Bored with chicken drumsticks and keen to escape Gazebogate, I decided to have dinner on Monday night with The Princess Royal at St. James’ Palace. How lovely. Lord Adonis spoke most eloquently (why can’t we all be called Lord Adonis?) and the worth of boarding schools to under privileged children was espoused movingly by beneficiaries. After dinner we mingled over coffee and I found myself with a public figure. Looking to ingratiate myself within the corridors of power, I asked what particular issues were vexing him most at present. His reply was less than I’d hoped for: “Suarez: ten matches fair, do you think?”
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Last week saw the annual “Ask the Headmaster Anything” session with the Fourth Forms. Frequently, this foolhardy exercise in pupil democracy gets bogged down in bizarre Sloughs of Despond such as “Why are teachers paid so much?” and “How come I get ripped off at the Tuck Shop?”, but I have to say this year witnessed a battery of mature and considered questions. “What is your favourite part of the School?” was a tester. My inclination was to say “Anywhere they can’t find me”, but I conceded that the green bounded by Thomas Cookes, Hazeldene and Old Chapel had a particular magic this time of year. A subsequent vox pops suggested my hazy Romanticism came a poor second to the Café.
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We hosted eleven schools at the Ryland Centre last Saturday in what was surely the largest athletics meet since London 2012. Fed up with me swanning around like .. well like a swan, I suppose ..., the shining ones decided I should earn my keep and do some announcing over the tannoy. Wow! People, I have tasted power and found my destiny: it is standing next to a van in a field, barking instructions and watching hundreds of people from Britain’s most famous schools do precisely what you tell them to. Including their staff. I could barely contain myself. The temptation to start making hoax announcements or inviting everybody to do the hokey-cokey became too great, however, and I had to hand the mic back after an hour.
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I commented in Routh Hall last Friday on a very worrying incident. After the School photograph had been taken, a group of boys decided to take their blazers off without Mr. Bowen’s permission (at Bromsgrove this is up there with grand larceny), and then start throwing a ball around near a School building (which is our equivalent of a crime against humanity). The Gods were not smiling on the youngsters, however, because I walked around the corner and almost bumped into them. Like a herd of terrified impala before an advancing leopard, they fled for safety – not on the open savannah of course, but in their day house. All except one. My master class in stalking had panicked one boy and separated him from the herd. Terror was now overriding his sense of direction and so he ran behind a bush. A bush that was smaller than him. He looked at me in the hope I couldn’t see him. I could see most of him. I shook my head in pity and disbelief. But he still didn’t move. Had a Bromsgrove education really brought him to this? Sometimes even a leopard feels it’s just not a fair fight, and so I returned to my lair in dismay wondering if spatial awareness should be on our curriculum.
