HEADMASTER'S BLOG NUMBER 26 - AUDI PARTNER

Last week, after one of my heart-stoppingly awful Sixth Form lectures on Pre-Socratic philosophy, a question emerged that would drive even Xenophanes to the Dog and Duck. To wit: what make of car should the Headmaster of Bromsgrove School own? Consider the dilemma. Too fancy and I’m an over-inflated, preening establishment wannabe with a corrupt value system and a bar tab at the East India Club. Too modest and I’m a self congratulatory hippy whose public efforts to send others on a guilt trip show me up as a squalid little leftie who should know better than to make a crass statement out of his own inadequacy. (You will have gathered this whole business worries me). Now for ten years I drove an old Rover which transcended stereotyping on the grounds nobody quite understood whether I was guilty of avuncular affectation, senility or hipster retro-chic. But it broke. And I’ve had to buy a new car. A lot hangs on this. More next time.

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Last Tuesday’s annual Bromsgrove School Foundation Lecture at the RAF Club in London was delivered quite superbly by a parent who also happens to be an Air Marshall and Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff. Indeed, it was while reading out the resumé of the Air Marshall (which includes a CBE, a DFC and a US Bronze Star Medal) that I realised I still have my A level results on my CV. Floundering in a dreary sea of middle aged worthlessness, I got home late and subsequently dreamt that I was standing up proudly in Routh Hall and giving the School a holiday because I’d passed my Cycling Proficiency Test.

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The following evening, standing shoulder to haircut with Dr. Thompson, I addressed parents in Routh Hall as to the relative merits of IB and A level. Both have their place and we are blessed with parents who understand that. But there’s no doubt from my in tray that some people still think that those studying the IB find trees threatening and the sun too loud. Such pupils also walk in geometric circles, translate Mr. Bowen’s newsletter into Latin at parties, and wear antennae on their heads thinking they are water molecules. My reply has remained constant ..... What’s not to like?

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This week’s Nadine Dorries Award for shunning the limelight goes to The Executive Suite. “The what?” you cry as one. The Executive Suite. A misnomer that promises wooden panels and sumptuous leather armchairs, but delivers an aesthetic experience better suited to hosting a Llanelli 4ths post match punch-up. I am currently in the process of meeting different pupil constituencies (Prep School monitors, new boarders, House monitors etc.) over a series of ask-the-Head-anything lunches, and despite the superhuman efforts of our catering staff, there’s zip one can do to brighten up my repeated meals in this ninth circle of hell. Now I have vowed to do to the Executive Suite what the Romans did to Carthage, but that’s some way off. So please don’t fall for it. Our facilities are sensational, but if you ever receive an invitation to an event in the “Executive Suite” just say you’ve been kidnapped by ninjas.

HEADMASTER'S BLOG NUMBER 25 - AM I DOUBLE PARKED BY THE CURBSTONE OF YOUR HEART?

Well it’s finally happened. I had a conversation this morning with a new teacher in the mistaken belief they were a pupil. But then I’ve known for a long time that age is nibbling my synapses. Among other things, I’ve started crying to country music lyrics (and surely we’ve all taken a moment over If my Nose were full of Nickels, I’d Blow it all on You), but I was minded of Kurt Vonnegut’s Line: True terror is to wake up one morning to discover your high School class is running the country. Not funny, Kurt: at Oxford I was an exact contemporary of David, Boris and George. No, I didn’t know them and again, no, they never invited me to that club. So, was I left with an inferiority complex? Yes, but not a very good one.

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Page House was opened last week. Now just in case people not involved in Prep boarding think this is merely the final raisin on Bromsgrove’s buccellato, think again. It’s the Waldorf Astoria in there. If it weren’t for the giveaway that most of the besuited people within are under five foot tall, you could be forgiven for ordering Singapore Slings from the Common Room. And I hope you all approve the large stone colonnade on the west side of the building. This Athenian Agora touch is designed to imbue the Prep pupils with Socratic wisdom and Periclean aspirations. It also protects the windows from rugby balls.

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I had a strange encounter on Conway Road a few evenings ago. A passing gentleman berated me for parking my car with two of its wheels on the pavement. Quite right too. Except it wasn’t my car. I just happened to be standing next to it. I told him this but he wouldn’t have it. Curiosity and masochism compelled me to stick around and take the rest of the tirade like a man. At the end the stranger threatened to have the police tow the car away. I said what a good idea. He told me not to get clever. I said I’d never dream of it and repeated that it wasn’t my car. But he wouldn’t have that and off he went again, threatening the car with this, that and the other. I said it wasn’t my car. We were there for a while.

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Following the inspirational, solemn ceremonies of our Remembrance Sunday (at which the CCF were quite superb), the Pre-Prep Remembrance Service took place the next day. Imaginative, moving and respectful though the event was, the lingering memory for many in the audience will be the home footage of a six year old interviewer. After – inevitably - asking his great granddad how one went to the loo on a wartime bomber, the little chap became a hysterical wreck when he learnt his hero poured poo over the enemy from a great height. When you’re six, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

HEADMASTER’S BLOG NUMBER 24 – Platoonic Love

Methuselah was nibbling Farley’s Rusks the last time I blogged. Anyway ... Our new Officer Commanding of the Combined Cadet Force asked me to announce in Routh Hall assembly that after a live firing exercise, Bromsgrove cadets went on to excel themselves in the administration of First Aid.

Should I be worried?

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At the height of Northern Ireland’s troubles, I recall somebody saying something like: “Anybody who claims to know what’s going on here doesn’t understand what’s happening.” A few weeks ago I felt much the same way at the HMC Heads’ annual conference in Belfast. This event is where the Fu Manchus of Britain’s finest independent schools gather, each eager to assure the world that leading an HMC School was a moral notch above drug peddling or gun running. And yet ... we were housed in a building proudly marketed by the locals as “Europe’s most bombed hotel” (take that, Holiday Inn Sarajevo); we had our annual dinner in the Titanic Centre, billed as the home of “The world’s most famous disaster”; and I had my hair cut by a Mr. Blast.  

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A few weeks ago I received a letter of complaint saying the School was high handed because it didn’t listen to the parents. Now that would be fine had these parents complained to me before. But they hadn’t. This was the first time I’d ever heard from them. So, their first and only complaint to me, at any rate, was “you don’t listen to complaints.” Hmmm. It reminded me of a response I received to a survey I sent out in my first year here to gauge how I was performing in the eyes of the staff. Teachers had to answer a number of questions, and I was intrigued to receive this from a legendary grumpster (who left many years ago):

Do you find the Headmaster approachable:                                   No

Have you tried to approach him with an issue:                              No

If the answer to the previous question was “No”, why not?      No point.

Gotta love it.

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Monday 17^th September. First day of my annual trip to the Far East. I had been awake for thirty three hours when I reached the lobby of my hotel. My mobile phone rang. Extreme tiredness had affected my brain and so somehow I answered the phone without cutting off the caller in the process. This has never happened before. To my horror and amazement I heard somebody speaking. I felt like Alexander Graham Bell. I was close to collapse, the lobby was noisy and I could smell fish balls. The voice on the end of the phone said it was the BBC, and would I offer a view on Michael Gove’s pronouncement regarding the abolition of GCSEs. I was intending to say that now wasn’t a great moment but I realised the voice on the phone was saying “You are live in ten ... nine .. eight ...”. I’m not entirely sure what happened next. There was an interview of sorts I know, but I sensed increasing bemusement on the part of the interrogator as chronic fatigue syndrome plus my increasingly vocal attempts to wrestle my overnight bag back from a fearsomely zealous porter intruded upon the conversation. I fear at one point I might have asked the nation to leave their things in my bedroom. Anyway, it was all over pretty quickly and I’m not entirely sure they’ll be using me again.

HEADMASTER'S TWENTY-THIRD BLOG - AHHH, GYM LAD

Salvete. Welcome to the first Headmaster’s blog of academic year 2012/3. It’s not The Brothers Karamazov, I’ll grant you, (where Dostoyevsky took two years, I’ve been known to whack this baby out over break time) but there are fierce creatures in rooms above me who insist all good schools need a blog. (Or was it all schools need a good blog? In which case I’m toast). Anyway, they come over shirty if I don’t hit the qwerty, so tippy-tap is the order of the hour. What’s in it for me? you ask. Oodles. My loyal readers have before now won champers, relived the Wurzels golden moments (sic), and voted in that crucial Halle Orchestra versus Sugarbabes debate . I venture to hope that everything you never wanted to know about Bromsgrove is here. Who says great Schools need to wear starch every day? Welcome one and all.

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Every year, at the end of August, just before term proper begins, I journey to Oxford with a handful of staff, all the new international pupils and those feral Antipodeans upon whom we have taken pity by employing them as gappies. It’s a trip that opens minds and hearts. Not really. Once we’ve parked up, Mammon’s hapless slaves (the majority) actually go shopping while a dissenting cadre of keen beans and future monitors comes with me around my old college. Upon breathing the rarefied air of my alma mater, I adopted hushed tones and told one innocent looking new girl that the quadrangle on which I had lived was 700 years old. Her immediately asking if I’d witnessed its construction nearly led to an unseemly punch up.

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Last week, during my opening Prep School Chapel talk – an event I like to think makes the Gettysburg address sound like a Teletubby monologue – I began to motivate the seven year olds by telling them that on my first day of School, aged five, I was locked out of the classroom and duly started crying. I went on to discuss why I had nothing to offer the ancient Romans, how the Yugoslavs had conquered Australia and why it didn’t get any easier as you got older. As the youngsters filed out in bewildered silence, staring at me with suspicious eyes as they passed through the Chapel porch, I could see I had made an early connection. Establishing bonds like this is very important when running a large School.

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As the molar fears the drill, so I dread the School gym. Last week I clambered aboard a cross-trainer (this is a machine, not an angry Mr. Mullan) and saw on the television screen in front of me a fearsome, hunky dude yelling at me to work harder. I looked at him and thought, “Yes, darn it - with a little more work, I too could have a body like that.” Anyway, it transpired a few seconds later that what I had been looking at was the “before” model. For those who don’t know, that’s the tubby guy prior to embarking on his training programme. Suddenly the “after” model appeared: a block of human granite with a trilobite stuck to his midriff. I got off the machine forlornly and went down to the cafe for a bun.

HEADMASTER'S TWENTY-SECOND BLOG - WORKING OVER-THYME

Civilisations have risen and toppled back into oblivion since my last blog. I’m cool with that: there’s a School to run. Alas, the marketing Furies upstairs have a rather more contemporary, not to say aggressive, take on the significance of blogging. Indeed, those little incisors that were grazing my heels last week have now become gaping maws, closing around my stumbling legs, and threatening me with torments that would have Hieronymus Bosch turning queasy. So, since I value my knee caps, let us take the M5 to the Three Counties Showground and the Malvern Spring Gardening Show.

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Q) “What do you get if you divide the circumference of an apple by its diameter?”

A) “Apple Pi.

With dextrous wit and urbane sophistication I entertained visitors at Bromsgrove School’s award winning garden. And not just any award: this was a first prize in a show visited by tens of thousands of people. I was in awe of the exhibit, because last time I mowed my lawn I found a wheelbarrow. Two female members of staff and pupils from all three sections of the School should be feeling immensely proud of themselves. The theme was sustainability and bees, so some of our smallest dressed up for the occasion in bee outfits. My suggestion that I too would look mighty fine as a bumble bee excited people less than I had hoped.

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Gardens have not been kind to me, as I told the Prep School in Chapel only last week. When I was the same age as our little Pre-Prep bees, I auditioned for The Selfish Giant. There were numerous speaking parts, so imagine my disappointment when I was told I would not be the Giant, nor The North Wind, nor one of the children, but the tree. I rallied a little when I realised that the tree was actually home to the boy Jesus, and that the giant would fall dead at my base, upon which moment I would shower him with blossom. It wasn’t King Lear, I’ll grant you, but I told my teacher it was an honour to be THE TREE. I wouldn’t let her down.

“No, Christopher,” said Miss. “Not ‘the’ tree; ‘a’ tree.”

They’d only gone and created another tree, not in the original story, whose job was to stand in silence for the entire play with his arms out. As my fellow tree dropped coloured paper over the giant’s head, I shed silent tears. It was like auditioning for the Sound of Music and being cast as an Alp.

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Now that I’m a School gym-freak (sic), I’m catching up on contemporary dance music while falling off machines. Sadly, I’m of an age when all I hear is a cracking riff from my jeunesse doree ruined after ten seconds by some wannabe gangsta from da hood rapping over the top. And why is everybody called something like “Slee-Z featuring Dod –G” ? Why can’t they just play the original James Brown? And why am I so old?

THE HEADMASTER'S TWENTY-FIRST BLOG - GRAND DESIGNS

Nearly three years ago, in a small seminar room in Oxford, the scary ladies and I came up with a masterplan for the neglected Worcester Road end of the campus and for Prep School boarding. The scheme lacked humility. Many governing bodies would have thrown it out. Typically, our governing body did not. They asked for details.

Almost done. Sure there’s some touching up required, but every new building of the Worcester Road development is now operational. I’ve just hung out and had a cup of well posh coffee in Café 1553: you’ll love it.  And yesterday I went to the new gym and entertained guests by screaming “Make it stop, oh please make it stop!” a lot. I’ve seen people dancing in the shiny studios; Mary Windsor has been thriving since Christmas: Oakley is a joy; the Hospitality suite last week witnessed its first major event for around 150 people; the arena has already been booked by national sports teams and will host the England Schools hockey finals next year. Page House (possibly the UK’s largest Prep School boarding house) will be finished for September, as will the new extension to the Health Centre.

On it goes. Energy and purposeful change remain our mantra.

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During the Easter holidays I found myself gettin’ down wid da crew in the newly built but as yet uninhabited Oakley House. By this I mean I was helping the Bursar and Director of Estates attach labels to the girls' pigeon holes. Me at my demotic best you might think. Not so. I immediately bagsied the bourgeois job of putting the labels on the pigeon holes, while Bursar and Head of Estates acted as the lumpenproletariat by peeling the labels from their backing and handing them to me in alphabetical order. However I was soon demoted because in the Bursar’s prosaic eyes I wasn’t putting the labels on straight enough. Get her. Anyway, the Bursar now took over and, despite my protestations, I was unceremoniously relegated to peeling labels and handing them to her in sequence. Relations were now frosty. Worse was to come. But let’s pause for a moment.

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Next week the statue arrives. The final aesthetic flourish to the Worcester Road project. Inexplicably, none of the governors seemed interested in a fifty foot statue of me, designed along Stalinist lines, with a square-jawed, flag-carrying Headmaster striding boldly forward, grateful children clutching his bronze boots. As a result we’ve had to go for something else. Herbert Read said that “Art is pattern informed by sensibility”: the only definition of art I have come across that resonates with me. It is evident in the sculpture that is set to appear next Tuesday. Please like it.

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Back to labelgate. As the Bursar neared the end of the job (and there are lots of girls in Oakley), I discovered I had sometime earlier dropped a label and therefore overlooked a name. A name that began with a letter significantly nearer “A” than “Z”. I suddenly remembered what it felt like to kick a football through your mum’s kitchen window. Reverting to the passive tense, as one always does in these situations, I informed the Bursar in a mousy voice that there had been a tinsy-winsy error and that she’d need to peel off the labels and start again. In the following moments I had time and cause to muse on Christopher Morley’s observation that a man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life. I felt like a king.

HEADMASTER’S TWENTIETH BLOG – CARRY ON BROMSGROVE

I went on Mumsnet for the first time last week. Not because I’m becoming a mum - no gags about the midriff please - but because I heard the site was a cornucopia of gossip from the chattering classes about independent schools. And it is. Oh boy it is. But where’s Bromsgrove? Mamans, I am sorry to report we are all but invisible. The only thing I could find about Bromsgrove School was a lady saying she “wouldn’t touch it with a barge poll” (sic). Now while I’m perfectly happy not to be touched by this good woman’s nautical election process, I was rather peeved to see so little in the way of scandalous and unfounded rumour. I felt quite left out. Come on mums. I’ll start you off:  “Bromsgrove’s been going downhill ever since Michelle Obama said it wasn’t right for her daughters....” 

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Last week I saw a revival of Billy No Buzz in the Pre-Prep. The actors were three. Age not number. Much as Aristotle defined the essence of great tragedy, I have applied my own rules to determine whether a Pre-Prep work is successful or not. My criteria for an outstanding production at this age are: no crying, no fighting and no falling off stage. I am delighted to report that the players adhered to the dramatic unities and that the morning was a triumph, darling.

Q. Who is the patron saint of actors?

A. St. John the too, too Divine.

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Only one person wrote in regarding the appalling grammatical error in the last blog. You’re a very polite audience.

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Eager to assuage my high brow longings, I followed Billy No Buzz with Pirates of the Curry Bean. The eleven- year- old Sid James and Charles Hawtrey doppelgangers confirmed that what happens to a child’s sense of humour between Billy No Buzz age and Pirates is akin to coating a snowflake in creosote. A vast and wonderfully talented cast revelled in dodgy puns, crude slapstick set ups and glitzy Busby Berkeley routines.  Sadly, I loved every minute.

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And then it was Birmingham Town Hall to hear Vivaldi, Bach and Handel. Four hundred people listened to our brilliant young soloists and mighty Choral Society. Coming so hard on the heels of our St. Paul’s performance, it was a fitting end to a historic musical term. As the final chords of Handel’s titanic Coronation Anthems faded in the great civic building, I thought of the Billy No Buzz cast. It will be their turn sooner than any of us would wish it.

Have a wonderful Easter.

HEADMASTER'S NINETEENTH BLOG - OUR DAY OUT

“I’m so bad at lying,” moaned the Upper Sixth former, rocking back and forth with his head in his hands.
Where was he? In my office about to be expelled? Regretting his two timing ways with a longstanding girlfriend? No. He was sat behind me in an IB lesson on Oligopolies and had just lost an exercise on game theory in which the object was to make as much dosh as possible for your business. The game had been won by a baby faced assassin at the back of the class whom I had previously considered to be a young lady of unimpeachable standing. Everything my lovingly wrought School Mission statement stood for had been usurped in the fifty minute lesson I had just witnessed. Not since Luke Skywalker discovered Darth Vader was his dad had anybody been so taken aback. We will return to this sorry state of affairs in a minute.

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An hour before Evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral, I slipped quietly away (as in left the coffee shop rather than passed over the great divide), and wondered off to look at a couple of the City’s churches. On every corner of my walk I saw Old Bromsgrovians, many in their OB ties, strolling about the city waiting for the service to start. One was a girl – an international pupil - who had left last year, and another a gentleman who had last sung in Bromsgrove Chapel over sixty years ago. Later, inside the Cathedral and a few minutes before our Choir sounded the opening notes, I noticed these two OBs walking in together. They sat down next to one another. Soon the Choir had infused the cathedral with ethereal grace, and – looking at those two OBs – I could not help but be moved by how very, very far this great School has travelled.

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And then we all piled into the House of Lords. Well, not all of us. Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham, had kindly provided a venue for the party animals in the congregation to raise awareness for Bromsgrove School Foundation. Actually, the reception almost never happened because Digby gave the coach driver some kamikaze instructions and his vehicle full of guests became wedged in the approach road to the Lords. Nonetheless, the battle weary revellers eventually escaped and found their way to a wonderful event that sought to impress on everybody why we need to widen access to our School. My sincere thanks to Digby, the governors and all who place inclusion and opportunity before arid social elitism. Thanks also to the kind lady serving the posh canapes who took my “I couldn’t eat another thing” to be the meaningless social nicety I intended.

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“But lying is bad,” I pleaded. “Come back to the light. Walk with me my child.”

I was told game theory wasn’t lying, so much as the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent, rational decision-makers.

“But you’ve all been telling porkers to one another. How can this be righteous?”

Tomorrow’s business leaders left the classroom oblivious, and I approached the teacher who was awaiting my assessment.

“That was the most morally reprehensible lesson I’ve ever witnessed,” I said.

“Thank you Headmaster.”

It was as if I’d given him an ASBO.

HEADMASTER’S EIGHTEENTH BLOG – CUPS AND FORCES

Having done the rounds in the Pre-Prep I am currently going to lessons in the Senior School. I scored a creditable 5 out of 11 in a test on the rise of Italian fascism and narrowly missed getting a Kit-Kat. I was also challenged but not utterly lost in a recent Maths lesson (I won’t tell you what year group though, given the School turns over many millions of pounds and I’m supposed to be in charge). But not all lessons have gone so well for me. In one, the pupil next to me asked if I could assist with Question 1. I said unfortunately I couldn’t as I didn’t understand it. Question 2 perhaps? No, I didn’t understand that either. Well what about question 3, boss man? At this point I had to confess to not having the foggiest idea what was going on.

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Last week I was invited to an evening event in Birmingham Town Hall for Leaders of the Midlands. Given I’m not even the leader of my corridor, I was somewhat surprised to be there, but it turned out to be a jolly affair with the Managing Director of John Lewis, Andy Street, on fine form as guest speaker. I admit my leadership technique (sic) has been compared before now to that of Vlad the Impaler (why can’t we give him a break?) but I’ve also tried to follow this suggestion of David Lloyd George: “Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You cannot cross a chasm in two small steps.” Well, not unless you’re Bugs Bunny.

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I don’t want to stray into Mr. Bowen’s Senior Newsletter territory here, but the Fourth Form play, Shockheaded Peter was, in the words of a young member of the audience, “like amazing.” Just stunning. The leads and supporting players were sensational, and the imaginative flights of the production were as creative as anything I’ve seen in the Studio. Bravo. But let’s not forget all those who worked behind the scenes in the high pressure jobs:
Q: How many stage managers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I DON'T CARE - JUST DO IT!

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Somebody should inform the United Nations that the Headmaster of arch-rivals King Edward the Sixth Birmingham and I had both lunch and dinner together last week. At one point I was seen walking around his School holding a KES umbrella. Sorry. Anyway, their Head let on that an old sporting cup had been sent back to him, but he discovered that it actually belonged to us (the confusion arising presumably because we are also a King Edward the Sixth School and for a long time retained the same nomenclature). But guess what? They’ve gone and kept our silverware on the grounds that we’ve won enough cups.
I’m priming the CCF for a Commando raid.

THE HEADMASTER’S SEVENTEENTH BLOG – TALL STORIES

As a Headmaster I am compelled every now and then to ascend the pulpit of an eminent Prep School and hold forth. Last Sunday was a case in point as I found myself in the delightful Chapel of one of our finest establishments. My primary aim on these occasions is to avoid creating schism and inciting religious war among the young, but no matter how I try to keep to matters eschatological, I always seem to end up telling seven year olds wholly inappropriate stories about what happened when I was last in the pub. I can’t help myself, even though I see their teachers throwing disapproving glances at me, and parents whispering down to their little ones:  “It’s Marlborough for you, my lad.”

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I don’t want to milk excessively the entrance examination papers, but I think there is a category of answer that is neither funny nor ridiculous but which you wish had been correct. For example, this year I asked pupils to identify the sources of five famous quotations. How very plausible to hear that “Go ahead, make my day,” was coined by Margaret Thatcher, and that the last words of Mahatma Ghandi were: “They think it’s all over. It is now.”

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I note that Newt Gingrich's most popular attack on Mitt Romney came in the form of an accusation that the Mormon candidate was so un-American he had the gall to speak French. This spectacularly crass and frightening assault comes at a time when 57% of pupils taking GCSEs are not sitting any language whatsoever. And yet ... Goldman Sachs’ projections for GDPs in 2050 don’t just have the likes of China, Brazil and India up in the top five: they also have countries such as Mexico and Indonesia riding high above the UK. As Mitt Romney would say: On doit se réveiller et sentir le café.

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A few days ago, one of the scary ladies shrieked in horror when she realised I was taller than her. I told her that I’d been taller than her for the seven years I’d been here and quite possibly longer than that, but she wouldn’t have it. Curious, I then asked one of the ladies in Administration how tall she thought I was and she said “Five foot seven”. Increasingly deflated, I asked one of the retired policemen who works in our gatehouse: 

“You should be an expert on this sort of thing,” I said: “How tall am I?”

“Five eight.”

Fearing for the safety of the nation, I returned to my office where my PA told me that her mother had seen a picture of me in the paper and said “He’s not very tall, is he?” My PA then asked a Head of Department with a top First and a Doctorate how tall I was.

“Well,” he said, “I’m five nine and I tower over him.”

My last full medical had me at six foot.



THE HEADMASTER’S SIXTEENTH BLOG – DIAL M FOR ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS

This is the only time of year when I feel like a real teacher from central casting. The 11+, 13+ and 16+ entry papers are flooding in and I can skulk about the Common Room justifiably moaning about my mark load and how unreasonable it is to expect me to ... etc. etc. Feels good. Best answer so far has turned up on the 13+ General Knowledge paper.

Q) Name a mammal that lives in the sea

A) Sea Horse

We like this kind of thinking at Bromsgrove.

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About three years ago, as part of the General Knowledge paper, I asked 13+ candidates to fill in the final, missing word of famous film titles. So, for example, they would see “Live and Let ..” and I would expect them to write “Die”. What actually happened had me writing scripts in my sleep as I tried to invent plotlines for the following epics: Lawrence of Manchester; Bridge on the River Tweed; The Empire Strikes Lucky; The Good, The Bad and the Really Quite Unfortunate; and that most cerebral Bond movie of them all ... Quantum of Physics.

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My favourite account of an entrance examination is Winston Churchill’s, whose experience at Harrow is described, unedited, below:

I was found unable to answer a single question in the Latin paper. I wrote my name at the top of the page. I wrote down the number of the question " I." After much reflection I put a bracket round it thus "(I)." But thereafter I could not think of anything connected with it that was either relevant or true. Incidentally there arrived from nowhere in particular a blot and several smudges. I gazed for two whole hours at this sad spectacle : and then merciful ushers collected my piece of foolscap with all the others and carried it up to the Headmaster's table. It was from these slender indications of scholarship that Mr. Welldon drew the conclusion that I was worthy to pass into Harrow.

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There’s no way of doing this next bit tactfully but I think, as a service to mothers, I need to share something with you. On my Essay Paper for the 13+ candidates this year was a statement for discussion:”Everyone has to lie sometimes.” Now then, the vast majority of candidates who chose this topic used the same example to illustrate why lying is sometimes necessary. What example is this? Well, in the words of one candidate: “It’s like when your mum’s going out and says to you ‘How do I look darling?’, and you have to say ‘Really lovely lovely, mum’ even though she looks a right state.”

Like I said, I’m not commenting ... just passing it on.

THE HEADMASTER’S FIFTEENTH BLOG – OXFORD BLUES

I doubt the Head of Eton received “Holy Cow! It’s The Wurzles Christmas Album” as a seasonal gift from one of the parental body. You will recall that “The Wurzles”  was deemed second best answer to a recent quiz held on the blog, and the runner up is clearly trying to persuade me that the artistic output of these cider drenched warblers is superior to that of the winning answer – the Hallé Orchestra. I’ve played the album and I think it fair to say I’ll never be the same again. That men can make such music such as this is indeed remarkable. Thank you.

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Just before Christmas there was a quiet celebration in a dark hut. Me and a crowd of hunky dudes. We raised our plastic cups and sipped the warm fizz with some satisfaction. The builders were handing over four of the five new buildings to the School. Now because of the landscaping works (and I’m not talking a few daisies here .. think Great Wall of China), the South end of the campus still looks like the set of War of the Worlds, but amidst the mud and din we have a useable Mary Windsor and Sports Arena. My thanks to the Scary Ladies for ensuring the builders remained cowed and frightened throughout the process.

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Oxbridge results are still coming in but already I’ve had some dreadful news. For many years I have successfully avoided sending a pupil to my old Oxford college on the grounds that if they went and found out what I’d been up to, I’d have to resign and live on top of a pillar for the rest of my life. Well, one of our pupils sneaked under the radar and has gone and got themselves a place there. A quarter of a century has passed since I left. Is it enough I wonder? Anyway, I’ve packed a trunk and a false moustache just in case.

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Ignore Robert Peston. The recession is over. How do I know? Well, when I arrived at Bromsgrove I got a fair few letters (usually from people whose children had been refused entry) that began “If I ran my business like you run your School” and proceeded to make clear that Bromsgrove and I were as dysfunctional as News International. Since 2008 I haven’t received much in the way of swaggering contempt as I suspect even the Shining Ones have been subdued by recent economic woes. Imagine my delight, then, when on opening the New Year mail I find a letter beginning “If I ran my business like you run your School....”. Good times can’t be far away. Happy New Year.