First and foremost, thank you for all your kind good wishes, following the news of my new appointment. I'm very excited about it, of course, and I'm greatly looking forward to a completely new challenge. Milton Abbey is a great school, and the (now not so) new HM, Mr Doodes, is doing a brilliant job and making it a school of choice for many. I'm doubly pleased to be joining the school at such an exciting time in its history.

I heard from one of the LMs tonight that one of you had informed him that I no longer write the Newton Blog .... ! What?! How could you? All I said was that because Mrs C and I weren't around on Tuesday or Thursday nights, I didn't see much point in writing about something I knew nothing about! I will, though, probably stop when I reach my intended target of 500 posts, which is not far away now, but at the moment, and until I do, then you will continue to receive these bulletins. And you might even receive them after that; I haven't decided yet.

Incidentally, my new boss responded with great alacrity to the idea of a 'Chaplain's Blog', so you'll be able to see how things are going if you log on to the Milton Abbey website. (www.miltonabbey.co.uk)

It was suggested to me tonight that in order for the LMs to know what kind of a mood I was in, I should sport a different coloured pullover each evening. Blue for good, green for not quite so good, and red for danger. I thought the idea had some merit, actually. I'm wearing a blue one at the moment. It reminds me of my prep school deputy headmaster, Blighter Burton, who, in my mind, did much the same. (I don't suppose he really did, but such are the workings of the prep school boy's mind.) A tweed jacket meant that he was in friendly mood (well, at least vaguely approachable), a blazer indicated a slightly more edgy disposition, and that horrid, horrid, miserable grey suit became known as his 'murder suit'. Woe betide any boy who scored less than the passmark (which was always ridiculously high) in a history test when he was dressed in such terrifying apparel! I shiver even now when I picture said suit in my mind's eye .....  He it was who, in order to demonstrate the failure of King Canute to halt the waves, pulled the gym shoe that laid in wait in the drawer of the form master's desk from its evil repose, and started hitting the floor with it, shouting 'Stop! You wicked waves!'  Elvidge ma, the silly boy, laughed, and enabled Blighter B to enhance his improvised demonstration as waves of sound echoed around the form room.

Goodnight.