Greetings.

The Curlewites and I have 'had words'. And I told them that they would feature, for all the wrong reasons, in today's blog entry. Throwing plastic soldiers around the dorm? Er, I think not. Not on my watch. And then compounding the crime by blaming the dog? I don't think so. However talented Isla may be, she is not into plastic soldiers and she certainly hasn't been trained to hurl them around a room. And if anyone is thinking up witty comments about gun-dogs, forget it. I'm not in the mood. The relevant Curlewites looked appropriately chastened, I'm glad to say and I suspect that the thought of any parental input will act as a very apposite deterrent!

Mr Bryan was on duty last night, and all went well. And I'm sure the residents were delighted by his self-admitted flexi-silent reading time! Getting heavily involved in a game of Stratego is a most honourable excuse.

Of course, one of the joys of having assistants working with me and for me (or, in the case of the Head of Classics, per and pro) is that I can, occasionally, read a book. And that's what I did last night. I opened 'The Old Boy Network', by the late, great Headmaster of Westminster School, Dr John Rae, and realised what a brilliant blogger he would have been if he were still alive today! The book is a diary of his time as a HM, and, delightfully for me, the daily record starts at the same time as I started teaching: September, 1973.

There are all kind of parallels, of course. Except that while he was dining in Downing Street, or consuming grouse and claret in a Fellows' Common Room at Oxford or transforming the world of private education (as well as turning Westminster into a hugely successful school), I was swigging back a bottle of cheap plonk with other young beaks, putting the headmaster's wife's prize rose bush back together early one morning after a colleague had leapt from a first floor window in anguish at his failure to attract the attentions of an under-matron, or racing around the lanes of Berkshire at a ridiculous velocity in my open-topped Fiat Spider.

Then, just like those Curlewites, I had to grow up.