Life is hard. It is meant to be so. The difficulty is not an aberration but the very condition that confers worth upon achievement. Success lightly won is success lightly valued; that which is wrested from adversity carries a deeper savour.
The only true failure is the abandonment of the struggle itself. To persist, to rise again, to refuse the counsel of despair: these are the lessons that endure, and they are best learned not from theory but from those who have practised them under fire or in the long, unglamorous grind of duty.
How a school hour works
In a classroom the session is one hour. Two veterans speak. Each has fifteen minutes for a first-person account of service. The remaining thirty minutes belong to the children — questions and answers, not a lecture.
When we meet at a pub the tone is the same, only the refreshments change: tea and a bacon roll in ordinary surroundings. For winter evenings there is now a pub format of its own, the winter Yarning series, hosted by Rory in any welcoming pub or space, with summer sessions to follow in beer gardens.
The first school visits in Oxfordshire are being booked now. Names and dates will be published on the events page as each booking is confirmed.
We start in Oxfordshire. The aim is national. Supported by a Civic Future Action Grant.
Yours sincerely,
Rory Hanrahan