FRIENDS OF TOWER HOUSE

A Message from FOTH

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Phew!! Our second year at the helm of FOTH has gone by and as always we have had a fantastic time and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. We feel incredibly proud of being in the centre of the wonderful Tower House community and we could not hope for a more supportive and enthusiastic group of families!

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Last Autumn we were delighted to kick off the year with Mr Geary saying that he would be putting on another one of his notorious (for all the right reasons) shows.  The Staff Review was a massive hit and the hall was packed for two nights – many laughs and higher than expected bar takings ensued…certainly a hilarious event that will go down as legendary in Tower House folk law!

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The Christmas fair is always hugely popular with the boys and much plotting went into persuading Father Christmas to pop along with his reindeer. Our blood pressure could only just cope with the Sleigh parking issues that ensued (known in FOTH circles now as ‘Reindeergate’ – thank Heavens for the ever calm and collected Mr Peyton!). Santa, the bucking Christmas pudding and the usual and hugely popular stalls helped to create a really fun afternoon.

Thames Rowing Club was transformed in March into a fairytale venue for our Strictly Fabulous night, an evening of dinner and ballroom dancing - many thanks to all who came and to everyone who supported the auction. We were delighted to raise £11,000 and even more delighted to contribute £2,250 of this to Tower House charities.

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Our last major social event of the school year was the Summer Barbecue –proving just as much fun as ever. It’s always a balancing act keeping drinks flowing, hog roast roasting and boys from spontaneously combusting from excitement whilst we try to keep all the balls in the air! However yet again your amazing class reps helped to pull it all together and make it work. We were grateful to our sponsors Knight Frank for coming along to serve free Pimms, which unsurprisingly proved very popular! Don’t forget that Knight Frank are offering 5% of their fees to FOTH on any house sales made by the Tower House network.

 

Beyond these bigger events which rely heavily on our wonderful class reps, as you know they have also laid on Junior and Senior school discos for the boys and helped raise a lot of money for the school charities with sweet stalls, cake stalls and themed dressing up days.  Thank you so much to everyone, it’s been a wonderful year and we will miss you being our reps! We very much look forward to welcoming our new team in September and can’t wait to get to know you all.

 

There are a number of additional people who help us each year to whom we would also like to give huge thanks:

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Gale Heath, our amazing Treasurer who also created the new FOTH website

Jenine Kershaw for another year as our fabulous Secretary

Sole Nasi – our graphic design guru

Vicki Martini – Decorator Extraordinaire

Martin Beaumont – Unofficial Marketing Relations

Bex Slack – who is responsible for astonishing second hand uniform sales of £1,839 (Don’t tell Bentalls!)

Jane Bhandal – for very kindly agreeing to manage the FOTH website from the Autumn

Jenny James – who is our festive expert guiding the annual Christmas wreath stall

And finally….an all important finance update:

 

Our priority has always been to put on fantastic events and to give boys and parents opportunities to have fun together. But raising money and spending it is pretty nice, too… So, we have been delighted this year to raise a net income of £18,293 (which includes generous sponsorship from Knight Frank) and even more so to be able to provide some ‘nice to haves’ for the boys: a significant contribution to the school play, a new kiln for the art department, providing one of the interactive whiteboards to help with the roll out across the school, new MIDI keyboards, and we have a pot waiting to be spent on new violins.

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Thank you again for all your support this year and we look forward to the next!

 

Have a great summer everyone.

 

Best wishes,

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Anna Corben and Vicky Singlehurst

Co-Chairs, Friends of Tower House