1971 UNKNOWN - "Set Fair with the Grangers" an interview with Alex Ritchie

This year's Fair Queen, Jennifer Snedden, and the principal characters of her royal court are all pupils of Grange School.  It is in fact particularly fitting that this year's Fair should be a Grange Fair, for the Fair day will also mark the retirement of Grange School's well known Headmaster, Mr. Alexander Ritchie, and it is an undisputed fact that there are few men who have done more for the Fair than Alex Ritchie.

Mr. Ritchie's first connection with the Fair came in 1912, when as a very small boy, only just begun school, he was chosen by the two Miss Dotts, Bo'ness Public School famous and much beloved infant mistresses, to be one of their presentees.  "I was clad from head to foot in a bright red suit, covered with little green leaves," recalls Mr. Ritchie.  "For the Public School's presentees that year were the Babes in the Wood.  The other poor lost Babe was Jennie Ainslie and together we wandered hand in hand through the streets of Bo'ness.  The crowds seemed huge and I can still remember the cheers as we went up to bow to Queen Annie Peace from the Public School."

Next year Mr. Ritchie swooped his red suit as one of the Babes in the Wood for one of the red caps worn in those days by all Public School pupils, both boys and girls, when they went to the Fair and together with his classmates from the second infant room watched the crowning of Alice McNaught from St. Mary's.  But for him the highlight of the Fair was not the coronation ceremony, impressive though it no doubt was, but the thrill of being allowed to ride around the procession route on a hay cart and of looking down through the spaces in the slats at the big red wheels turning round and round.  In 1914, when Academy Queen, Helen Grant, was crowned, he was not so lucky, because by then he had moved up from the infants and as a big boy in Primary One was considered old enough to walk round the whole route.  "But in those days we thought nothing of walking despite the dust and the tar which always seemed to stick to the new white rubbers which were considered an essential part of our Fair outfits, "adds Mr. Ritchie.

It was however, to be quite a few years before the tar was to stick to Mr. Ritchie's shoes again, because less than three weeks after that warm July Fair Friday in 1914, Britain went to war with Germany.  By 1919 when the return of peace made it possible for Joan Campbell from Borrowstoun School to be crowned as the first post-war Queen, Alex Ritchie was ready for the Academy, and when it came that school's turn to provide the main characters he was chosen as Lord in Waiting to Queen Catherine Sneddon.  The Lord in Waiting's most important duty is to escort the presentees when they mount the platform to bow to the Queen and Mr ritchie remembers in particular accompanying Infant Mistress Grace Ross's choice of presentees.  "Typical of her sense of humour, instead of the nursery rhyme characters such as Bo-Peep and Dick Whittington and his Cat, which were the usual presentees in those days, Miss Ross had cast two of her infants as Fish Supper and Vinegar.  It was a dreadful job negotiating the steep stairs up to the throne with the wee boy who represented Vinegar, for he was dressed as a giant bottle with only tiny holes for his feet.  My struggles to guide him up and down to the throne without 'a spill' obviously did not pass unnoticed, because the following Friday the Journal commented that, "The young Lord in Waiting seemed inexperienced in handling a bottle'."

Mr. Ritchie remembers 1925, not only because of his role in the Fair, but also because it was in the October of that year that he began his studies at Edinburgh University.  By 1929 he had graduated, completed his teacher training at Moray House and returned to Bo'ness to join the staff of the Grange School in time to join in the preparations for the crowning of Grange School Queen, Marion Kilpatrick.

On that Fair day, forty-two years ago, as the newest and youngest member of the Grange School's staff, Mr. Ritchie could hardly have foreseen the time when he would become headmaster of that same school.  Now on the eve of his retirement Mr. Ritchie has given pride of place on the main stairway of the new extension to the Grange to a display of photographs of all the Fair Queens chosen from among its pupils.

"I can remember them all apart from Ina Ritchie, who was Queen in 1911,"  recalls Mr. Ritchie.  "There's Annie Currie; she's Mrs. Serafini now.  And Andrea Walker, the first Grange School Queen from the primary school after the closure of the secondary department following the opening of the new Academy.  Then in 1946 it was the Grange School which had the honour to restart the Fair after the was, when Sadie Potter was crowned Queen."

All the colour photographs, of which Mr. Ritchie is so proud, have been presented to the Grange School by Mr. Archibald Buchanan, who was Queen Ina Ritchie's Champion away back in 1911.  In addition, Mr Buchanan has also arranged with Mr. Ritchie to have photographs taken of this year's Queen, and of all future Grange School Queens, so that the school at which he was once a pupil, will always have a complete record of its links with the Fair.

What makes Mr. Ritchie even more impressed by Mr. Buchanan's generous gift of the pictures and of a sum of money which has been invested to provide a gift for every future Grange School Queen, is the fact that Mr. Buchanan has for many years stayed south of the border in Skipton, Yorkshire.  Despite his long exile, however, Mr. Buchanan has always remained in close touch with the Fair through the younger members of his family who still stay in Bo'ness, and it is this family interest in the Fair which Mr. Ritchie claims has always most impressed him with the Fair.

"Bo'ness Fair is not like any other local gala days, which have customs grafted on to them simply to provide something to do.  Bo'ness Fair is a tradition, a tradition which every Bo'ness child is brought up to respect, a fact which is clearly demonstrated by the amount of self discipline which the boys and girls show as they carry out their duties during the coronation ceremony, "says Mr. Ritchie.  "The Fair is also important for the way in which it brings exiled Bo'nessians back home, and for me no matter how famous the show business personalities appearing at the Royal Revels in the Douglas Park, the top of the bill attraction will always be simply the opportunity to wander round meeting old acquaintances whom I haven't  seen for years."

One way in which Mr. Ritchie has managed to maintain family interest in the Fair as far as Grange School parents are concerned, has been to greatly increase the number of presentees so that as far as possible all Grange School pupils have the chance to be a character at the Fair at least once during their school careers.  It was in fact Mr. Ritchie who introduced the new style presentees, now adopted by all the other schools, when he presented his all singing, all dancing, Black and White Minstrels, which many people still recall with enthusiasm.  So successful, indeed, were the young Minstrels that the group was kept together for several months and its appearances raised sums of money for various local charities.

Mr. Ritchie's other big contribution to the development of the Fair as a major spectacle was his decision to transform the exterior of his school on the Fair E'en into a floodlit fairy wonderland.  This effort proved so successful that it, too, was taken up by other schools, and this year Mr. Ritchie will keep up the new tradition which he began by decorating the Grange School as a castle fit for young Queen Jennifer, and guarded, of course, by all the toy soldiers who will be this year's Grange School Presentees.

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