Versa: Issue Ten

10
OA News
11
DRILLS
at Sandhurst
We would like to congratulate Felix Turk (OA 2014),
for passing his drill test at the Royal Military
Academy Sandhurst in February 2022. Having
spent the previous five weeks training in the basics of weapon
handling, navigation, and battlefield casualty drills, Felix
successfully passed the test and was allowed a weekend off for
the first time since the course began. Although Felix recently
changed career paths and is relatively new to the course, the
drill test is an important milestone in any Officer Cadet’s
journey to becoming an Officer in the British Army.
Felix said “Joining the army and going to Sandhurst has
always been something I have wanted to achieve. It marks
the biggest challenge I have ever taken on but equally that is
what has drawn me to the military. I look forward to the next
few weeks and beyond!”
Felix is now 16 weeks into his training and plans to join the
infantry and commission in December. Best of luck Felix!
SK COACHING
SK Coaching is a remote coaching service that
focusses on improving mental and physical health
through diet and exercise, specialising in body
transformations. Having been a personal trainer for
over a decade, Saul Katz (OA 2008) moved most of his
coaching service online when realising that his clients
were not struggling with information or knowledge but
accountability in between sessions.
Despite having clients all over the world, most of the
people Saul works with are OAs and he is currently
offering a promotion for alumni of the School. The offer
is for a FREE private training day including lunch and a
nutrition session at a studio in North London.
If you would like to sign up or find out more
about this exclusive offer, please contact Saul on
saul@saulkatzcoaching.co.uk or check out
saulkatzcoaching.co.uk.
RIGHT, FELIX TURK (OA 2014)
SAUL KATZ (OA 2008)
THIN AIR
John Mole’s new poetry collection tackles our troubled times
Dealing with the changes
to all our lives caused by
the pandemic has been
challenging, and people have found
different ways of coping. John
Mole, former Head of English at St
Albans School and Cholmondeley
Prize winner, has inevitably
been ‘hoping that words/may do
the trick’ (‘The Trick’). Writing
throughout the two lockdowns
and the brief intervening freedom
between March 2020 and February
2021, Mole published a number
of poems on Instagram and on
Plague20journal.com. Now these
poems, full of observations,
meditations and reminiscences,
have been collected and published
by the Shoestring Press in Thin Air.
Thin Air is a neat little volume of neat little poems. Each
poem is just a page, usually eight largely unrhymed couplets,
but within their sparse colloquial form, they offer anecdotes,
thoughts and memories, charting how we have negotiated
the changing social landscape. A number of poems note
the paradox of courtesies which have developed, where it is
a sign of care to avoid people, where we keep distance ‘for
health and safety’s sake’ (‘Distancing’), an idea developed
further in ‘Out Walking’:
‘See me perfect my neighbourly
swerve and dip
away from the pavement
or my deft parabola
when exercising in the park’.
By Noel Cassidy, English Department, St Albans School
Out Walking
A writer is always attuned to the shifts and vagaries of
language; it is not surprising that the collection plays with
the new Covid language. Even titles such as ‘Distancing’,
‘Bubbles’, ‘Contactless’, ‘Elbows’, ‘Briefing’, ‘Granular’
and ‘Measures’ employ a vocabulary which has acquired
particular connotations over the last two years. There
is whimsical humour here, as Mole
compares the ‘soapy bubbles’ of Millais’
painting with the pandemic’s ‘bubble
permitted/by decree’, while accidental
elbow-bumping in an awkward dance
has changed from ‘the bump to be
avoided’ to ‘the safest way/to greet
a friend’. ‘Contactless’ begins with a
playful observation about card payments
and social interactions, but ends more
seriously, coming to ground with the
nature of restrictions which weigh
‘authority/against our loss.’
Despite the humour and the wordplay
in this collection, that seriousness
underpins it. ‘Measures’ are not the
paces of walking or the beats of rhythm,
but ‘policy/restrictively laid down’. ‘As If ’ considers the
absence of choice created by those measures, and ‘Our
Ghosts’ gently acknowledges those loved ones no longer
with us who still ‘hauntingly’ attend family events that are
‘grateful for their blessing’. It is those threads of humanity,
like the skirting of people on pavements ‘always with a smile’
(‘Out Walking’) which still offer solace.
JOHN MOLE, FORMER STAFF
Thin Air is published by Shoestring Press at £10 and is
available from Books on the Hill in St Albans and from the
publisher now.