Harper Life Magazine 2020

Harper Life Nov 2020 — 15 Eileen Clark 1965 – JohnWard 1961 – 1963 Mark Noble 1999 – Guy Izzett Dip Poultry 1962 – 1963 Anne Smith and I, now both veteran poultry students, were about to go to Croatia in March, which we cancelled when Covid-19 started. Lockdown has exposed many different aspects of life! Being retired and involved in volunteering in Carlisle and our Wetheral Village, the cut-off immediately made me aware of the need to survive! After getting first things first: e.g. acquiring ‘slots’ for food supplies and achieving click and collect, my life settled into daily walk routines and gardening. The hot weeks in May made planting and socialising with tea parties in the garden most enjoyable. I now miss being involved in driving for Meals on Wheels in town and the normally busy village life of Flower Shows, Village Fetes, and the like. I took great delight in ringing our Church Bells 75 times (at least) to celebrate VE Day. Staggering how much has changed since my student days! I met Elizabeth Sunderland (1962 – 1964), a poultry student, and we married in 1973. Two daughters later and one grandson, we both live in Warkworth, Northumberland which is amazing. We were both reared, educated and worked mostly in our native Yorkshire. I spent most of my working life in the Animal Feed and Animal Health Industries, retiring in 2003 after many years with Pfizer Limited. We have visited Harper since on many occasions and I was proud to be largely responsible for placing the brass plaque behind the “new” doors at the front of the original main building. A group of us formed the Yorkshire Harper Adams Association in the 70s and on its winding down we donated the remaining funds to the College and hence the provision of the doors. I have been reassured that the plaque is still in place and hope it will survive for many years to come. It’s now several years since we attended the reunions but hope we can conjure up a significant event to return. Unfortunately quite a few of our original group are no longer able to attend and Northumberland to Shropshire return is a sizeable mileage but I think we could do it – so maybe one day we will meet up and admire the new Harper and thank the old one for shaping both our lives. Having worked at Pensthorpe Natural Park, a progressive nature reserve in North Norfolk owned by the founder of Jordan’s Cereal, Bill Jordan and his wife, Deb, for 16 years, including running the three companies based from the estate for the last 8 years, I’ve now moved into my first year running a predominantly tourism-focused consultancy company. I left Pensthorpe in February and was asked to become a Trustee of the Charity based there and more recently Company Secretary. I still work for Bill and Deb privately but was also asked to join Blue Sky Leisure, a large tourism business in the county, as a Non Exec Director. I am also acting Operations Manager at Jordan’s Mill overseeing the day-to-day operations whilst establishing a new management team to continue turning the business around. Outside of work, I’ve competed my qualifications to be a Practitioner in Life Coaching, Neuro Linguistic Programming and clinical hypnosis and my level 3 in ILM. I’ve been beating on the same shoot for 13 years working my Lab-x dogs. 2010 saw me project manage my greatest achievement, which was the demolition and rebuild of my family home. Aside from that, it’s travel including long weekends away in my VW camper van with my partner Lauren and her two lovely children. Becoming self-employed has allowed me to start finding a good work/life balance and time for the things in my life that are really important. After returning to Zimbabwe I worked in poultry for several years and had my own poultry farm for a few years ‘till squeezed out by the big multi-nationals. I moved from Zimbabwe to Australia and worked in ag-chemicals for several years until I realised there was a better way. I became self-employed for 20 years, supplying an IPM service to the orchard industry. Now retired in Perth and not aware of any ex-Harper students in Western Australia. I still consider my two years at Harper as perhaps the best most productive two years of my life. www.harper-adams.ac.uk