Old Walhamptonians 1980s

Tiffany Barrett (Reading)
Left Jul 86

Went to university in 1991 to study Hospitality Management and by a circuitous route am now a year 3 teacher Lambrook School near Ascot.

Being a teacher now, I love the memory of having so much freedom as a child to go off and explore, take risks and find out about life in a safe yet creative environment. I love the fact that most of our playtimes involved games that are banned now, and I find it sad that many of the apparatus we used has been deemed ‘unsafe’ by the health and safety brigade...none of us were seriously injured!!

Justin Davidson (Hong Kong)
Left Jul 81

Parents came back from Nigeria and went on to day school in St Albans. University in Nottingham, interspersed with lots of backpacking to Asia and Africa. Worked in the City as a lawyer before moving to Hong Kong in 2000. Now a partner heading up intellectual property practice in Asia for DLA Piper. Married in 96 to Cathy, whom I met at Nottingham, with three (v active) sons, James (2001), Loughlin (2002) and Dominic (2004).

Best memories - British Bulldogs on the lawn, night time wide games on the common in the New Forest in boilersuits, Mull camp, woodwork with Mr Short (I still use my lathe work bowl for fruit to this day), all the hobbies and sports......some of the best years of my life.

Worst memories - chapped knees (wearing shorts all winter was tough coming from Nigeria), the slipper from JB (with Ian Shaw for sneaking out after lights out)

Simon Perkins (Sante Fe, USA)
Left 1983

Picking up a few years after Walhampton... Studied physics at Oxford, realizing in the process that I didn’t enjoy all the hard maths nearly as much as I’d thought... Switched to studying computer science and artificial intelligence, and did a PhD at Edinburgh University. Unexpectedly got offered a post-doc research position at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, and have lived out here since 1999. Got tired of all the bureaucracy and security paranoia involved with working at a big government lab, and left to work for a couple of small software start ups, in pursuit of various entrepreneurial dreams. Had a lot of fun, but have failed to make my fortune there so far...

At the time of writing (Sept 10), just about to start a new job with Google at their Boulder, Colorado office.

Best memories - being one of the first to be allowed to play with the fancy new Commodore Pet computers the school obtained in the early 1980s. For me this was an experience that was pretty pivotal in what followed in the rest of my life...

Worst memories - captaining the Shackleton house quiz team (after being a member of the moderately successful inter-school quiz team), and confidently proclaiming that Graham Greene wrote Wind in the Willows, without consulting with the rest of the team, who all knew the correct answer (Kenneth Grahame, in case you were wondering). It’s funny what sticks in the memory...