To celebrate and mark the Queen’s Jubilee my wife and I were invited as guests of the Secretary of State – The Right Honourable Brandon Lewis CBE MP to the Royal Gun Salute to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee at Hillsborough Castle. We joined some 150 other guests, including the principals of those schools with a tradition of CCF Cadets.

It was rather wonderful to be in the Castle and converse with so many and then to be taken outside onto the portico to see the 42 Gun Salute. Afterwards at lunch, we congratulated a series of service men and women following the presentation of medals by the Secretary of State. The Marquis of Downshire has taken up residence in Northern Ireland once more and from a longstanding rule is able to have his own Militia. Hence the photo of myself with a man in a funny hat but an absolutely resplendent uniform.

I was, as I always am, entirely disconcerted when out of a crowd a voice says “How are you Mr Robinson?” (I recognise this is a silly thing (and this to say to Old Campbellians who undoubtedly will look for more ways to unnerve me in the future), I was stopped by two OCs, brothers Mark-Andrew (8863) and Samuel (9521), who confessed to never having set foot back on site since they left but kept up to date through the OC website.

We chatted a while and I heard their reflections of school and their observations of the event. The common story of how much they loved school. As I always do, and reiterate to the OCs reading this, I invited them to visit. If you, like these gentlemen, have not been back at the Campbell for some time, please make time to do so. Organise to come to an OC Society event, or if you just want to look around the College again and relive old times we can do that as well.

On Friday I was interviewing a boy who will be joining us in September. His father is an OC. The difficulty I had was in trying to talk to the boy, his father wanted to talk so much about his time here! Please keep in touch.

Sincerely,

RMR