At the Brook

This is late afternoon on June 12th 1986. By this time the weather has cheered up and jumpers have been shed. Pictured and identifiable from left to right are: Quintin Lever, Katherine Holroyd and Jackie Stone at one table; Ant Reed and Paul Searles (German) sitting on the wall, and Jerry Gardner and Sarah Coyne at the far table.

If you have any pictures that could be added to the web log, please e-mail them to me and I will upload them.

The photographer - and possible supplier of Champagne

On 12th June 1986 Tim Read, who had graduated the year before and by this time was in gainful employment (hence the suit) dashed out of the office at lunch time to take the class photo (see below). We suspect he was also the one who supplied the Champagne that interested Jerry Gardner. Here Tim enjoys his packed lunch with Helen Willliams at his side. Jac Stone may be interested that Tim still has the tie - but not the hairstyle!

Celebrations on the library steps

Here we see Jerry Gardner employing dodgy tactics to wrestle a bottle of Champagne from the clutches of Sarah Coyne and Carolyn Penfold on 12th June 1986.

Picture perfect

I thought that the web log could be brightened up with a few more photos, so here are Diane Manifold, Helen Barrett, Mat Hindmarsh and Graham Grant outisde the library on 12th June 1986.

Update Sunday 22nd January 2006

Some interesting things have happened this week. First of all, I am pleased that this web log has become a little more interactive with a couple of people, including a mystery individual, making comments on the web log entries. A few more people have been in touch, including a couple of staff. The "in the know" graduate list has now grown to 25.

Unfortunately we have also discovered that some of the contact details that we have for our former classmates are out of date, and it looks like it is going to prove difficult to track some people down. We have found a number of phone numbers are simply wrong, and a few e-mail invitations have bounced, or not elicited replies. I've also been engaged in an interesting e-mail conversation with a Kate Wills who is not our Kate Wills. It was very kind of this person to let me know that I had mistakenly invited her to an event with which she had no connection. I was almost tempted to invite her along anyway!

Here is another plea for you to let me know if you are aware of the whereabouts of anyone on the second list across the page. If you are one of the people listed in the second list, please drop me a quick e-mail so that I know that you are in the know re 15th July 2006 (even if you can't make it on the day). We still have almost 5 months to find everyone. Let's see if we can do it!

Finally, yesterday I had an interesting e-mail from a 1986 English graduate who has approached us to ask about our event, and ask advice about running something similar for his cohort. I have replied with the suggestion that English 1986 might like to run something in parallel (but not jointly) on the same day as us, and I await a phone call from the person who contacted me to see if he would like to discuss this further.

Staff invitations

I've just checked the French Studies web pages and see that there are six staff from our era who are still employed by the University. I have e-mailed them to tell them about the event, and asked them if they could pass on the news to any former staff. I have also told Elizabeth Faillaize of our plans. She is now at Oxford. I met her at a work event last September and she was interested to hear of what we might do. It would be nice if some staff could come along on the day, as they did in 1996.

Awareness of event reaches 21 people

Our efforts to contact people over the past week have started to deliver results: we now have 21 people listed who know about the event on Saturday 15th July. This includes a number who live outside the UK. The furthest-flung graduate to contact us this week was Ian Calvert in South Africa. He passes on his best wishes to everyone. Ian may be far away, but for the time being Nikki Osborne, in the Falkland Islands, is person most distant from Birmingham.

Unfortunately we have found that some of the e-mail addresses that we have are no longer valid. If you are reading this and have the contact details for anyone listed in the second column on the left, please let me know. It would be a shame for them to miss out on attending the event because we were not able to tell them about it.

Contacting the cohort starts in earnest

We now have a wee team that has divided up the job of contacting people about the reunion on Saturday 15th July. Bev Neighbour is contacting people through their FriendsReunited entries. Helen Williams and Jackie Stone are contacting people by phone using current numbers where we know them, and last known numbers where we don't. My job is to contact people for whom we have e-mail addresses (by e-mail) or physical addresses (by postcard). We would like to move as many names as possible into the top colum on the right hand side of this page as possible in the next few weeks.