10/04/2008 by April First.

The usual nonsense as the main body of the staff returned after the holidays. Two teachers whom we had never seen before arrived swearing blind that they had been working here all last term. The Deputy Head sat them in the staff room with a cup of tea, and then set them to work repairing the boiler. They seemed happy.

Dr Havoc-Blythe did not reappear and sent no message – which double hit meant I won the sweepstake for the first time ever. However I suspect we will have to find a different topic to gamble on next term as this is the fourth time in a row he has not made it back in time for the start of the term. Last Christmas he sauntered in a week late having sent a text message over the holidays stating that he had been kidnapped in Venezuela, and giving the Head a phone number of a bread shop in Caracas to which the ransom money should be paid. He put the broken arm down to torture but the common gossip was that it was caused by an off-piste adventure.

Pupil numbers are once again on the rise – ever since the story started that last year’s Form R4 sang the backing on a track on an album by Madonna. Apparently house prices in the catchment postcodes are up by 30% in the last 3 months, and there were several reports of local authority staff making a significant sum on the side in issuing council tax bills in false names to allow parents to put their kiddies names down for the school. Personally I don’t believe a word of it. 150% possibly. 30% never.

Janice was concerned that I had not replied to her texts over the holiday period – I told her I had not received them. After considerable experimentation it appeared that my mobile is now too old (ie 2.5 years) to receive messages from the most modern machines, such as that which Janice had. Mrs Marchmount suggested I could retire my phone to a rest home for mobiles where it would be happy and not feel abandoned, but I think she has been watching too many commercials again.

At 11.20am Derek and Clarius arrived to tell us that the whole ceiling in the staff room had finally been removed. As befits the original team that brought the matter of the bird to Derek’s attention we attended en masse, to find the room in total disarray. Polystyrene, mixed inexplicably with plaster, brick and the debris of what one might have taken to be the centuries (had the school not only been constructed eight years ago) lay across the floor, and there in the centre, was the skeleton of a poor bird.

To read the diary from the start, click here Diary of a School Administrator, April 8

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10/04/2008 by April First.

We had not been at our desks more than five minutes on the first working day of the new term when Blinky Althorpe rushed in in hysterics shouting that there was a bird trapped in the false ceiling above the staff room. As befits our position as guardians of the school’s administration we shut the office and proceeded into the staff room.

Blinky is in the maths department which means she sits at the far end of the staffroom, (for reasons that will not become apparent at this time.) We entered, stood, listened and considered. There was not a sound. A teacher entered and as one we turned and frowned. He retreated. (It was a clever trick and one we should use more often). But still we heard no sound.

Blinky recovered her composure and we returned to the office and our consideration of what the forthcoming year might hold.

Within minutes Blinky was back, visibly upset, claiming that she had heard the sad creature again. Rather than return to the staffroom we agreed that action was called for. Derek was summoned.

By the time Derek made it to the staff room the sad little bird had once more given up its call for help. Derek surveyed the situation and used his walkie talkie to get Clarius, his ever faithful assistant) who arrived armed with the paraphernalia of his work, and together they set about removing the ceiling and exposing a nether world of cables and bric a brac..

I looked in before I left for the day. The covers were still off the ceiling, but there was no sign of Derek or Calrius.

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