realising you are about to hit a 44-tonne lorry at 50 miles an hour, it is flooded with masses of information. Your pupils dilate, your hearing becomes more acute and your skin becomes hypersensitive, pumping much more detail than normal into your brain. Allowing it to rapidly scan for options to save you. Processing that flood of sensory data would normally take much longer, which therefore makes it seem as though time has slowed down. It hasn’t of course, your brain is just working faster than normal.

So, with life-threatening stress, Time slows down. But anything less than that, it seems to speed up. Trying to score a winning point in the final seconds of a match, the countdown timer seems to accelerate. When you’re sitting a difficult test, the clocks in the examination hall seem fast. If you are late for a plane, the minutes get shorter with every step that you take towards the gate.

The same is true in times of good stress too. And yes, there is such a thing as good stress. It’s called Eustress and it’s the feeling of flow when you are being positively challenged. An enjoyable first date, hosting a successful event, nailing a tough ski run or a difficult music recital. If you are enjoying being completely absorbed and a bit stretched, it’s over all too soon. As the saying goes, Time flies when you’re having fun.

But then you go further down the stress continuum and it slows down again. In periods of great boredom, with little to stimulate your mind, Time seems to drag once more. Again, blame your brain. It is used to working at normal speed, so when there is nothing novel, new or interesting to process, it feels as if Time is passing more slowly than usual. My Mum used to tell us as kids that “Only boring people get bored” and it’s true. Those who can’t stimulate their own minds are unlikely to stimulate others.

Sometimes when you are bored, the only stimulation your mind gets is looking at the clock. If you are revising over the Break, this may happen. Unfortunately, it is the worst thing to do, because you end up convincing yourself that Time has stopped. It hasn’t, of course. The one thing that Time doesn’t do is stop.

Clocks sometimes do. Deep sea divers have recovered the mantlepiece clock from the ballroom on the Titanic, its hands stopped at 3:07am, 15th April 1912. I once saw the pocket watch of an old man who had died in the world’s first atomic blast at Hiroshima. It was frozen by at 8:15am, 6th August 1945. There are numerous wristwatches in the Twin Towers Memorial that all read 10:04am, September 11th, 2001. A stopped clock is never a good thing. Neither is wishing time would pass more quickly. I’m sure the owners of all those clocks would have given anything for more time; you shouldn’t wish yours away.

Clocks may stop, but Time moves on. Which is why the concept of Time management is misleading. When you return after the Half Term Break, the School will be entering into the start of the examination season. Most of you will need to revise and people may start to talk to you about time management. But nobody can manage Time, it is constant and relentless. What you can be taught to manage is yourselves. Rather than Time Management, we will be trying to teach you Self-Management. You should make a start on that over the Break.

Time is not elastic, despite how it seems. It is only you that is flexible. The only way to travel through Time is one minute after the other. You can’t speed it up and you can’t slow it down. What you can do is decide how to use it. What you squeeze into an hour and what you drag out to fill a day is entirely in your hands. So next week, make the most of your 216 hours, because however you spend them, the clock will be ticking. 

Presentations
House Music
There was superb array of talent in the House Music competitions last week and I commend all who took part, as well as those who went along and supported your Houses.

In the Ensemble competition, the Adjudicator, Mr George Bevan awarded Elmshurst a Highly Commended, placed Housman Hall runners up, and named Wendron Gordon as the winners. I invite the House Music Captain from Wendron Gordon to receive that trophy.

Then in the evening, we returned to Routh to hear soloists battle it out in two categories: Intermediate and Advanced, in what was a wonderful evening of musical talent.

Intermediate category:
Highly commended: Olivia Garrett (Hazeldene)
Runner up: Joe Ying (Webber)
Winner: Jake Wingfield (School)

Advanced category:
Highly commended: Cesar Lam Dai (Webber)
Runner up: Gabriel Brown (Lupton)
Winner: Max Wong (Elmshurst)

CCF awards
Cadets from the RAF section spent two hours learning emergency life support and then had their practical skills assessed before completing a formal written test to achieve their Heartstart certificate and badge. I invite the following to receive our congratulations:
Daniel Goodwin, Katie Rolph,Sam Kwan,Jason Yiu,Polly Green, Ioana Voicu, Brooke-Lily York, Klara Floricic, Jack Ma, Martin Kara Valchev, James Doohan-Smith,  Luke Bond.

Mathematics Challenge
75 pupils from the Fifth and Sixth form entered the Senior Mathematics Challenge. The following all achieved Gold certificates which saw them gain automatic entry into the Senior Kangaroo or British Olympiad paper as a follow on round. Huge congratulations to all for their outstanding achievements, but special mention goes to Ricardo Xu and Jay Lyu for scoring in the top 1000 candidates nationally to then spend 3.5 hours writing solutions to five very challenging problems in the Olympiad paper
Minghzhe Lyu, Jenna Kam, James Pei, Stanley Cheng, Shang Shi, Thomas Chu, Kristi Lee,  Jacky Wong, Michail Harmand jiev, Judy Wu, Junfei Yin, Ruike Ma, Joaquim Pang, Theodore Gariazzo, Paul Pohl,  Ricardo Xu  and Irene Lo

Creative Writing
The WW1 Creative Writing competition for the Lower Fourth has now been judged. The following were highly commended for their entries:
George Hastings,   Phoebe Hodgkisson, Herbie Warner,  Joseph Boardman, Yanbo Dong, Lydia Flynn, Evie Kingston

The two winners who will be visiting the Battlefields in May for an all-expenses paid World War One experience are Hamza Suleman and Amelia Geus.  
The judges were particularly impressed by the way these entries had used their visit to the Archive to enhance their creative responses.

Table Tennis
At the recent Worcestershire championships, there were good performances from our table tennis players, but a special mention must go to Sanniva Chang who finished runner up, Jenna Wong who won the Senior Girls, Darren Hui who won the Boys’ competition. I invite all three on to receive their trophies.

 
Review
Badminton
Good matches against Cheltenham College with the boys narrowly losing 7-9 and the girls winning 6-3.

Cross Country
Our Cross Country runners competed in the prestigious King Henry VIII relays with both teams giving a creditable performance and Natalie Hatfield and Callum Wilkinson running the fastest laps for our teams. Also good to see over 20 of our runners competing in the League match on Saturday.

Football
The U16A and 1st XI drew and the U16B’ won against Oundle School.

Hockey
Congratulations to our Boys U15A’s for beating Bedford School 2-1 and to all teams for very good results overall in the block fixture against Stamford School.

Netball
Good news for our U18 team, who have now qualified for the semi-final of the National Sisters’ in Sport competition.

Well done to the U14A Netball Team for finishing runners up in our Invitational Tournament, narrowly losing to Bablake School in the Final.

The rest of our teams played away at Stamford School, winning 7 out of the 12 fixtures played with the 1st team winning 49-17.

Rugby
Congratulations to Sebastian Atkinson and Oliver Wynn who have been selected to attend the England U18 training camp during the half term holiday.

Table Tennis
At the regional finals yesterday the boys and girls teams both played well but did not progress.

Tennis
Well done to Stuart Shannon and Josie Ward who represented Hereford & Worcestershire’s in the 12 Counties competition.

Congratulations also to: Claudia Bullock, Sash Makarenko, Borislava Mekushina and Kiyyah Grant, who beat Rugby School in the final stage of the Midlands knockout Under 18 team tennis competition. That team now progresses to the Regional Finals.

And in a new initiative, we had a Saturday tennis fixture in the Lent term for the first time. It was very competitive, with the boys drawing 2-2 and the girls winning 3-1 against Clifton College.

Squash
The U16s came third in the national plate competition, narrowly missing out on an automatic place in the finals but still hoping their impressive points tally will be enough for a wildcard place. Special mention goes to William Hobbs, Leo Mellor, George Lamb, Marius Chung and Sebastian Hall.

 
Preview
This year’s annual Senior House Drama Competition is officially launched today. After the superb efforts of the Fourth Form in their House Drama Competition, there is much to live up to. The competition will be held at 7pm, Thursday 12th March in Cobham Theatre. Each House is asked to present a 5-7 minute piece, with performers from the Fifth and Sixth Form. This year’s adjudicator is a highly successful stage, screen and television actor, you will have to wait to find out who. No specific theme, you may choose to present an extract from a published piece or write a short play yourselves. Your House Parent will have further information but please have a representative email Mr. Norton by the end of school tomorrow.

Finally, the School Eucharist for Fourth & Fifth Form pupils takes place on Thursday P1. Please now stand as we say the Grace together.