So much to tell you, dear friends, but I mustn't become boring.

First, I must relate the story of what happened in my French class yesterday. I have a rule whereby my 'learners' (we shouldn't call then pupils, apparently, these days) are meant to leave five lines between each piece of work in their exercise books. Of course, and as you will have already worked out, this is to make the books look the part, but I tell my learners (!) that I'm doing what I can, in my position of Director of PSHE, to save the rainforests. Saving paper equals saving the trees, and, as Tesco's will have it, quite rightly, 'every little helps'.

Be that as it may, I had cause to complain to one of my learners (yawn) that he weas not starting his sentences with capital letters. He took it on the chin, as you would imagine from a Summerfieldian.

"Sir!" exclaimed a new member of the set, "I think I know why he does that."

"Oh yes? And why might that be, I wonder?"

"He's trying to save ink."

Brilliant. Lovin' it.

Enough of classroom stuff. Tonight I was given special dispensation to attend the buffet dinner party (Cn one have one of those? Are they supper parties?) with the HM, the visiting preacher and an assortment of colleagues. Forgive me, but,

God, I love this place. Quite apart from a terrific chat with the visiting preacher, who's about to become Harrow's first American director of studies, I was able to engage with my endoctored head of English, and with the Chaplain, in a terrific debate about the 'agony of choice'. The former, you see, is writing an article about Andrew Marvell, and he was telling me about the procession in which Marvell, Milton and Dryden could have been standing together, and I suggested to the Chaplain that one could raise the bar even further, theologically, and compare that with the Gospel writers actually speaking with Our Lord. I suggested further that choice is not always agonising, but that it was, in fact, alternatives that could be. I also ventured to suggest that anyone's choice caused another party to make yet another choice, and so we went on. Brilliant. Better than discussing detentions.

I hope you enjoyed my rendition of Bach's D major Prelude before Chapel this evening: it was hardly worthy of being transferred to CD, but it was OK. Mostly.

If you were watching Songs of Praise, though, you will have seen Laura Wright of the group 'All Angels': she was a pupil at Old Buckenham Hall prep school, which until very recently was run by our greatest friends, now living the life of Riley in southern France. Lots of text messaging, of course, and good to know that prep schools like our own - and your own - are producing excellence in every field.

That's enough for tonight.

Goodnight.