A text book evening? Well, yes, I suppose so, if the book in question happened to be 'Duvet-changing for Beginners', part 1. Should you happen to have been passing through Newton last night, you would have found yourselves confronted by strange, ghoulish spectres, ostensibly duvet-like, wandering, like lost souls, through the dorms. Sometimes they would fall, prostrate, on to the floor, sometimes on to beds. Others would be clambering, apparently aimlessly, up the ladder of a bunk bed and would lurch on to the mattress, face-first. (Or whatever ghouls have in place of faces.)

This terrifying spectacle lasted for most of the pre-silent-reading time, and all of that, coupled with my insistence that showers should be taken by all after such ghostly exertion, ensured that by the time I called for Silent Reading, all were ready for a rest! Fortunately, no-one was confused enough to wander into the shower encompassed by a duvet cover.

So that was that. I then realised that we hadn't actually had our statutory fire practice, so, enlisting the assistance of Mrs C, fifteen minutes after lights out I turned the key of the alarm. The cries of horror, shock and awe at such campanological sonority surpassed even the ghoulish screams of before. Time it was, therefore, for another of my John Cleese impressions.

"Right. If that's how you're going to behave like that in a fire practice, we'll have to do it again. Go back upstairs and if the alarm goes off at midnight then you'll know why." Etc., etc.

Chastened, the Newtonians returned silently to their beds. And waited.

Two minutes later I turned the key for a second time ......

Text book.