About Last Night...

Published by Farleigh School on Tuesday 1st of July 2025

If the focus of Year 8 until the end of the first week of June has been on doing their best in their Common Entrance examinations, then the ensuing weeks are very much about making memories. These will become rose-tinted weeks, weeks we all recall from the long, hazy summers of our own youths. We know from our alumni too just how salient these weeks are cementing the lifelong friendships which were established as pupils at Farleigh.

Of course, there are many highlights amidst the Year 8 leavers’ programme but the annual recital on the final Wednesday of the academic year is certainly one of the most cherished. The evening inevitably centres around music, but the children are very much encouraged to perform in groups, and to include anyone who wishes to be involved. Each year, there are a couple of big group dances, featuring an ever-expanding array of mesmerising costumes of all colours and designs. It’s as if the children are just three years old again, raiding the dressing-up box at home. Long may that uninhibited approach to life last! At the end of the evening, the children come together as Farleigh leavers to perform one last time and it has become tradition for them to sing a well-known popular song with the words specially rewritten to mark their time at Farleigh.

It might be a bit rough and ready, but, after the Soirée the previous evening, we are all feeling a bit rough and ready and the whole thing is only put together in a couple of hours. Although they are always excellent (with some standout performances each year), the standard of the performances isn’t important. What matters on this occasion is the children, their families and staff coming together to celebrate the end of up to 10 years at Farleigh.

There is laughter, there is pride, there are tears aplenty. It’s a brilliantly wonderful, magical scene: the final song, sung through moistening eyes, with everyone huddled together in the amphitheatre in the warmth of the evening sun, which is soon to set, just like those leavers’ time at Farleigh. That’s a memory no one can ever forget, it’s halcyon.

Marcus Reeves, Director of Music