Westleigh College Reunion - November 13th 2016

                                                            

                                                                  

After some 56 years old school friends get together again!

I thought it was a great day, and many thanks to Miriam for organising  it.
The venue was great, the company was even better!

I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.

Here are a few stills I managed to get and I am hoping, perhaps, some of the other girls will send me some more.         

                                                           

                                                            
Hopefully there will be more to come. Stay tuned!

Some more from Miriam, just received - thanks very much, Miriam!

 

"What a wonderful afternoon we all had last Sunday. Although I’d been hoping to do something like this forever, it would never have happened without the help of a number of ladies on this list. 

To Elana, whose inspired choice the restaurant was, well done. Thanks to Rosie for the Westleigh blog, through which many of us have reconnected. And Elana and Robyn for following up on ladies they’ve kept contact with."

                                                                

                                   

    

                                                           

           

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at 90

                                                                

                                                                   

Here is a thought experiment for anyone who has “made it” — who has scrambled to the top of their heap. Look in the mirror and ­remind yourself that you haven’t, by and large, achieved success through personal merit. You have been lucky. Brains, determination and looks are randomly ­distributed.
                                                    

The world is unfair. People who have risen to the top of any small pyramid have mostly got there ­because of good fortune. Whether they are well-remunerated grandees from the financial services ­industry counting their bonuses, or preening media types, or actors, or even entrepreneurs worshipping their creator, they haven’t achieved what they have simply by guts and hard work.

Guts and hard work matter but they bring disproportionate ­rewards to those born, randomly, with the brainpower, good health and family security to make use of them; and then they are super-­effective if good luck in your education and connections helps you up the tree.

It’s an obvious, almost mundane thought, but it’s rare that people who have “made it” like to acknowledge the obvious. We live in a raw and abrasive meritocracy that likes to pretend those on top have got there because they thoroughly deserve it. So what does that say about everyone else? To acknowledge the randomness of good fortune is more than politeness; it’s humanity.

And so to the Queen. It’s often said that it’s because we don’t ­really know her that she has ­managed to stay so popular for so long. By now, this year, her vast popularity seems a given, blandly accepted.

It didn’t seem that way in 1992 — her “annus horribilis” — when The Sunday Times serialised ­Andrew Morton’s searing bio­graphy of Diana, Princess of Wales.

It didn’t seem that way in 1997, after Diana’s death, when for several eerie days the monarchical country of the United Kingdom seemed mutinous. In fact, when you think back over the Queen’s reign, the Windsor story has been much more wrinkled and difficult than it can seem today.


By Andrew Marr


With many thanks to The Australian