Charles Frean OWL 1962
Memories of Windlesham

I was at Windlesham from 1957 to 1962. I remember my time there with great fondness, especially for the warmth and wit of Mr. and Mrs. Charles (Malden). I remember many of my friends and the staff. My love of classical music was greatly promoted by regular sessions with Barry Forester Walker in the music room behind the gym (Harrow). I remember enacting the climactic “ides of March” scene from Julius Caesar (also in Harrow). I have too many vivid memories to mention them all ... friends I remember to this day include Marshall, Fletcher, Taverner, Nicholas, Cox, the Tajirian brothers (Vahan and Armen, whose parents lived in Baghdad where my parents were at the time), Shankar Dass (who read excerpts from Ian Fleming’s Dr. No to us after lights out), Kanjee, Karimjee, Wright, Pagliero, Allen, Walker, Bright and many more.

My uncle Charles (Frean) had taught at Windlesham before my time. My oldest brother Peter went there, as did my older brother Patrick. From Windlesham I went to Stowe, then to Reading University, where I majored in German with Linguistics and Psychology. I always enjoyed the precision and structure of Latin and Greek (as taught to me by the Maldens); the same applies to German, which I focused on at Stowe, and that perhaps was reflected by my subsequent career choice in the software industry, where in 1973 I learned programming at ICL in Reading.

My career in the software industry took me across the pond to Massachusetts in 1975. I worked for Wang, then Digital Equipment Corp for 17 years. In 1984 I jumped at the chance to learn all about the exciting new Apple Macintosh, which I used to develop software prototyping tools at Digital. I next worked as an independent developer of multimedia training CDs — this was before the internet really took a hold of distance learning. I subsequently worked both for Apple in retail product support and independently as an Apple product specialist. I also trained in sales and worked briefly in the renewable energy industry, helping several Massachusetts families ‘go solar’ and generate their own electricity using the latest solar panel technology.