Thank you, Mr Bryan, for ensuring that peace reigned last night. My deputy lodgemaster informs me that all went well, other than a rather highly-charged game of ‘Romans’, but, as I was at pains to point out, the aforementioned race were not really known for a particularly peaceful modus vivendi.

I was also delighted to see that the Duplo set that Mrs C and I have donated to the lodge was in use. Remember Duplo? We actually brought it back from Dorset so that the particularly young members of the community, namely little Bryans and little Aldreds, could avail themselves of such a facility while their parents were engaged in other pleasures - like eating and imbibing – but if Newtonians want to construct model ice-breakers and the like with it, then that’s fine by us. (The reference to ice-breakers, by the way, is in homage to one of the most amusing books I’ve ever read, ‘Tomkinson’s Schooldays’. If you haven’t read it, I won’t spoil it for you, save to say that Tomkinson is caught building a full-scale model of an ice-breaker in the hobbies hut.) I must confess that I was more a Lego man myself, and – believe this – at the age of eight I used to go downstairs, make my parents a cup of tea that they could enjoy in bed, and present them each morning with a newly-built house! Add that to the fact that I used to enjoy (apparently, according to my mother) sitting under the kitchen table at the age of seven and reading words from the dictionary aloud, simply because I liked the sound of them and you may begin to understand that which stands before you in parents’ meetings now! Oh goodness, this is like Confession!

Picture this morning’s scene. Three (!) baskets for towels and flannels, Guernseys need to be collected from the laundry room, and poppies need to be attached to the latter. Meanwhile, Isla has misappropriated a boy’s slipper and is triumphantly parading it around the lower corridor and three boys have yet to appear! Miss Ruthie is enjoying her well-earned morning off, and Diana has been in to explain how the system of Guernsey-collection and poppy-fixing is to work, that towels and flannels should be pressed down in the respective baskets in order to make it easier for sorting, and I have been threatened with deuteronomical consequences - or worse- if any boy should leave the lodge poppyless.

So! Just a day’s teaching, duty and games-taking to go, then! What a breeze.