After the Ceremony of the Key it was onto tea in the Centenary Hall where representatives of each of the reunion groups was given an opportunity to address the throng on behalf of their year.
Jock spoke on our behalf and mentioned that it had come to light that one of our number had borrowed a school library book back in '70 and failed to return it. The person in question had, and still has, a taste for war literature (inspired no doubt by Neil Emslie) and the book tells the story of the famous South African 2nd WW fighter pilot, 'Sailor' Malan. The book has remained in his possession all this time but now, 40 years later, the guilt-stricken individual has passed the book on anonymously with the request that it be returned to the school with an offer to pay the relevant fine as an act of contrition. As far as memory serves, the fine back then was 5c per week on an escalating scale depending how long it had been outstanding.
The services of an actuary had been engaged to calculate where the current value of the fine (including compound interest) and with a bit of rounding-off it stood at +-R3 000,00.
Headmaster Sammy Gunn was happy to receive the book back on behalf of the school with payment of the fine to follow.
As an aside to the above story, it transpired that Sammy is a researcher of S A Airforce history, an interest he shares with our own Brian Stockland.
Brian was green with envy that it's now in Sammy's clutches and wished he'd known of its existence before the handover in which case he said he would have been prepared to pay very good money for it as it is a collector's item!
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