The Chronicle

Dear Parents

A highlight of this term thus far must be our wonderful First Holy Communion Mass at St Francis' Church earlier today.  My sincere congratulations, personally and on behalf of the school, to Samuel, Saffron, Amelia, Seamus, Francesca and Thomas.  They all looked very smart and received the sacrament with the utmost sincerity and reverence; a real credit to themselves, their families and school.   I must extend my kind thanks to various people including family members, the whole school community, Mr Hester, Mrs Griffin and fellow trustees, Mrs O’Farrell, Cmdre Warner and Mrs Lane for joining the communicants on their special day.  My sincere gratitude goes to Mrs Jackson-Mayne and Mrs Simmonds for all their hard work in helping to prepare the children for today and our catering team.  I should also like to thank Father Kevin for all that he has done for the children on their faith journey and for all that he continues to do for the good of our school community.   Thank you, also, to Mrs Olden and the chamber choir, the office, maintenance and catering team and our wonderful altar servers and readers at Mass.  We hope that everyone who attended enjoyed the day and that they will continue to keep their young family members, who made the First Holy Communion, in their prayers.

As this is the first Chronicle since our return from the Junior 6 visit to France, I would like to mention the wonderful behaviour of the children who participated.  They enjoyed the excursions, the travel, the culture and being together as a group.  It was a pleasure to be able to experience this learning opportunity with the children.  Thank you to all the staff who accompanied me on this trip and those who remained at school to provide cover.

Well done to our stars of the week on your fine achievement – keep doing your best, and being the best, you can!  Isabella P was the recipient of our RE book of the week for her wonderful piece of writing on Archbishop Bernard Longley.  I am delighted that she is being recognised in this regard.

Isabella, along with Andrew G, Andrea Z and Andrea’s sister Erika all gave up part of their half-term Saturday to serve at Mass on the occasion of the investiture of one of our parishioners as a Papal Knight of the Equestrian Order of St Gregory.  Peter Rand, MBE, receiving the award, has worked so hard for the Friends of the Holy Land charity, amongst much other good work in the parish, and is known to the pupils of Crackley Hall after delivering an assembly at school last year.  Archbishop Longley celebrated the Mass and presented Mr Rand with his award.  Our altar servers certainly did us proud.

Next week will be another busy week at Crackley Hall including the exciting trip to Twycross Zoo for Reception Class, the ISA athletics, the ISA Cricket tournament which we will be hosting and Little Crackers sports day.  Preparations for the school production are progressing well and I am sure it will be another spectacular performance by all.  For those parents who have yet to attend one of our productions, you will not be disappointed and tickets will be available to purchase from the Spa Centre in Leamington soon (look out for the online link).

I look forward to seeing some Crackley Hall families at the Kenilworth Show tomorrow - it really is a fantastic event, very well organised, with so much to see, do and eat.  Please visit the Crackley Hall stand if you are planning on going to the show. I can highly recommend the show to everyone - I hope that the good weather continues over the weekend.  This event is one of the highlights of the local community – a few of our Crackley Hall farming families are heavily involved in the organising of it – the Minshulls, the Lucas’ and the Farquharsons, amongst others have spent months in planning and getting ready for tomorrow.  Look out for their sheep on show and their home-made treats on display in the competitions.  It is a super occasion!

After a depleted Springbok rugby side were narrowly beaten by an equally depleted Welsh side last week in one of the worst games of international rugby I have seen, I don’t hold out much hope for the South Africans when they host England tomorrow afternoon.  Well done to the Welsh though.  Home advantage will not matter!  England came back well in the second cricket test against Pakistan and the football team looked fairly comfortable against Costa Rica.  Let’s hope that England can change the fortunes of their recent World Cup campaigns (if we dare call them campaigns) when it gets under way in Russia next week.

I wish everyone a very happy and restful weekend.

God bless,

Robert Duigan