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 17th 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.
