Sunday 24 September

Gwen has forbidden me to talk to the press.  I knew I was in trouble when she changed the hymn boards and we did Amazing Grace instead of Bread of Heaven, and after the service she had a private meeting with Mum and Mrs Ramsbotham that went on for ages.  Mum won’t tell me what Gwen said, but she was in a very bad mood when she came home and I had to cook my own dinner (beans and spaghetti on toast with a perfectly cooked poached egg on top, and a bowl of Aunt Bessie’s delicious oven chips.  Aunt Bessie isn’t my Aunt Bessie because my Aunt Bessie can’t cook for toffee: she is another Aunt Bessie.  She must be very busy preparing oven chips every working day, because they have them in the Co-Op as well as in our Spar, but perhaps that is her vocation in life, preparing oven chips, as mine is professional organisting, and as we are so frequently enjoined from the pulpit we should not make judgments about people lest we have a beam in our own eye) (whatever that is supposed to mean.)

Antony wasn’t in church.  Not only is he very conceited but his attendance record is appalling.  I shall have to say something to Gwen next Sunday in my secondary capacity as Choirmaster.

Saturday 23 September 10:00pm

I was a little apprehensive after my tea, particularly as I could see and hear the police helicopter hovering above our steeple, and it was only when I explained to one of the uniformed marksmen in full riot gear who ringed the church that I was the Organist and had to do my practice for tomorrow’s service that I was allowed through the cordon, such is the respect accorded to our national faith.

Inside all was quiet, apart from low murmurs from the choir vestry and an occasional hoot of mirth.

Bravely I ventured in to my choir vestry.  And there was mum with a cup of tea and a big smirk on her face, and there was Mrs Ramsbotham, with a cup of tea and another big smirk on her face, and there were the Flower Ladies, similarly armed with cups of tea and smirks.  The floor was littered with used tea-bags and bits of discarded foliage.

“”Ee, ’e’s a grand lad, your Barry”, exclaimed an elderly lady with an eye patch and several blackened teeth, who was introduced to me as Mrs Whimpenny, Head Flower Lady and Mother of Chapel.  “’E fell forrit just like you said ’e would.  Daft as his dad.”

Mum explained.  It was all Antony’s doing.  He had complained to Gwen that he’d had awful attacks of hay fever when he was tidying the music in the vestry and couldn’t sing his solos, and he blamed it on the lilies which the Flower Ladies strew about with gay abandon, and the Flower Ladies, having been tipped off by a disaffected verger, had counter-attacked with the claim that Antony’s singing gave them migraines as well as varicose veins. 

“Eh, cut the cackle”, said Mrs Whimpenny rather sharply to mum. “’E’s your lad.  Tell ’im what he’s got to do.”

But it was Mrs Ramsbotham who took me to one side.  “Barry, dear”,  she said soothingly.  “We want you to use your influential friends in the Press to give publicity to the Flower Ladies’ demands, which are legion. Between you and me, they are afraid the PCC is going to listen to Antony and have plastic flowers adorning the High Altar in future, thus putting them out of a job and therefore their influential position in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.  I and your mum have co-opted all the Flower Ladies onto the PCC as a precaution, but the vote is by no means a foregone conclusion and therefore we need public opinion on our side.  Barry, forget Iraq, forget Afghanistan.  This is serious.”

And then she said:

“And Barry, this stand-off was organised by e-mails which emanated from your laptop. So be a good boy, and do what mum says.  Or else.”

  

I realised that I had been entrapped by low feminine cunning, and my silent plea to James Bond was unforthcoming resultwise.  Then mum handed me a list of things that the flower ladies were demanding and said I was to use my contacts in the National Press to get it on CNN and Sky News. Not the BBC, mum warned me.  Too provincial, also desperately short of funds because they are still paying off Jonathan Woss with the takings from the licence fee.

“You go out there, Barry, and tell the bobs to put down their weapons, then tell the press the truth about the oppression of flower ladies by an unholy alliance of Suffragan Bishops and Choral Scholars.  They have had enough of victimisation and oppression and prejudice, and they have banded together under a banner which will inspire a revolution by flower ladies the world over.  But keep the message simple, Barry, so that they can understand it.”

So I went out and said “the Flower Ladies are revolting, but this is what they want”, and the policemen had a quick chat among themselves and said “sounds reasonable to us, Squire, and you’re dead right, they are.  A more villainous lot I never saw in all my puff.  We’ll have to nip off, though, because Control says someone’s been spotted riding a bike without lights, and the helicopter’s already up. Have a nice day.”

Saturday 23 September 5:00pm

I am going to have to make my own tea, although it is actually mum’s turn, but she can’t fulfil her obligations because she and Mrs Ramsbotham are being held hostage in church by the Flower Ladies.  Mrs R managed to slip off to the awful vestry loo for a moment to phone the police before the battery in her mobile ran out, and the first I knew of this alteration in our domestic arrangements was when my friend from the Daily Mail telephoned for the Inside Story, having had a tip-off from a disgruntled nark in the Police call-centre.  It was all a complete surprise to me, of course, and my first thought was that he was phoning to arrange an interview for that feature about me that he had promised.  But no.  He was very excited.  “That can wait, Barry,” he said.  “Don’t your realise that your mum is being held hostage by a gang of armed Flower Ladies?  There’s massive human interest here, Barry, what with police brutality and little old ladies, and our readers will love it.”

He promised me another £25 cheque if I visit the scene and phone him back with a first-hand report, and I agreed.

I suppose it will have to be boiled egg and soldiers to sustain me through what could prove a long and trying ordeal.  Luckily there are two eggs left, and after my tea I will make all speed up to church, for mum might be in danger.

Saturday 23 September 12:00 noon

A breakthrough.  After less than an hour exploring the contents of the laptop I discovered something called Inbox, and when I looked inside there was this:
 
 
From: barry.acne@gmail.com
To: barry.acne@gmail.com

Subject: My First E-mail

Date: Fri 22 September 21:30:47 +0000

Hello Barry

It is possible that I was a little premature in blaming the postman for the non-delivery of my e-mail.  Apparently e-mails do not require the intervention of human postmen – or postladies, I assume – because they are delivered by means of Electronic Communication through the frictionless medium of The Ether.

Saturday 23 September 9:15am

Saved!  Mum had a phone call from Mrs Ramsbotham and has had to rush out to church.  Apparently the flower ladies are rioting in the graveyard because somebody has removed all their Oasis records, without which they say they will be unable to meet their legal obligation to fill the ecclesiastical urns with large white lilies in readiness for tomorrow’s services.

So now for an exciting session with my laptop...

Saturday 23 September 8:30am

No post.  I saw the postman go past on his bike five minutes ago.  It is a great disappointment, I must say, and I am inclined to agree with Mr Grudge, who regards all forms of communication since the invention of the Carrier Pigeon as unnecessary and undesirable. “The Quill and the Pigeon”, Mr Grudge regularly intones.  “Mark my words: The Quill and the Pigeon.”  Garnham once asked Mr Grudge if The Quill and Pigeon was the name of his favourite public house, and got a double detention for impertinence.

I would like to be at my laptop learning even more about IT, but mum beat me to it, and has been up and firing off e-mails in all directions since 7:00am.

I could tell her that our machine is evidently faulty, for the e-mails are not being delivered, but she will just have to find out the hard way.  I shall therefore boil myself an egg to keep my strength up and then wait until she goes shopping, when I will have the laptop all to myself.

Friday 22 September 10:30pm

My Mum is amazing! I wish she had taken my IT exam instead of me, for she would have got a Grade A-star-plus.  As soon as we’d finished the Chinese take-away she had summoned she was off, connecting plugs here and plugs there, and suddenly we were on the Internet!  In our house!  On my laptop!

But the best thing is that I can now use my e-mail!  Mum helped me write a message to myself.  I couldn’t think of anything to say that I didn’t know already, so I just typed ‘Hello Barry’.

It is wonderful!  I am really getting a grasp of it now.  Mum’s gone to bed and I’ve only just switched the laptop off.  It is indeed a New World to be explored.

I can’t wait for the postman to arrive tomorrow with my e-mail to myself.

Friday 22 September 16:50pm

Simon is very patient.  He took a long time explaining to me the difference between a router and a router, and the thing I have brought home is a little black box with a sticky-up bit like a dog’s tail.  Simon says that it is an abroad banned modem as well, which is what I really need.  No doubt Mother will be au fait with all this gobbledegook, which I do not understand at all.  I don’t know why I bothered attending all those IT classes.  I am not surprised that I don’t get fed properly if Mum is out learning all about e-mails and abroad banned with her cronies at the Women’s Group all the time.

I will try to put it out of my mind and have ten minutes with the Raindrop Prelude and a few Custard Cream biscuits to restore inner calm before mum comes home and starts blaming me for something.

Thursday 21 September 9:30pm

I didn’t know school had written to Mum with advice on parental supervision for pupils with school laptops. The reason there wasn’t any post today was that Mum had met the postman as she was going to Mrs Ramsbotham’s for a PCC Caucus Strategy Meeting and had stuffed the letter in her handbag.  So when she got home and said “Well, where is then, Barry? This new lappie of yours? Have you broken it yet?”  It was a bit of a shock, and I had to pretend that I had completely forgotten about it in my desire to cook Mum a sumptuous meal of microwaved toad-in-the-hole (Sainsburys, £3.49, sell-by 21-09, use-by 24-09).

It seems that Mum has hidden talents, no doubt acquired at her Women’s Group, for within seconds of my retrieving* it she had it going and she was playing a card game called Solitaire.

I was genuinely impressed, for after all Mum is but a woman.  “How did you do that?” I inquired (well, gasped, really).

“I plugged it into the mains”, she replied somewhat tartly. “It is a convenient and widely understood method of making laptops work when some half-baked incompetent has drained the battery.”

Then she started rummaging about in the bag.  “Where’s the router?” she inquired.  “Surely you haven’t lost it already?”

She explained impatiently that without a router thing we wouldn’t be able to Serf the World-Wide Web, and school should have given me one if I am to send in my homework by Electronic Means.  I haven’t a clue what she is on about, but I’ll ask Simon tomorrow.  I’m sure I’ve seen a cupboard in the Woodwork Lab with a label saying “Chisels and Routers.”

*those gerunds again! What a fruitful lesson with Mr Grudge it was!

Thursday 21 September 5:30pm

I think Simon has given me a dud. I turned it on, just as Simon had explained, but just when a picture came onto the screen it went beep-beep-beep and a message came up saying “battery 10%.  Save your work and Exit.  Oh for heaven’s sake, come on, hurry up. You stoopid er sump’n?  Have a nice day.” then it went whirr-whirr and died while I was trying to work out what to do.

I’ve put it back in its bag and shoved it under the bed with my collection of things I hide from Mum, such as my diary and James Bond books. Mum is due any minute and it is my turn to microwave our dinner.

Thursday 21 September 5:00pm

A very exciting day!  I now have a laptop computer!  Simon summoned me after our secular assembly where we hang little flags on totem poles and sing Unicorn songs, and explained how to turn it on.  At last I am going to be able to Serf the World-Wide Web!  I said “Don’t you mean Surf, Simon?”, and he said “No, I mean Serf, because that’s what you’ll become if you’re not careful – a slave to the Internet, like all the other kids.”

He said a lot more, being a teacher and a bit pompous, but I was too excited to listen.

I’m going to turn it on now, before Mum gets home, then I can surprise and impress her with my in-depth understanding of IT, and introduce her to the world of Instant Electronic Communication.

Wednesday 20 September

A quick breakfast this morning – just my favourite cereal, Sugar Puffs (with honey goodness, and no added salt!) when my eye was caught by the advertisement for a free gift – the Complete Organ Works of Dietrich Buxtehude.

I mentioned it to Garnham at break, but he laughed and said I was imagining it. “They wouldn’t fit inside the packet”, he sniggered. Really, sometimes Garnham can be a pain in the neck. I think I will opt for the pedals edition, because by the time I have saved up the requisite 1,000 tokens I will probably be quite expert, being 53 ½, or thereabouts. Mind you, by that age I will be probably be incapacitated by RSI or BSE or some other affliction so horrible that no-one dares give it a proper name, or else I will be suffering from terminal arthritis from a lifetime of playing the organ in unheated churches.

Still, it's worth asking mum if she could have a word at next PCC, or, even better, asking Gwen if she could preach about the life-affirming properties of Sugar Puffs, and just happen to mention that at the back of church there will be a collecting box for tokens - in aid of the Choir Fund, of course.

Tuesday 19 September

Remedial English was cancelled today because Mr Grudge is off sick with a sore neck, and the class was dispersed to various alternative locations. It was perhaps not a good idea to send Garnham to the new Department of Sub-Atomic Physics, for his eyesight was not really up the job of controlling Miss Smith’s new Small-to-Medium Hadron Collider, which will now have to be replaced at enormous cost, along with two classrooms and a large arc of the school playing field which were vaporised, though luckily without human casualties.

I myself was obviously directed to the Music Lab, and was blissfully unaware of the mayhem in the science block because the Music Lab appeared to be having its own mayhem party. The noise was indescribable. The Music Lab is full of giant speakers and computers and rank after rank of black boxes with flashing lights and levers and knobs, and I made the mistake of asking a pimply young person where the piano was.

He looked at me in an incredulous manner. “Hey, man, dem tings gone out wid de ark. Where you bin? Evertin’ done on de ’pooter now, savin’ a whole heapa hassle bodderin’ wid dem liddle black notey-thingies.” Then he looked at me more closely. “O golly gosh! You’re Barry, aren’t you? Don’t you play the organ in a church? And I took you for an A-Level student! Mea culpa. No offence meant, old chap. Hope none’s taken. I’m Julian, by the way. Head of Music, for my sins.”

He shook my hand, and I felt obliged to enquire why he had first spoken to me in such a curious manner. “O, it’s the kids”, he said. “They all talk like that, and you have to learn or they think you’re hot, I mean uncool. But hey, Barry, can you really read music? That is so, like, pants!” A wistful look crept into his eyes. “ Wish I could, though.”

I survived the lesson with a thumping headache and without heaving learned anything at all, but I have resolved to be more polite in future to my old music teacher, Miss Abricote (she who advised me after my first seven failures at Grade I Piano to take up carpentry or budgie-breeding), even though every time I encounter her in her buggy in the village she pulls the blinds down and zooms off at 7mph in the opposite direction.

It was because of dear Miss Abricote that I can now read music, provided it has no more than three sharps or flats (or two in the minor keys), and in my school that probably qualifies me for a Doctorate.

Baked beans for tea, on soggy toast. Mum is too busy to cook properly, because it’s her Women’s Group tonight so she has to get her make-up off and her boiler suit on, which takes hours.

Tuesday 19 September

Remedial English was cancelled today because Mr Grudge is off sick with a sore neck, and the class was dispersed to various alternative locations. It was perhaps not a good idea to send Garnham to the new Department of Sub-Atomic Physics, for his eyesight was not really up the job of controlling Miss Smith’s new Small-to-Medium Hadron Collider, which will now have to be replaced at enormous cost, along with two classrooms and a large arc of the school playing field which were vaporised, though luckily without human casualties. I myself was obviously directed to the Music Lab, and was blissfully unaware of the mayhem in the science block because the Music Lab appeared to be having its own mayhem party. The noise was indescribable. The Music Lab is full of giant speakers and computers and rank after rank of black boxes with flashing lights and levers and knobs, and I made the mistake of asking a pimply young person where the piano was. He looked at me in an incredulous manner. “Hey, man, dem tings gone out wid de ark. Where you bin? Evertin’ done on de ’pooter now, savin’ a whole heapa hassle bodderin’ wid dem liddle black notey-thingies.” Then he looked at me more closely. “O golly gosh! You’re Barry, aren’t you? Don’t you play the organ in a church? And I took you for an A-Level student! Mea culpa. No offence meant, old chap. Hope none’s taken. I’m Julian, by the way. Head of Music, for my sins.”

He shook my hand, and I felt obliged to enquire why he had first spoken to me in such a curious manner. “O, it’s the kids”, he said. “They all talk like that, and you have to learn or they think you’re hot, I mean uncool. But hey, Barry, can you really read music? That is so, like, pants!” A wistful look crept into his eyes. “ Wish I could, though.”

I survived the lesson with a thumping headache and without heaving learned anything at all, but I have resolved to be more polite in future to my old music teacher, Miss Abricote (she who advised me after my first seven failures at Grade I Piano to take up carpentry or budgie-breeding), even though every time I encounter her in her buggy in the village she pulls the blinds down and zooms off at 7mph in the opposite direction.

It was because of dear Miss Abricote that I can now read music, provided it has no more than three sharps or flats (or two in the minor keys), and in my school that probably qualifies me for a Doctorate.

Baked beans for tea, on soggy toast. Mum is too busy to cook properly, because it’s her Women’s Group tonight so she has to take her make-up off, which takes hours.

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.

Sunday 17 September (Trinity 15)

No Antony at church this morning. Gwen preached about Upmarket Church (organs and choirs and Henry Persil) and Downmarket Church (guitars and pimples and Graham Kendrick) and suffering little children (probably a swipe at Antony’s solo singing). We are definitely Upmarket in my Church, which is no doubt why Ken had to move on.

There is a great sense of relief that the threat of legal action has been removed, and Gwen says she intends to have the old choirstalls reinstated, for plywood choirstalls with chromium fittings are naff and only appropriate in Downmarket Churches (said Gwen.) I only hope they haven’t rotted while in the boilerhouse and being used for target practice by the Vicarage cat.

Gwen has also offered to help with the choir (which at present numbers one, when he remembers to turn up). Apparently she has had some experience with choirs. She says that if we are to be a proper Upmarket Church we must launch an immediate recruiting campaign now that the schools are back.

I had only been home a few minutes when there was a loud banging on the door. I heard Mum shriek from upstairs: “Don’t open it – it’s the Swat Team, and they’re after your poor Mummy.” “No it isn’t”, said an exasperated voice through the letterbox. “It’s me, Tarquin – Antony’s dad. Have you got my handcuffs?” My mind raced, as James Bond’s must have done at moments of great danger. Tarquin! I filed the information away for possible future use.

“Oh come on, Barry”, he hissed (hissed?) “Just stick them through the letter box and we’ll forget about your mum assaulting a police officer in the execration of his duty. And Barry, I hope you didn’t eat any of that blancmange. Forensics thought it was Semtex and blew up my uniform in a controlled explosion.”

Mum was still shrieking and I thought at any minute she’d start throwing things about again, so I dug the handcuffs up from my unfragrant satchel and popped them through the letterbox. “Ar thanks lad”, said the police officer otherwise known as Tarquin. “You’ve probably saved my life. The Super gets really shirty when us bobs mislay our darbies. Any time you need a dependable professional witness, lad, you can count on me. We coppers are trained never to allow the facts to get in the way of a few whopping great porkies up there in the witness box, ho-ho.” A fiver fluttered through the letterbox and, with catlike tread, he was gone . I opened the door but there was no sign of him. My hero 007 would have been proud of me. Then I remembered mum and shouted upstairs: “He’s gone, and I don't think he'll be coming back.”

Mum came down and made lunch, and it was edible. She said she was proud of me, and if I wanted to I could practise the Raindrop Prelude all afternoon.

So what with one thing and another, and all in all, not a bad day, considering.

Saturday 16 September

Mum has locked herself in her room again. She is wailing and throwing things about. I though Antony’s father was very polite when he appeared in full uniform and asked Mum if he could see her CRB clearance, which mum is supposed to have now that she is on the PCC, the PCC being stacked with vulnerable adults, and I don’t think it was very wise of mum to throw the blancmange all over him, for mum’s blancmanges are often a bit lumpy. When I had helped him get up and wiped his uniform down and pushed back the dents in his helmet he said he was very sorry, but he now had no choice but to arrest mum. It was at that moment that Mrs Ramsbotham phoned. I explained that there was a bit of a problem with a policeman, and that mum had just gone up to her room to throw things about, but she just sighed and said: “Barry. This is official PCC business. Put the ruddy rozzer on.”

The policeman wasn’t like mum, who always repeats everything Mrs Ramsbotham says, so I always hear both sides of a conversation. After warning Mrs R that anything she said might be taken down, he didn’t say very much at all, as people tend not to when Mrs R is in full swing. But I could hear Mrs Ramsbotham crackling away at him, and when he gave me the phone back he looked a bit pale, and said it might be a good idea if he came back tomorrow, if I thought I would be safe in the house. “Jolly good, then”, he said, before I’d even had time to answer. He must have a had a lot of serious crimes to solve before bedtime, for he was off like a shot, so rapidly that he left his handcuffs behind.

The phone started whistling at me, so I picked it up. “Barry – is that you?” said Mrs R. I confessed that it was. “Has that bluebottle gone?” “Yes”, I said, “but he’ll be back – he’s forgotten his handcuffs.”

“Oh poo”, shrieked Mrs R (well, she didn’t exactly say ‘poo’). “Listen, Barry. On no account let your mum find those handcuffs. Barry – promise me you will hide them? It was handcuffs and hormones that caused all that trouble in 1993.*”

I promised Mrs Ramsbotham I would hide them, just to get her off the phone, and I put them in my satchel, which even after two nights in the shed still pongs a bit of the sort of cheap aftershave which some teenage boys splash liberally about their persons rather than a) employ it for its proper purpose, viz. and to wit, descaling lavatories, or b) wash.

After the events of today I shall need a period of calm and reflection so that I am able to fulfil my obligations at church tomorrow. I shall therefore go to bed now and read a little more Dostoevsky. I have nearly finished p8.

*No, she didn’t go into details. I wondered, too.

Friday 15 September

Dear Antony,

I have to say that you did a marvellous job of sorting out the piles of ancient music in the choir vestry. You are one of my oldest friends, and I knew that you, with your background in Advanced Cathedral Worship, were the only person who could be entrusted with such a really really important task, which of course I would have willingly performed myself had I not been burdened with my silly organ-playing duties. That you so graciously undertook this dusty labour for me, your young and unworthy Choirmaster, says much for the strength of our long-standing friendship and the esteem in which you are held by me, and by my dear Mother, who by the way wishes to ask if you would please call her Angela in future and not that rather frosty and impersonal Mrs Acne (please?)

Yours with gratitude and admiration,

x......................................x

Barry Acne (Organist and Choirmaster)

Mum said if I don’t sign it I could move my bed and all my belongings into the shed. It would be blindingly obvious even to a woodlouse with an IQ of –273 that I didn’t write it (I mean, can you imagine a literate and well-educated professional male person such as I myself ever using the expression ‘really really’?), but Antony is vain and thrives on flattery and is probably even at this moment being patted on the head by a horde of admiring Flower Ladies.

I’m not sure I did the right thing, but I do have my own dignity to consider, and there are times when a man must stand up for what is right, even against his own mother. The prospect of another night on the floor of that shed was not pleasant of course, and I confess that I struggled greatly with my conscience, before I signed the wretched thing. Mum uttered a self-satisfied smirk and said she’d pop it in the postbox straight away.

There was no school today. It seems that 98.1% of the pupils, I mean students, have come out on strike because they have no confidence in their teachers, and most of the teachers have come out on strike because they didn’t like having to go back to work. Apparently the only teachers in the staff room today were Simon and Miss Smith and Mr Grudge. Garnham was standing outside the gates when I arrived, and he says he peeped through the staff room window at 8:54am and saw Mr Grudge drinking whisky and reading Shakespearean sonnets to Miss Smith. Garnham also says that he saw Simon sharpening a hammer and repeating ‘grrr, grrr, grrr’ to himself in a shrill falsetto, but the consensus is that Garnham is an untrustworthy witness. He is very short-sighted and has to wear corrective spectacles, so in all likelihood it wasn’t Shakespeare at all that Mr Grudge was reading. It could have been the Beano, or the Fifth Form timetable, for all Garnham knows. But Garnham swears he heard Mr Grudge say ‘How-do. Islay for you? Lumme! Can’t thou ease? ’, and then Simon picked Mr Grudge up by his collar and shook him about a bit before gathering Miss Smith unto himself in a protective manner and leading her forth, no doubt to some bosky dell designed by Nature for canoedling, or, if there was a sudden world shortage of bosky dells, the groundsman’s hut on the school cricket field.

But as I say Garnham has proved himself to be a most unreliable person in the past, as I know to my cost. He still has that James Bond book that he acquired from me by false pretences and now I do not believe a word he says.

Thursday 14 September - off the hook!

Thursday 14 September 7:00pm

Mum says that there is no longer any likelihood of the Civic Society’s pursuing any form of legal action against us, for lurking forgotten and unseen in a dusty pile of Novello anthems (Price 3d) was a document that has brought the church wardens and the faint-hearts of the PCC all back to the fold, tearing up their letters of resignation. The ‘ancient’ choirstalls were fakes! They were installed in 1896 at a cost of £73.1.11 (including polishing.) Mrs Ramsbotham is to send a photocopy and a snooty letter to the Civic Society, and is already rolling up her sleeves in joyous anticipation.

Thursday 14 September 2:30pm

A major upheaval at school today, and we were sent home at lunchtime so that the staff could hold their start-of-term meeting in the Red Lion to sort it all out. It seems that everybody in the Fifth Form but me has opted to take Psychology, Media Studies and Sociology at A-Level and the teachers have protested at the size of their potential classes. There are 237 for Media Studies alone! When Miss Darling (Media Studies) saw the list she fainted and Mr Grudge (English Lang & Lit) had to hold a burning feather under her nose until she revived, the school medicine cabinet being locked and Matron, who has the only key, still recovering in that home for victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the 3^rd Form girls locked her in the biology lab overnight with a lot of white mice on St David’s Day the year before last.

The whole Fifth Form has to assemble in Main Hall at 9:15 tomorrow morning to be addressed by the Headmaster, whom until today I had always assumed to be a figment of the Education Authority’s imagination, for nobody has ever been seen entering or exiting the luxurious penthouse suite on the top floor of our exclusive Parker-Morris-standard 1960s educational establishment.

It is all very exciting. Much, I imagine, as a PCC meeting must be.

I tried to see Simon to ask about my computer, but a sign on his door said ‘All Hope Abandon – This Means You’ so I went home and cooked myself some egg and bacon to keep me going until tea time, with a couple of sausages and a few tomatoes and some fried bread and then some healthy yoghurt (peach and raspberry) for dessert.

Do not know where mum is, so will now take opportunity to brush up on Raindrop Prelude and possibly read some Dostoevsky in preparation for tomorrow’s Assembly.