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.