Now there's something I didn't know! I can track the number of 'pageviews', as they seem to be called, each day! Yesterday, lest you should be interested, there were 26, and today, a meagre 22. How fascinating this all is. I've also discovered that I can do all kinds of fancy things with the design layout, so if NFN goes weird one night, you'll know that the zenith of my technological ineptitude has been surpassed. Erm, not sure if that really works, grammatically or otherwise.

Tonight's gathering over here began with one resident hurling himself through the main door and informing me, in a most tuneful manner, that, apparently, washing machines last longer with Calg ........ - oh! Sorry sir! Very entertaining it was, but perhaps less so for the one with designs on a operatic career.

From there I walked down the corridor, and straight into a gaggle of Newtonians who were discussing Isla's gender in an animated manner. "She's a girl!" "No she isn't, she's a boy! Don't be daft, he's a girl! Sir, is Isla a boy or a girl?" "A girl." "Oh." I did not, as you might imagine, attempt the inevitable moment of irony, viz: "There's just a hint of a clue in her name", as I think we'd moved on by then.

I spent a most enjoyable few minutes wandering down Memory Lane with one resident tonight, sharing with him extracts from a 'log book' that had been kept by one of my former pupils, way back in 1974. I was fascinated to read the percentages awarded to all of my colleagues in those days - and me - as well as the comments! I scored a mere 55%, which was pretty pathetic, really, but I consoled myself with the thought that I'd been at that school for only a term at that stage! At least I did better than the colleague who scored just 5% and was referred to as a 'swindler' and, worse than that, a 'tuck dealer'. Heaven forbid that I should ever be styled as one of those .... ! (Oh yes, I bet you're longing to know what the comment about me was. Oh all right, then. 'Seems quite nice. Likes cars, music and girls. Would like to be a journalist if he wasn't a teacher.')

So it's been a good evening, with just the one Newtonian being prevented from endeavouring to discern whether he could get into one of the drawers under his bed. He simply could not understand why it had been 'so much easier in Savage's'. I left him to work it out.

Jusqu'a demain. Goodnight.