An interesting day today, culminating in a choir trip to the Ashmolean, where we had been invited to sing for the museum's first anniversary of its refurbishment. There were, we were told, about 3000 people there, and all went very well. The birthday cake was, apparently, delicious: I say apparently, as your correspondent decided that discretion was the better part of valour and made his way back to lodge, thus missing out on the hand-out. Oh well, lodge was just as enjoyable, even if you can't eat it. (A surreal moment there.)

During my journey home I noticed, not for the first time, the name 'The Eagle and Child' atop the front of a public house. (Mrs C and I have actually eaten and imbibed therein, and it's not at all bad.) The ostensible randomness of the two juxtaposed beings reminded me of those wretched English exercises, so beloved of Ronald Ridout, in which one had to put things in their pairs. You know the sort of thing: knife is to fork as cup is to ......... (options: plate, mug, saucer.) The last ones in those exercises were often, to my mind, beyond the wit of man, let alone the schoolboy - unless you were into surrealism or the plain weird. It would say something like 'Lion is to pencil as desk is to (options: birthday, curtain, jelly.) And before you all start writing in, yes, I know.

I sometimes think that our charges must wonder about the mental health of their preceptors. We have a strange habit of employing the pronoun 'we' rather than 'I', and say idiotic and pompous things like 'And what do we think we are doing?' or, as I really did say once, 'I don't think we speak to me like that'. When begowned, we seem to be overtaken by pomposity as we place our thumbs behind the pleats at the front and intone stuff like 'I am somewhat mystified by the behaviour of this form', or, as I have been known to start a lesson by becalming an unruly Fifthy Year form, 'I am deeply disturbed ..... '

Still, not as bad as my maths master, who once enquired why it was that every time he opened his mouth, some idiot spoke. We said nothing. (For once.)

There was some mileage in asking some of the choristers, as they returned (post-cake-guzzling) how the event had gone. I had a most engaging conversation with one such, who narrated chapter and verse for about ten minutes, before stopping in mid-sentence and asking, 'Sir, you were there, weren't you?!'

That'll do for tonight. One of the governors is spending the night here, in readiness for the govs' meeting tomorrow morning, so I'll wish you a fond goodnight.