I’ve just been asked by a pupil whether I run this School “like Mrs. Thatcher ran the country.” I said I considered Suleiman the Magnificent to be a more accurate analogy. Unimpressed, the pupil then asked if I wanted a funeral like that afforded the Baroness. I said I’d settle for some shrieking, wailing and people throwing themselves to the ground in frenzies of despair, but other than that we could keep it simple. I chanced my arm and enquired of the political tyro whether she thought Headmasters should have a ceremonial funeral. Her “No Sir” was polite enough and very Bromsgrove, but the accompanying look of pity – something only a teenager can pull off properly – was as engaging as a pickled knee cap. Well, we brought it on ourselves. In Lucy Martin’s words: “The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.”
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Not wanting Kim Jong-un to have all the fun, I drove some staff to the cement works the other day. Oh yes, Good Time Chris was back in town. We actually visited the adjacent site where our builders had created one of the new Housman Hall bedrooms on their factory floor. And we brought a real live pupil with us to jump on the bed and test the design, fixtures and fittings. Anyhow, it was in that somewhat surreal environment that I was told there is a boy in this School who needs storage for his three sets of hair styling tongs. Three! For his hair! Am I the only man left who thinks all you need to get ready for the day is a bar of soap and a shower button marked “All Systems Go”?
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While in the Prep School at the end of last term, I met a small group of Year 3s who said they preferred books to computers. I knelt and wept in their presence.
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I’ve just come out of Chapel where the Senior School had been shown giant photographs on a drop down screen. Photographs of the academic staff when they were babies. I’m not sure what was going on but it certainly wasn’t the Sermon on the Mount in there. Indeed, I fear the School may be traumatised. Good grief, there were some sights. The fashion crimes perpetrated upon those children defy human compassion. It’s easy to see why many colleagues turned out the way they did, and I’ll certainly be more understanding in future. But then I recalled a picture of me as a toddler wearing ... a poncho. What happened to ponchos? And more importantly, what was my mother thinking? Anyway, those days are behind me now. The only fashion statement I ever make is if I miss a spot shaving.
