Didn’t We Have A Lovely Day…

Posted on 28th August 2016 by Barefoot Bohemian

When I was young a day out involved a trip to the seaside, a fish and chip supper in a proper restaurant – with bread and butter – and falling asleep in the back of the car on the way home, especially if it was a trip to Blackpool Illuminations which mainly involved a massive traffic jam down the seafront and a lot of lights which looked remarkably similar after the first hour. Now a day out can be much more far-reaching and interesting.

thumb_P1010093_1024I have done day trips to Dublin, Geneva, Oslo and now I have added Copenhagen to the list. I accept it requires a few things to make it possible – a willingness to get up in the middle of the night; a budget airline operating from a fairly local airport (although this is not essential if your budget can cope with the additional costs or you have built up air miles – see note*); accommodating flight times with an outward flight in the early morning and a return flight in the evening; a city which is small and compact enough to see in a day and either the attention span of a gnat or no real interest in spending your day wandering around museums, art galleries or churches. If all, or at least most of these criteria apply to you, then perhaps a day trip abroad is for you.

The formula is pretty similar regardless of the destination, and the costs involved are comparable too, so I’ll use the details of the Copenhagen trip as an illustration.

Flight costs vary but are usually between £40 and £120 for a return flight within Europe. Transfers from the airport to the city centre are about £10-£20 each way. This was remarkably simple in Copenhagen.

Terminal 3

There are trains, buses, taxis and a metro to choose from. For me, the metro seemed the most efficient and cost effective. Trains and the metro leave from inside Terminal 3 and a single to the centre cost 36DKK each (£4.13). All prices are based on an exchange rate of £1 to 8.71DKK.  The journey takes ten minutes to Kongens Nytorv, which is pretty central and puts you among the shops and walking distance of many of the main attractions.

The usual hop on – hop off tourist bus costs 245DKK (£28.12) each and this includes a boat trip. In my opinion, the bus was a little disappointing but the boat made up for it, however, it does its job in taking you around all the places you need to see in a couple of hours. In some cities, it’s essential without incurring taxi costs. It also saves on doing any preparation before the trip because all the main attractions will be included.

Little MermaidI’m not really going to review Copenhagen because tourism is so subjective and there are numerous guides which go into much greater detail than I could, however, I found the people friendly and cheerful, but then the Danes were named the happiest people in the world in three of the past four years by the United Nations World Happiness Report.

Food is good and not too expensive even in the most popular tourist areas, and the Little Mermaid is just that – little and a mermaid – but you have to see her.

*Air miles note: Clearly this is only an option if you belong to a loyalty programme with a major airline and have made enough full price flights to build up a reasonable number of miles. But if you have, using air miles can be another cheap way of travelling. To kill the myth, it’s not free. Yes, the flights can be free, or you can pay with a combination of miles and cash, but you would usually be expected to pay the airport taxes and fees. These vary depending on the airport but are usually about £50 per return trip. However, British Airways for one has another scheme which can reduce this to a one-off fee of about £35 for the return flight, if you meet their criteria (check their website – www.britishairways.com – if you are interested and a member of their Executive Club loyalty programme).

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Musical Chairs At St Albion’s School in July.

Posted on 1st August 2016 by Barefoot Bohemian

Union FlagThings at St. Albion’s School calmed down a little in July, although not because of calls to ‘calm down’.  Never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down because they were told to ‘calm down’.  No, it’s a little calmer because nothing has really happened, and as predicted in the last newsletter, it seems not much is likely to happen for some time.  This is because the people who wanted us out of the Confederation of Schools are now saying they need to talk to a lot of experts about the implications of leaving – something we’d all hoped had happened before they so strongly argued that we should leave.  I suppose these are not the same experts who clearly told us in May that it was not a good idea.  You remember, the ones Gormless Gove told us we’d heard enough from.  Meanwhile, the people who still want us to stay, clearly have a vested interest in dragging their feet until all momentum is lost, and we end up with some form of staying because by then it will be the best option (again as suggested in what is looking like a prophetic June newsletter).

However, there are some school events to announce, despite being so close to the end of term.  We have a new Head Girl, only the second in our history, and it’s Maggie ‘Mumsy’ May.  That happened after the most pathetic election in the history of elections.

First, Foxy Fox was thrown out – again.  It’s only a few years since he was the Shadow Prefect found to have over-claimed the most in expenses and then he resigned as a Prefect for allowing a male friend to see things he shouldn’t have seen. (More on him later).

Then Crabby Crab (no, they were not all named after animals) got a text telling him he needed to spend more time with his family, and less on his phone not to his family, so he dropped out.

Then, Gormless Gove was thrown out.  Now even his mummy, Lady MacGove, has stopped mentioning him in The Mouldy Murdoch.  But no doubt he’ll be back – they always are.  It seems failure, disgrace and embarrassment are never enough to end a career in politics – or football for that matter.

So that left two girls for the top job – Maggie May and Loathsome Leadsom.  Loathsome spent a couple of days getting most of the lies out of her c.v., refusing to tell anyone how much daddy earned, and then stupidly attacking Maggie for not liking children.  It was only a couple of days later that Loathsome decided she couldn’t hack it either.  And so ended the most bizarre game of musical chairs ever – no-one ever sat down but Maggie was left as the only one circling a single chair when the music stopped.  Not so much an election, or a coronation, more an only-one-left-so-you’ll-do result.

So with Maggie as Head Girl, she wasted no time in picking her prefects.  In a bizarre set of choices the most striking announcements were: No job for Gormless Gove, who stays in the lower desks; Foxy Fox, complete with chequered past, got picked; Pretty Patty was picked to be in charge of some after-school clubs she’d previously called to be scrapped; and most bizarrely of all, the school bully, Barmy Boris was back, only days after going home in tears and refusing to even try to be Head Boy – which is what he’s wanted since he was cloned.

There are two rumours circulating about this.  One is that Maggie has put Barmy Boris in a position where she can bollock him if we can’t pull out of the Confederation smoothly, but not close enough to be involved in talking to them – the giving-him-enough-rope / you-broke-it-you-pay-for-it rumour.  And the other rumour involves a cock-up.  Barmy Boris has been put in charge of school trips, which we call the Foreign Office.  Well, the rumour has it that when Maggie was writing her list of prefects with their roles she wrote F Off next to Barmy Boris’s name and the school office misunderstood and gave him the job.

Either way, it’s an interesting appointment but it’s impossible to ‘un-see’ that image of Barmy, complete with school flags and his trousers pulled into a wedgie, hanging on an aerial runway at a school sports day a few years ago.  It will, and should, haunt him forever.

Now a game of double-speak has begun, where everyone says what they think everyone wants to hear while meaning exactly the opposite.  It’s similar to the normal diet of lies, distortions, and misinterpretations that emanate from the School Council but linguistically slightly cleverer.  For example, Maggie, who didn’t want us to leave the Confederation, is running around saying Exit means Exit.   Can’t fault her on that one.  Stay mean Stay too, but it doesn’t tell us anything.  In fact, the head of English tells us most words mean what they mean because that’s how language works.

It’s all happening because it’s based on the flawed school vote we had, which purported to be a clear Yes-No decision, when in fact, there are shades of grey in both choices.  In other words, if we’d had a vote to ban caning it would be a clear Yes-No vote.  Unless we were suggesting banning it for all offences apart from those involving violence, for example.  In which case, it would have been clear in the vote.  This vote couldn’t cope with the nuances or shades of staying or leaving the Confederation.  We can’t ignore the Confederation altogether so we will have to have some kind of relationship with it, therefore it’s not really a Yes-No issue.  What conditions would be acceptable within the deal we end up with that would satisfy those who voted to leave?  That’s the ambiguity that Maggie is banking on to get her out of having to deliver what many people thought they wanted when they voted.  And after all, a school vote, or any survey, is always going to be flawed to some extent.  Surveys involve asking people what they think, when most of them are ill-advised about what to think, and others simply have not been thinking at all – and that includes both sides of the argument.  But as Maggie says: a vote is a vote, a result is a result and the future will be the future.

Meanwhile, the Alternative School Council is still in chaos and tying itself in knots by trying to out-manoeuvre each other by using the school rule book.  This is doubtless going to run into next term so I suspect this will have to be addressed in future newsletters.

On the sporting front, we have a new teacher to supervise the football after Wonky Way resigned. It’s Hagrid Sam – a safe pair of hands, a systems man and reliable.  He’s renowned for dodging relegation which means he’ll probably ensure we avoid dropping out at the group stage of the World Cup in 2018 but after that, he normally hands over to another manager who specialises in success so who knows if we will do any better than under Wonky.  It remains to be seen whether this appointment is enough to inspire our over-hyped players enough to turn them into winners.  It’s not promising, but if we didn’t want to bring in someone from another school, he was probably the best we had.

Our athletes are preparing to go to the Inter-Schools Games in a country where they have a virus which is a danger for unborn babies.  Believe me, there’s been an unprecedented rush on matron for those sticks you wee on from many of our girls’ team.  The other drama is that our team won’t be meeting many Russian competitors this year as most of them have been banned because some of them are accused of taking drugs.  It’s a shame it’s come to this, but it will certainly speed up the time it takes to get ready in the morning.  Last time the queues for the shaving points were horrendous, especially in the girls’ bathrooms.

Enjoy the holidays.

The Common Room Commentator

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Cheers. But Don’t Mind If I Don’t.

Posted on 20th July 2016 by Barefoot Bohemian

Coffee CupI’ve been considering stopping drinking alcohol for months now. Not necessarily forever, but for at least a few weeks, and afterwards, probably never returning to my pre-abstinence levels. What has prompted these cataclysmic thoughts?  A number of things really – some age-related, some health-related, some experimental.

Let’s get age out of the way first. For years I’ve believed that as you slide over 40 you can either have a late night, or a heavy drinking session, but not both; and my experience has borne that out.  So, even though I still think I can hold my own drinking alongside others half my age, (don’t we all?) it undoubtedly takes me longer to recover. And to quote the American civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer: “I’m getting sick and tired of feeling sick and tired” after a heavy night. Instead of losing a couple of hours to a hangover, I can lose most of the next day to not feeling 100%.  Although there is an interesting aside to this effect, in that it does depend on what I drink. For some inexplicable reason, I have developed an intolerance (in quantity) to my favourite tipple – Aspalls cider. A couple of pints and I struggle the next day whereas 5 or 6 pints of a different, arguably inferior, brand and I’m fine. It’s not the strength of the brew and it’s not the quantity, but it’s definitely happened. I’ve even contacted Aspalls to see if their recipe or brewing methods have changed. But they were unable to explain the effect, or why it’s suddenly developed. If anyone can shed any light on this I’d be interested to hear it.

On to health. At the moment I have an injury which is preventing me from running so I’m starting to put on a little extra weight. I eat pretty healthily and so one of the most obvious sources of unwanted calories is the sugar in alcohol. According to various websites, there are about 275 calories (16 grams, or about 3 teaspoons of sugar) in a pint of draught Aspalls. This compares to about 190 calories (18 grams, or 3.5 teaspoons of sugar) in a pint of draught Strongbow;  or 110 calories (20-25 grams, or 4-5 teaspoons of sugar) in a single Gin and Tonic.  Clearly, this is mainly in the tonic water so a slimline tonic has less sugar but then you open the can of worms that is aspartame, and you really don’t want to go there. I have quoted the statistics for cider because I can’t eat wheat, so that rules out most beers, but for the record, some real ales can contain as much as 9 teaspoons of sugar, and a bottle of white wine contains about 700 calories, so there are no real good guys in the alcohol world as far as controlling calories go.

The third ‘reason’ is my compulsion to try things to see what will happen, even if that means using my body as a lab rat. I suppose it’s the same faulty gene which has made me run four more marathons after I swore I’d never do another. (See my earlier post about testing a weekly diet which resulted in a significant weight loss – although the results of this experiment do raise the question of how much dropping alcohol was responsible for that weight loss).

So why do I drink, anyway? Convention, social pressure, habit, ease of ordering and I like that slightly spaced out feeling you can get as the alcohol gets into your bloodstream.

  • Convention – we live in a society which to an extent revolves around pubs and drinking.
  • Social pressure – this can very strong particularly among men, and as for men who don’t finish their pint, don’t get me started.
  • Habit – drinking alcohol in pubs, usually in moderation it has to be said, has been part of my life for 40 years, even since pubs were merely annexes to newspaper offices.
  • Ease of ordering – buying a pint of whatever cider is on draught is much simpler and quicker than having to decide what you’d like to drink every time you go into a pub. Yes, men are incredibly lazy.

So 5 weeks ago I stopped drinking alcohol. I didn’t cut down.  I didn’t stop during the week and then drink Waitrose dry at the weekend.  I genuinely stopped.  This included the week I was at Glastonbury, which anyone who’s been will know is no mean feat as drinking is part and parcel of the festival experience.

The first thing I noticed was that I thought about drink far more than when I am drinking. I didn’t crave it but I thought about it. I thought about not drinking which inevitably made me think about drinking.  At the risk of getting all Zen – you can’t think about a negative – try it.

By far the biggest ‘problem’ was social pressure, having to constantly justify why I wasn’t drinking, putting up with the jibes and comments about not being able to run with the big dogs anymore etc. etc.  Predictable, I suppose, and I dish out enough I have to suck up my share when the tables turn, but that might be a little surprising to women, who, by and large, take a much more sensible approach to most things.  Still, after a couple of weeks, the humour wore off but so did the effect it had on me and it just served to make me more determined to continue.  I did wonder if I was still the same sparkling company sober as I am when I’m drinking but I’ll leave others to be the judge of that – and to be honest, I don’t really want to know.

I drank a little more coffee than usual, perhaps subconsciously in search of some form of buzz, but I suspect more because I don’t really like most soft drinks so I ordered coffee when faced with choosing a drink.

The main health benefits were that I obviously didn’t have any symptoms of a hangover and I have lost some weight.

When I started, I weighed 12st 6lbs  (79kgs), a week later that had fallen to 11st 11lbs (75kgs). The following week, there was no change (this week included a three-day birthday trip to Valencia so you can imagine healthy eating was not a top priority). At the end of four weeks, my weight was still at 11st 11lbs (75kgs) so no further losses but I’d maintained the lower weight. This is interesting and suggests that dropping alcohol can shed a few pounds but it’s not a weight-loss programme in itself.  I should make clear that during this period I did not change my diet, eat less, or do any exercise other than my usual daily hour-long dog.  I simply stopped drinking alcohol.

All in all, I’m happy I tried it, pleased I managed it, relieved I know I am in control of my drinking and glad I’ve lost a few pounds. I found it much easier to go without than I thought it would be, so I guess I’ve proved I wasn’t on my way to becoming an alcoholic. In fact, it’s become so easy and routine to order a soft drink that I’m aware I might be creating a habit I feel obliged to continue – that’s the obsessive-compulsive, stubborn gene again!  How long could I keep it going?

So, enough is enough. I’m going to start drinking again.  I don’t feel the health advantages are significant enough, the weight loss consistent, or the hassle of not drinking worth continuing. And when all is said and done, I do enjoy the odd pint.

So cheers, I don’t mind if I do …… again!

Good Luck
The Barefoot Bohemian.

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Open System To See More Golf

Posted on 13th July 2016 by Barefoot Bohemian
St Andrews 2015

18th Hole at St Andrews

Tomorrow (Thursday, July 14) sees the start of The Open (note there is no need for the word British to be inserted before Open). It’s one of the four most prestigious golf tournaments in the world and this will be the 145th competition.

This year’s four-day event is being held at Royal Troon in Ayrshire, Scotland. After the first two days, the field is cut with only the top half ‘making the cut’ and playing over the weekend.

We have made the trip to whichever links course is hosting the event most years over the past decade and have developed a system which works on every course, and ensures you not only see all the holes, but also most of the players while ending up in the best seats to watch the presentation of the Claret Jug to the winner.  So, if you fancy attending The Open, either this year or in future years, I will share our system with you.

Unless you have plenty of time I’m assuming you only want to attend the two main days, so this is based on maximising your golf viewing on Saturday and Sunday.

There is no need to buy tickets in advance as they are always available on the day, although there is a discount if bought in advance via the R&A website. This year’s tickets cost £80 per day for both Saturdays and Sundays (£60 if bought before May 31).  This might sound a lot but you can see about 10-12 hours of golf per day, so it amounts to between £5 to £8 per hour, which I think is reasonable value, and comparable to most major sporting events or concerts.

There are numerous park and ride schemes available which can slow your entrance and exit but means you can carry extra wet weather gear and decide what you need at the venue. Make sure you pack binoculars and a small radio so you can listen to the action around the course regardless of which hole you happen to be watching.

Once you are on the course, I suggest you spend the Saturday walking to every hole, watching whoever you happen to come across on your journey.  While you are walking around look for the best vantage points – possibly somewhere you can see two greens, or a green and a tee or a tricky part of the course which might produce some drama.  You should also take a look at the grandstands surrounding the 18th green.  Take note which ones are reserved for corporate or members, which ones are in the sun, which ones give the best views, if any also provide a view of the first tee, or using binoculars enable you to see a couple of other holes or tees, as these might be the holes used in the event of a play-off etc.

Phil Mickelson 2013

Phil Mickelson with the Claret Jug after winning at Muirfield, Scotland, in 2013

On Sunday I suggest you spend the morning at your chosen vantage point or points.  Then get something to eat and at around noon or 1pm get a seat in the area of your chosen grandstand.  The timing of this depends on how big the stands are and how quickly they start to fill up.  Once you are in situ, you will be able to watch most, if not all, of the players, play the 18th.  This lets you compare their different styles and appreciate the really great shots.  You will also see the eventual winner make that emotional walk onto the green, or see the winning putt, and you will be ideally placed to watch the presentation and listen to the winner’s acceptance speech.

Clearly, this is just our system, but I believe it enables you to maximise your experience at the event, regardless of the course.

If it’s too late for you to make the journey to Troon this year,     then the venues until 2020 have already been decided.  (Every fifth year is at St Andrews, Scotland).  The venues are:

2017 Royal Birkdale, Southport, England
2018 Carnoustie, Scotland
2019 Royal Portrush, Ireland
2020 St Andrews, Scotland

Good Luck
The Barefoot Bohemian.

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Flaming June at St Albion’s School

Posted on 4th July 2016 by Barefoot Bohemian

This the first of a monthly newsletter from St Albion’s School.  It’s intended to be an amusing aside to the main blog posts.  Hope you enjoy it.  

Union Flag

Well, what a month it’s been at St Albion’s School.  We started the month with our over-hyped football team heading off to play in the Inter-Schools Tournament in France and, as usual, we had over-inflated hopes of their chances.  We also started the month as a member of the Confederation of Schools, of which we are a pretty big cheese despite our size and school numbers.

We ended the month no longer in the tournament, or the Confederation, with much blame and recrimination swirling around the school corridors, some of it turning quite nasty, and involving some out-of-school protests.  The Head Boy has resigned and is going to spend more time on his farm; the school bully has gone home in tears after being snitched on by the mother of his weaselly sidekick;  the school council is falling apart and the teacher who ran the football team has skulked away, taking a load of school cash with him.  For a while, there was so much back-stabbing going on that we needed a knife amnesty to get all the cutlery back in the dining hall. Meanwhile, the school sneak is telling anyone who will listen to calm down, after spending the last couple of years trying to get us all to panic.

The footy was embarrassing as we scraped through one of the easiest groups in second place and then lost to a tiny Icelandic school which has a population smaller than our sixth form.  The teacher in charge, Wonky Woy, immediately resigned with a pre-prepared speech saying; “These things happen”.  Only to us, apparently.  An apology for his woeful decisions would have been nice.  Decisions like having our top goal scorer and one of the tallest lads in the year, Bendy Kane, taking the free kicks so Sobber Sterling, one of the shortest kids in the school who is currently having a crisis of confidence due to a bout of cyber-bullying, could try to get on the end of it.  Madness!  So now the talk is of who will succeed Wonky.  There is a strong rumour we could go for the Iceland manager, but with most of the games on a Saturday, he’s concerned he wouldn’t be able to leave the store long enough on what is his busiest day of the week.  More next month.

That debacle would have been bad enough, but there was more turmoil.  In fact, the football team are thanking their lucky stars that the school newspaper, The Mouldy Murdoch, has been full of the month’s other news, or they would have taken a much bigger battering given the amount of school cash that has gone into facilities for them.

The other embarrassment for the school surrounds the school vote on whether we should stay part of the Confederation of Schools.  Always dodgy to ask school kids for their opinions and expect them to be sensible.  I remember when we asked them to name our new science lab and we got The Boom Bar, Frankenstein’s Lab and the Kim Jong Un Centre for Nuclear Research as the top choices. But if you can’t be immature at school, where can you be immature?

Anyway, we have had years of everyone criticising the Confederation of Schools, some of it justified, most of it lies and distortions concocted by the Mouldy Murdoch like we can’t sell straight bananas in our tuck shop anymore.  The trouble is none of us defended the good things about the Confederation and so when we came to test school opinion, we shouldn’t really have been surprised when a majority of the school apparently believed the lies.  Add to that, the school bully, Barmy Boris and his weaselly sidekick Gormless Gove, who spent the whole month making up stuff and accusing anyone who disagreed with them of being a scaredy cat.  Nobody should have been surprised that Barmy Boris would lie, given that he has twice been expelled for lying – once for making up quotes in the Mouldy Murdoch, and the second time when he denied shagging Petroleum Watts behind the bike sheds.  His biggest whopper was that he doubled the amount of money we give to the Confederation of Schools, then said we would continue to support all the school activities that are currently being funded by the Confederation, while at the same time spending the entire imaginary sum on bringing our medical centre up to scratch.  Why the majority of the school swallowed that flawed calculation, is one for the head of maths to explain.

Anyway, we ended up voting 52-48 to leave (if you are into Jane Austen, you could say that’s 48% Sense and Sensibility and 52% Prime and Prejudice) But interestingly, those are exactly the same statistics the school sneak Nasty Nigel had claimed would merit a second vote as it would be too close to act upon.  Of course, he was talking about it being 52-48 in favour of staying.  He hasn’t mentioned that since and has now gone home early demanding we leave the Confederation immediately.

Unfortunately the Head Boy, Piggy Cameron, has also walked away with his mum Ham Cam, who is still reeling from the realisation that her mother’s advice of ‘never putting anything in your mouth if you don’t know where it’s been’, does not come close to covering the horror of how much worse it is when you do know where it’s been.  Gormless Gove’s mother, Lady MacGove, has ‘leaked’ a letter to the head saying Barmy Boris is a liar and can’t be trusted as Head Boy, so having caused chaos, he’s run home crying and is currently looking for another jolly jape to keep himself occupied and in the limelight. That leaves a load of candidates – including the weasel-in-chief – who most people in the school have never heard of, now asking to be Head Boy or Head Girl. The only one most of us have heard of is Mumsy May, an uptight prefect who is respected, if not particularly well liked.  Well, I say most of the school know her but my survey to check that is a little inconclusive.  When I asked: “Do you know Mumsy May?”  Most people replied with words to the effect: “Great, thanks for the tip”, which again highlights my point about immaturity.  Still, it looks like it’s her’s for the taking – but then with a school council who eat their young without a second thought, who knows?

Meanwhile, as something of a sideshow, the Alternative School Council is in chaos too.  Commie Corbie is clinging on to what passes for power when he should really be kicking seven shades of shit out of the ruling group who are in marginally less disarray than his mob.  And Kranky Kipper is running around trying to find a way for her, and her friends, to stay part of the Confederation, even though she’s clearly not a school.  Having said that, if her section of the School Council votes to reject the school vote, we wouldn’t be able to say our entire school constitution supported it, and that’s what the Confederation of Schools requires for us to give notice we’re leaving.  So don’t discount Kipper, she’s a slippery fish.

Anyway, it all adds up to nobody really wanting to pull the trigger and officially tell the Confederation of Schools that we’re leaving.  If we’re looking for someone to get us out quickly I can’t think of anybody better that Wonky Woy.  He had us out in 90 minutes – no messing – and he didn’t have a plan either, so it can be done.

As term draws to a close, the chaos looks set to continue through the summer holidays and into next term.  How do I see it playing out?  ‘No idea’ is probably the most honest answer.  But if I have to speculate I would say that IF Mumsy May becomes Head Girl, she will slow everything down to a crawl.  She will go for a woman-to-woman chat with Matron Merkel and together they will carve out a deal which might just about be acceptable enough for the school to swallow – apart from Nasty Nigel who will be back to terrorising the foreign kids, calling them all sex pests and trying to build a wall around the sixth form block.  Mumsy will then put the ‘new deal’ to the school council who might then find it acceptable enough to ignore ‘the will of the school’ while keeping faith with ‘their obligation to govern’, and accept it. They might have the bottle to just vote to stay on the new terms, or they might call for a new vote sometime next summer term.  By then, those who confused ‘in’ with ‘out’ will have sorted out which direction is which; those who did it to piss off the teachers will realise that shooting yourself in the foot actually hurts, and those who thought it would mean all the Black and Asian kids would be expelled will realise they are not here because of the Confederation of Schools.  Or it will be clear that a significant majority of the school now think leaving is the right way to go and that we can run our own school, with or without an admissions policy like the Australians, which involves shipping off anyone they don’t like to Nauru and leaving them there until they decide they should go to another school.  Wonder where they got that idea?

On a brighter note, our rugger buggers have been kicking ass, as our American cousins would say, but that’s been pretty much passed over because we don’t really do success at St Albion’s.

Hope July is a little quieter – but I doubt it.

The Common Room Commentator.

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