HEADMASTERS’ BLOG NUMBER 33 – “PETROL, SIR?” - “NO TANKS.”

I felt like a lobotomised Neanderthal in the presence of Einstein when pupils of our Greenpower Engineering Team recently showed me around the electric car they had just built. How can children build (and race) full size cars? We didn’t build cars at School. We did woodwork. (Our creative summit was achieved by a friend who built an electric guitar in woodwork. It was a thing of beauty but, tragically, too heavy to pick up. To play it you had to stand next to it and strum it while it lay on a table. This did not make for a rockin’ stage show, and our band had to operate in a niche market of ourselves and whoever lent us the table). Anyway, the car is, I think, going to race at Rockingham and there are aspirations for Goodwood. Gone indeed are the days when to make an electric car faster you hitched it to a tow-truck.

*******************

Imagine going into the ring with Mike Tyson, lowering your guard and saying “Come on then big fella, hit me with your best shot.” This is akin to how I felt when sending out a parental survey via which all Prep and Senior parents have the opportunity not only to answer a bunch of questions but also comment on the School in any way they see fit. Now the results are in, however, I am not whimpering on the canvas for my mum, but rather undergoing Nietzschean invigoration. Sure, a very few people rained a flurry of merciless blows on the exposed Bromsgrove underbelly, but on the whole people were wonderfully positive and such criticism as there was seemed..... well, essentially Edwardian: a fact for which I am most grateful. Along the lines of: “Look, you’re a decent sort but sometimes even good eggs need a biffing. Now after I’ve thrashed you, I want you to learn your lesson, stand up and shake hands so we can get on with things. Righto?”

**************** 

Strange how Mr. Gove’s words work on the puerile mind: his love of tablets, for instance, still evokes in me images of children etching Latin onto stone. Now that he wants “I levels”, I am bound to recall the homonymous theme tune to Van der Valk which sat atop the pop charts for four weeks of my early childhood. (Only British oldies will understand .. some of you will have played it on the recorder in 1973). “I levels” will apparently be graded from 1 (inconceivably dreadful) to 8 (godlike), and the core subjects will be effectively free from coursework and modules. But why stop here? For example, perhaps people studying Environmental Studies could take C levels. And so on. Alas, all the fun seems to have gone from the examination hall. We had a teacher who wrote above the wall clock in my O level Physics exam:”Time will pass. Will you?” That’s jail today.

***************

Deep, deep down I’m all flowers and madrigals, but I admit it felt good to don the white hard hat recently and return to the bad, butch world of building sites. It’s he-man country at Housman Hall where two whopping new buildings are going up and two shockers are coming down. From the emerging first floor of the new build one can pose in a hi-vis jacket and hang around flexing a pec next to a pneumatic drill. At such times, I fancy cement dust is, to me, what sea-spray was to John Masefield. But then a real builder appears carrying bricks in his teeth, and I’m obliged to hand back my tough-guy outfit and slope quietly down the Kidderminster Road in a suit. As the now eponymous resident of Housman Hall once wrote:

And now the fancy passes by

  And nothing will remain,

And miles around they'll say that I

  Am quite myself again.

HEADMASTER'S BLOG NUMBER THIRTY-TWO – MC GLAMOUR AND THE FOURTH FORM MASSIVE

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?”

*******************

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.

*******************

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.

********************

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.

HEADMASTER’S BLOG NUMBER THIRTY-ONE - THE BABY’S NOT FOR TURNING

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.”

****************

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”?

*****************

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.

*****************
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.

HEADMASTER’S BLOG NUMBER 30 - WINDSOR CHANGE

The scary ladies and I were in the Prep School last week watching creative curriculum lessons. In one class, a little girl told me that the boy next to her was the “number one class genius.” The boy agreed this was the case but generously averred that the young lady was “number two class genius.” At this point another little girl said no, she herself was in fact the “number two class genius”. The original girl thought about this for a moment, acknowledged there might be some truth in the observation, and then cheerfully demoted herself. It struck me that Ban Ki-moon’s job would be considerably easier if we kept that attitude into adulthood.

******************

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the difference between a professional musician and a large pizza is that a large pizza can feed a family of four. Undaunted, our young vocal and instrumental heroes recently offered a gripping Senior School music competition, and then the School orchestra gave a cracking performance of the opening movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony in Routh Hall. It took me back to a conversation I witnessed during my school days when a friend of mine was arguing the toss with a teacher over homework. The boy’s argument was along the lines of “How come when Schubert doesn’t finish something he’s hailed as a genius but when I don’t finish my homework I get a detention?” I was waiting for a response worthy of Oscar Wilde but, alas, it wasn’t that kind of school. The teacher hit him over the head with a text book.

******************

Bigger and stonier than my gaff, Windsor Castle hosted our Chapel Choir last Wednesday. Evensong in St. George’s Chapel was sublime, and as the Choir pulled their “newsletter faces” for the photograph afterwards, I underwent a shameful moment of hubris. Poor show, I know. But how many schools, when they are one match away from Twickenham in the Daily Mail Cup, would have a choir singing Evensong at Windsor Castle just days before? It seemed to me, in the Windsor twilight, that some schools are so obsessed with specialisation for the sake of tables and charts that they ought to pause and reflect on Hillaire Belloc’s tongue in cheek advice to a young writer: “Concentrate on one subject. Let him, when he is twenty, write about the earthworm. Let him continue for forty years to write of nothing but the earthworm. When he is sixty, pilgrims will make a hollow path with their feet to the door of the world's great authority on the earthworm. They will knock at his door and humbly beg to be allowed to see the Master of the Earthworm.”


******************

One trench in to the new Housman Hall build and we’ve only gone and found King Arthur, the round table and all his knights under the car park. There they are, perfectly preserved in full armour with Galahad clutching the Holy Grail for good measure. An absolute nightmare. The Council would never let us continue if they knew, but parents will be pleased to hear we kicked dust over the find and then went back under cover of darkness to pour concrete foundations over the bejewelled Camelot floor. I pinched the Grail and stuck it in the Elmshurst trophy cabinet. Nobody’s any the wiser and the programme is back on schedule. Close one.

HEADMASTER’S BLOG NUMBER 29 - ONE MAN’S MEDE IS ANOTHER MAN’S PERSIAN

Michael Gove wants performance related pay for teachers. Speaking on behalf of my fellow whinging, stress-obsessed freeloaders, I would humbly point out that this might prove tricky. It’s not that I think idlers who fail to deliver shouldn’t be roasted alive in the ninth circle of hell – I absolutely do – it’s just that Bromsgrove can’t operate like the trading floor. For example ..... let’s say that at some point during my annual fifty three weeks of holiday I prepare a half decent lesson. Unlikely, I know, but bear with me. Under current practice, assuming I haven’t gone on strike, I rock up to School in September and cascade my inspiration over all and sundry that they might secure top results for their pupils. But no longer. Not under Mr. Gove. Now my colleague is the enemy. And, like Dick Dastardly in the much missed Whacky Races, my job is to stop anybody else doing better than me. More anon.

**************

So they’ve found Richard III. I had a hunch they would. Sorry. He isn’t the first man to leave a Leicester pub car park with a reconstructed face, but this whole business has left me bereft for other reasons. You see, my historical knowledge is based entirely on the old Ladybird Books. And in one of those books (I’m talking the proper Ladybird books with the text on one side and a colour picture on the facing page) there is the terrifying image of a man in black skulking into the room where the two little princes are asleep. I don’t care if it’s not true: it’s scared me witless for years. Haven’t slept since. Leave it alone. History should be like a piece of music that takes on its own life after the artist has left us. William Tell becomes the Lone Ranger and Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto is about a grey railway station and English repression. I’ve no issues with this. Richard has actually done very well out of being misrepresented, so why should scholarship and truth wreck that now? I demand my stories back. Soon they’ll be telling me Vlad the Impaler worked for the Samaritans.

**************

Fewer goodies than usual were found in the General Knowledge entrance examination answers this year. Nonetheless, I was gratified to learn from the 11+ papers that the timpani are in the “concussion” section of an orchestra and that “Covent Garden” is “where nuns go to pick flowers.” James Bond works for King Arthur (somebody please make that movie) and Ireland is ruled from the Kremlin. Otherwise, there’s little to report from the impressive 2013 batch. Except perhaps the charming observations that among the ten largest economies of the world is that of the Hebrides and that the late Sir Patrick Moore presented The Sky At Noon, which sounds to me like a wonderfully evocative black and white western.

**************

Back to my performance related pay. It’s all relative, so if I get better results than the other bloke, I’m flush. Next day I burn my resources (once I’ve used them) and start tampering with X’s whiteboard notes when I’m covering his lesson. Tee hee. I disseminate lies and misinformation when I encounter any pupil not in my class. (“Richard III, Lisa? Did for ‘em both he did, and no mistake.”) I sabotage a top language teacher’s cassette player, replacing a French oral with a dodgy Serge Gainsbourg number, thus getting my unsuspecting rival struck off. In the car park, I slash the tyres on the away team’s coach, ensuring there’ll be no evening revision for Harrow. Finally, I offer private tutors a cut if they help get 3W’s grades up. Ming the Merciless would blush.

But in doing all of this, I’ve forgotten to coach my Hockey 3rd team, who’ve just lost to a local rival for the first time. Aaarrgghh. Pay docked. I can hear Mutley laughing.

HEADMASTER’S BLOG NUMBER 28 – ICY THE FUTURE

So, Mr. Gove has spoken. I’ll summarise. From 2015, “Knowledge” will become the Everton of education. With a big fan base and a long history, it’s set to challenge the nouveau “Skills” (Chelsea?) for a Champions League place. Meanwhile, “Memory”, for so long languishing at the bottom of the lowest tier is set to do a Bradford and turn up at Wembley after years in the wilderness. “Coursework” and “Modules” are the Aston Villa and Newcastle of the new order (hanging on but it sure don’t look good). AS levels are QPR (they’ll still exist but won’t attract Premier League clientele). The option to switch allegiance to the IB (La Liga?) remains.

*************

My house backs onto the Prep School’s playing fields, and I have recently had the pleasure of watching carefree young Bromsgrovians gambol and pronk on the snow in scenes reminiscent of Breughel – assuming Breughel had moved to the Antarctic with a herd of springbok. Not really. To be honest, the view from my window looked more like something from Assassin’s Creed. People wary of Darwinism or prone to thinking Lord of the Flies was overly harsh on our little ones need only watch youngsters in the snow. The second a back is turned, the snowball onslaught begins: prolonged and ruthless. Some schools send parents twee Christmas cards of their pupils cheerfully enjoying the winter wonderland. No fear. All that’s missing with our lot is the Attenborough commentary as the pack takes down a fully grown adult.

*************

But the snow didn’t stop me getting in to work: I’m a trooper if nothing else. It’s a good ten metres from my front gate to the Mary Windsor entrance, which is more than enough for catastrophe to strike given that my performance on ice is not so much Torvill and Dean as a new born gnu. I wasn’t the only hero though. Let’s hear it for the Bromsgrove Support Staff who, with shovels and muscles, effected the biggest topographical clearance since Moses had a bash at the Red Sea. Note this, though. Last Friday, when Britain ceased to function, two sets of visitors turned up for full tours of the School. One from Budapest and the other from Berlin. All the Brits cancelled.

*************

I often feel compelled to remind myself how stupid I am. In such circumstances I read the late Christopher Hitchins. Barely a word the super brainy “Hitch” wrote or uttered failed to attract opprobrium and vitriol from some quarter or other. “You have to choose your future regrets” is one of his quieter meditations, however, and I was reminded of this as I looked at our architect’s drawings for the next phases of the Bromsgrove School site masterplan. At Easter we will start work on two new boarding facilities on the Housman campus, and then we will return to the main campus with all the verve of Donald Trump on Prozac. But one has to prioritise, and in doing so one knows that a particular year group will just miss out on this or that wonderful new facility. So, when looking ten years ahead (and that’s what we are doing), those future regrets amass strangely but inevitably beside the mountains of wonder and excitement.

HEADMASTER'S BLOG NUMBER 27 - VORSPRUNG DURCH NIGHTMARE

Happy new year to you all. Only one riff for the first blog of 2013, and don’t tell me some of you didn’t burn the turkey fretting about it.

Clearly the Bromsgrove Headmaster’s new car should have been a diesel Jaguar, shouldn’t it? Eco(ish) British trad, Indian wonga. A slosh of the hi-tech new world order with a twist of wistful yearning for briars and snuff-flecked lips. Elgar goes to Bollywood. In fact, let’s have that up in Latin above the South Gate.

“A little raga with your Finzi, Headmaster?” Don’t mind if I do.

But no. Oh no. You see, I don’t know anything about cars – absolute diddly, honestly - and I made the catastrophic mistake of reading reviews that dealt purely with quality as opposed to image. In other words, I did everything I’d want parents to do when choosing a School. I shunned the dinner party tittle tattle and did some hard core research. I also figured I had no need for a large car and duly looked at the next size down.

And instead of reading “Top Gear Magazine” (which, were it an educational guide, would say: “Oh I’m sure it’s a wonderful School, darling but, strictly entre nous, it’s not quite.. well you know, darling .. not quite .. how shall I say? .. Oh if only one could say “pleb”, darling, but one can’t anymore. More Taittinger, sweetie?”) I read “What Car.”

Never again. “What Car”. If “What Car” reviewed Bromsgrove School I believe it would say; “Brilliant. Go there.” But that honesty is not what one needs in a world where one’s self esteem is based entirely on the approval or otherwise of the chattering classes. I needed an image savvy lifestyle guru (i.e. a Fourth Former) to tell Mr. Laughing Stock point blank that slippered gents who are partial to a little Schubert while pootling down the motorway at 60 mph do NOT BUY...

A BMW 3 Series.

Dummkopf! Forget it’s an omnipresent motoring leitmotif (there are more of them on the roads than Mondeos, I’m told) that does 60 miles to the gallon. Forget too it’s a stolid, conservative staple back home in Munich. Forget even that it gets top marks in perishing “What Car” for just about everything. Remember only that in the UK it’s apparently been hijacked as the car of choice for every non-indicating, boy-racing, taste-bereft aspirational moron in the country. And now I’m one. How did this happen? Did all you BMW 3 series owners know this when you bought one? You thought you were getting Eton but let me tell you, chums, you’ve signed up for Grange Hill. (Apologies to younger readers for the arcane reference).

I discussed the matter with a Sixth Former who agreed the BMW was indeed a cracking car but was perceived in the UK as being the flash alternative for people who can’t afford genuine flash. He confirmed this was a PR catastrophe for a Headmaster on a moral crusade. So what should I do?

Well here’s the thing. Apparently, I wait. That’s right. I wait. Because, it seems, the BMW’s image is changing. The look-at-my-lifestyle aspirants are realising the car’s ubiquity has undermined their reason for buying it in the first place. And I am reliably informed by pupils who know these things that the next brand to be hijacked will be..... Audi. Oh yes. The auto-fashionistas tell me that if I can just hold on for a bit, Audis will start cutting me up on roundabouts and BMW drivers can get back to stopping for old ladies. So, if you’re smugly driving an Audi thinking you are the cuddly David Attenborough of motoring, you can wipe that smile off your face now. Troubled times ahead, my friends.

Anyway, since The Hobbit is on at the flicks, I’ll finish with a word from local lad JRR Tolkien, who said: “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.” Shame.

Happy New Year!

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.

***************

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.

**************

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?

****************

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.

*******************

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.

*******************

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.

*******************

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?

********************

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.  

*******************  

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.

*******************

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.

************************

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.

************************

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.

************************

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.

**************

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.

***************

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.

****************

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.

****************

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.

*****************

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.

*****************

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....” 

************************

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.

******************

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

******************

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.

*******************

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.

***************

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.

***************

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.

******************

“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.

***********

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.

**************

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!

*************

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.”

*****************

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.”

**********

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.

************

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.

*******************

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.

******************

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.

**********************

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.

********************* 

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.

*********************

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.

********************** 

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.

HEADMASTER’S FOURTEENTH BLOG – HARK THE HERALD

On Friday night I had two Oxford PPE hopefuls in my office for a final tutorial with their glorious leader. I nodded appreciatively as they spoke about things I didn’t understand, and waved an approving hand whenever quotations I didn’t recognise from philosophers I’d never heard of were cited. I then asked both students to offer a solution to the Eurozone problem in sixty seconds, but immediately got lost when one of the pupils described the European economy in terms of arcane political theory. Finally, I was asked if philosopher X was responsible for theory Y, and I said I didn’t know. We all shook hands and off they went to Oxford.

********

Consider the humble tea towel. No, seriously. How elevated it must feel when, once every year, the soap suds are left to drain away of their own accord because the proud rag adorns the head of a Pre-Prep shepherd. If “Come to the Manger” lacked a Cecil B. DeMille budget, it sure hit home in the lumpy throat department. (This may be because the play was not marred, as was a production some years ago, by a fight breaking out among the three wise men). Meanwhile in Prep we had “The Peace Child” which should be compulsory viewing for some of the role models (sic) playing in the Premier League. The Seniors turned in a transcendental “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, while tonight we have a charity concert (staff and pupils performing) for the flood victims in Thailand. And yet .. and yet ....  a prospective parent told me yesterday that Bromsgrove is still perceived to be dominated by sport. I will set my reply to music and have a dance troupe deliver it.

**************

I am going to sing “Baby I love you” at the Charity Concert. Why? Because you should never trust a pop song that purports to say more than “Baby I love you.” Look at the lyrical abominations that have arisen as bands try to say things beyond the proper metier of pop (which is teen angst round the soda fountain). I mean, what’s this about?

"I drew a line,
I drew a line for you.
Oh, what a thing to do.
And it was all yellow."

 And they’re millionaires. Millionaires I tell you.

***************************************** 

In the middle of Gordon Green stands a Christmas tree. Yesterday evening, as darkness fell, we had a two hundred and sixty strong floodlit CCF Review on the south side of the tree, overseen by a naval Commodore. To the east, at the same time, in a brightly lit Routh Hall, pupils chatted, served and performed at our Christmas party for local senior citizens. North, our many caterers were busy in their kitchens preparing hundreds of evening meals, while to the west, the administration workers processed a myriad online forms and accounts. And on the other side of the world, a different Bromsgrove School also prepared for Christmas. And the children there will, from time to time, be thinking of a place a long, long way west of them. An ancient, special place where for hundreds of years, young people have looked forward to this time of year. And from where I, the most fortunate of Headmasters, now offer Season’s Greetings to you all.