Good evening, all - and thank you to the 27 of you who tuned in to this corner of cyberspace last night. Oh yes, it all shows up, you know! My 'stats' page is very interesting!

'twas shoe-cleaning ce soir, and our judge was Miss Alice Heinrich, whose surname most of you won't recall, so I will tell you that her parents used to be the lodgeparents of Newton before our predecessors, the Smiths, and Mr Heinrich was the deputy headmaster before Mr Bishop. Mr Heinrich is now the HM of the supremely successful Cumnor House School in Sussex, where he has managed to attract at least three former SF members of staff ..... ! The Heinrich children and the Cheater children grew up together, you see, and there was much interaction between Mayfield (where we cut our teeth as lodgeparents for 13 years) and Newton. But to return to the shoe-cleaning: that went very well, with all four winners being delighted, and Miss Alice opining (yes, my word again, for those of you who observe such things) 'I wish Mum and Dad ran a lodge: they're all SO CUTE!' I concurred, of course. And thank you, yes, my cough is getting better.

In Break today we had the most superb flapjacks - and the only reason I mention that (you cynics: do you really think I'm just being political?) is that last Thursday, when we all foregather in the Headmaster's drawing room for coffee and a (usually) brief meeting, the coffee was superb, as always, but the biscuit upgrade, to which I had referred at the end of 5C's Latin lesson, and told them how much I looked forward to Thursday Breaks, didn't seem to happen. Now I have no problem with custard creams or digestives; indeed, I enjoy both very much, but when you know that flapjacks, inter alia, might be awaiting, one tends to arrive with a spring in one's step. I just thought I'd mention it.

I was asked by a senior boy, after games, whether I thought that teenagers and older people were really the same. I asked why.

'Because when you're young you slide down the bannisters, and then when you're old you slide back up them again.'

Not bad.

Goodnight.