Getting to know... Eddie Gaynor

Eddie Gaynor is the head teacher of The Astley Cooper School in St Agnells Lane. He has recently helped push forward the East Dacorum Co-operative Learning Partnership alongside Longdean and Adeyfield Schools.

What is your favourite food?

Salad

What’s the most played song on your ipod?

‘I Get a Kick Out of You’, by Frank Sinatra.

First sung in the 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes, Sinatra’s is probably the most notable of dozens of covers.

Your favourite quote?

‘A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is a series of defeats’ – George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945)

Favourite thing to do to relax?

Reading

thing you hate doing the most?

An income tax return

Invite five famous people for dinner, past or present – who and why?

1. Ernest Hemingway

2. F Scott Fitzgerald

3. James Joyce

4. Ezra Pound

5. Gertrude Stein

All to talk about writing and living in Paris in the 1920s

if the world was ending in 2014, what would you do differently?

I would spend more time with my children

Your favourite thing to do or place to visit in dacorum?

Working at Astley Cooper School

if you could witness any event, past, present or future, what would it be and why?

My parents’ wedding day, because we had no photos of it

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A cowboy

what was the last film you watched?

The Tree of Life – a 2011 American experimental drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain.

The film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man’s childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas

what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

Leaving home for the first time

What is the best/worst gift you’ve ever given/received?

The best gift was a photo album given to me by my daughters on Father’s Day

how would you like to be remembered?

As a good father