An oxymoronic day today. I was saddened to learn that one of our Newtonians had sustained a nasty injury over at school earlier, and Mrs C and I send our love to him, in the hope that he will not be in too much discomfort.

Tonight, though, as always, we have been off duty, and we have had the pleasure of entertaining our children's director of music, who, purely coincidentally, is examining at St Edward's and a few other schools in the vicinity, and staying on the Banbury Road. It'e been a truly lovely evening, during which we have done no more than reminisce about former times, consume a lovely spag bol and imbibe some very enjoyable liquid accompaniment, I put a notice on the board earlier, which informed the residents that we were entertaining tonight and requested of them that they might not be too noisy.They weren't. Under the excellent direction of Mr Bryan, we wouldn't have known they were anywhere near! So, many thanks are due to all - and I will tell them tomorrow morning how brilliant they were.

Cross country this afternoon, and everyone was terrific. Many Newtonians did extremely well, and I was delighted when so many of them came up to me once they had completed the course, proudly displaying their position number! I worked for a HM some years ago, who always said that he wanted to do away with entry tests, and simply get all prospective pupils (not their parents!) to participate in a cross-country run. In this way, he reckoned, he could tell far more about a boy's character than any academic test ever could. Controversial? Well, maybe - but he had a point. And all of your young were shining examples of what Baden-Powell called 'stickability'.

Until tomorrow.