Monday 18 September

Garnham was waiting outside the school gates at 8:55am this morning, bursting with excitement. “I say, Acne,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Have you heard about Antony? His girl-friend went potty because he’s had a letter from Another Woman and she ran over him with her bike. Antony had to go to hospital and the bike’s a write-off.”

It must be my assiduous study of the works of Ian Fleming that has given me such a clear insight into the mysterious workings of human psychology, for it was immediately obvious to me that that was the reason Antony wasn’t in church yesterday.

Our conversation was interrupted by the school hooter. We used to have a bell, but the mafia of the Lower Sixth stole it last year and sold it to a scrap metal merchant to augment their beer and fags fund. It is thought, but it hasn’t been proved yet, despite a thorough investigation by Matron and the Caretaker, to be the same mafia that discovered the box of Victorian ink powder when they were clearing out a disused store-room in the old block, and tipped the lot into the cold water tank that serves the cisterns in the girls’ lavatory. The health centre people were really excited because they thought there was an epidemic of an hitherto unknown tropical disease – Spotty Blue Bottom Fever – until the lab reports came back.

But as I say, our conversation was interrupted and we had to line up for Assembly.

It seems that both strikes are over. The reasons are complex, but apparently our school is now owned and managed by the American company that funded the new Science and Armaments Block. The teaching staff were threatened with loss of pension and holiday rights and took fright, some of them having already invested heavily in retirement caravans in Pontypridd, but more funding is to be provided by a famous beefburger chain for a new Psychology, Sociology and Media Studies department to secure an adequate supply of future graduates to staff its expanding portfolio of alimentary gratification facilities.

This was all explained to us in Assembly by the Headmaster, who arrived in a silver Cadillac that brought admiring glances from the junior forms until its chaffeur locked it away in the old stable block, no doubt having heard of the reputation of the Lower Sixth. The Headmaster spoke for ten minutes about Posterity and Glowing Futures, said we were wunnerful kids and great teachers, then had to leave because of his incredibly busy skejjle, being CEO of just about every mult-eye-national corporation in the world, including (and I did not know this until this morning, even though I am on the Staff) the Church of England. I must write to my Boss, the Archbishop of Canterbury, about it, for I suspect he might not know either.