The Bale family’s connection to the Dragon dates back to 1951, when Peter Bridges (OD 1951) joined the School followed by his nephews Mark Bale (OD 1968), Nicholas Bale (OD 1970) and Jeremy Bale (OD 1982), who was later followed by their cousin Rupert Bridges (OD 1991). In this edition we take a walk with Nicholas and Mark, who compare a history of Dragons spanning 40 years.
Would you like to take a walk down Dragon Lane? We’d love to hear from you at development.office@dragonschool.org.
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My time at the Dragon School in three words
Mark: Stimulating, foundational, pride-inducing.
Nicholas: Exciting, adventurous, Sporting
Jeremy: Traditional Sporty Independent
When I was a young Dragon, I wanted to be
Mark: Architect
Nicholas: Professional sportsman
Jeremy: A Soldier
Eggy or marbles? Squares or Pin? Snakes or Rubix Cube?
Mark: Marbles/Conkers
Nicholas: Marbles, Conkers, piggyback fights!
Jeremy: Marbles/Conkers
At the top of my bucket list
Mark: To grow old with my family around me.
Nicholas: It’s a deep bucket but, now I’m seventy, it is rather boringly to remain fit and healthy and travel as much as possible while I can.
Jeremy: More Travel
My most memorable moment at the Dragon
Mark: Getting my first XV colours. (Also, learning to swim in the bottle-green Cherwell, tennis-match teas, day-dreaming during Latin in Upper 3A while listening to the drone of the tractor mowing the playing fields).
Nicholas: So many, from games on the playing field, kicking a ball around in the rink, playing marbles, swimming in the Cherwell suspended on a rope attached to a pole held by a master before graduating to an inflated bladder from a rugger ball stuffed in a satchell strapped to my back, to passing my clothes test. The staff swimming regattas, the staff creating a frozen water slide across the playground and launching myself down it as fast as possible, skating on School House lawn, crazy bonfire nights letting off fireworks on the playing fields, a school trip to an iron and steel works in South Wales, skiing trip to Le Mont Dore in France. I could go on!!
Jeremy: Firing a .22 rifle for the first time in the old air raid shelter down by the river Cherwell. Learning to swim in the Cherwell
My biggest achievement
Mark: Getting the Form Prize in Lower 5 jointly with David Brock (my intellectual superior by a long way).
Nicholas: Getting to the final of the national prep school’s tennis tournament held at Wimbledon. (Lost to David Stewart…another Dragon!) Passing Common Entrance!
Jeremy: At the Dragon, being good at shooting. In my subsequent life, my children and grandchildren
The advice I would give to my younger self
Mark: Try to stop worrying! (It’s only much later in life that you realise school staff are actually on your side, and not to be feared. Having said that, I’m not entirely sure that that was entirely true in the 1960s…).
Nicholas: To Believe in yourself more, to do what you want to do and not what people expect you to do or is required of you. Be who you want to be!
Jeremy: Don’t ever hang back, always “go for it”
In one sentence, what does it mean to be a Dragon?
Mark: It is inspiring to know that you’re part of an extraordinary community. I feel privileged (in my case) to have caught the end of the era of a principally classical education.
Nicholas: Belonging to a unique and undoubtedly privileged ‘club’. Great pride in being an O.D.
Jeremy: As my siblings also went to the Dragon it feels like a shared experience from which we all took completely different things! For me, an understanding that life is very multi-faceted and we all have our own different strengths
Since my Dragon days…
Mark: I’ve always looked back on my Dragon days as formative, in the sense that the way things were done at the Dragon seemed to me at the time to be the way that things should be done. The rest of my life hasn’t lived up to that, as I’ve found that things are done differently elsewhere. But I’m pleased that I learnt the Dragon way first. I’ve profited hugely, mainly just privately, from having done so much Latin and Greek at the Dragon. These Classics weren’t the foundation of Western Civilisation for nothing, and I hope that they still figure prominently in the curriculum.
Nicholas: After Uppingham and Durham University I returned to Oxford working in surveying and estate agency before moving into property renovation.
Jeremy: I focused on the arts and outward bound pursuits as it is clear that is where my strengths lie and it’s what I love.
Would you like to take a ‘walk down Dragon Lane’? Please get in touch with the Development team; we’d love to hear from you.
