The Members’ Weekend programme followed its customary course. The Autumn Golf Tournament (reported on separately) took place on Friday 3rd November, blessed by a fine day among a succession of wet ones. That evening saw gatherings at The Hydro Hotel (the senior group); at La Locanda (mostly school joiners in 1958/1959); and at The Lamb (the younger group, relatively). All these gatherings featured groups of contemporaries enjoying each other’s company and sharing memories of EGS and Eastbourne from fifty, sixty and even seventy years ago; long may this continue!

Moving on to Saturday 4th November, sixteen OGs braved the uncertain weather – which relented sufficiently at the critical time – for the short remembrance service at the Memorial Flagstaff outside the entrance to the former EGS building at King’s Drive conducted by Canon Geoffrey Baulcomb. Proceedings began with the lowering of the flag to half-mast and laying a wreath of poppies and included the reading of the names of those associated with the School who lost their lives during the First and Second World Wars and the exhortation of remembrance.

The Annual Lunch was again well-attended (49 members), though a handful of late dropouts for health reasons meant that the number present was a little down on 2022. Attendees included one OG there for the first time and others coming after a gap of several years. The bar did its usual good trade for more than an hour prior to the lunch, so everyone had the opportunity to be well-lubricated before sitting down to the excellent food, efficiently served by the REGC team. The raffle arranged by James Hazelden, and with prizes – predominantly alcoholic, no surprise there – donated by attendees, raised £285 for Blackburn Vail Trust funds.

The formalities of the AGM were handled swiftly and efficiently. The usual reports came from the Hon Secretary, Hon Treasurer (including on the Blackburn Vail Trust) and Social Committee (Golf Competitions and other events). The project that Fred Reeve was undertaking to scan and digitise all EGS Magazines and various other documents had stalled in the autumn of 2022 and had not been resumed because of Fred’s death in March 2023; in consequence, the anticipated flow of potential new material for the website had not come to hand and there had been relatively few additions to the site. The magazines and documents that Fred had both at his home and stored at two other locations were now with the Hon Secretary, who would be assessing and making recommendations to the Executive on what is worth retaining and how the scanning and digitising exercise might be concluded.
Regarding membership, the notional roll of members stood at more than 400, but only around 70% of that number were receiving emails sent out by the Hon Secretary through MailChimp, the email addresses of the others having been “cleaned” automatically because a threshold of undelivered emails (hard bounces) had been reached. What might be done to attempt to re-establish email contact with these members was work in progress for the Executive.

The Annual Weekend in 2024 will be on 8th/9th November.