14/04/2008 by April First.

Saturday

A polite couple knocked on my door offering me £450 a week for the nominal rent of the broom cupboard. I said, “You want to get your child into the school,” and they admitted it at once, and upped the price.

I think I could get quite good at this negotiating business, and suspect that I have missed my true vocation. Later I spotted a man who, I am sure, is spying on my house. I lobbed my stuffed duck billed platypus at him and he wandered off looking nonchalant.

After lunch I drove into town to stock up on CDs and DVDs for the nights ahead when I am not invited to a great party and have no fun-loving visitors at home. Upon my return I found all the residents’ parking bays near my house were taken by people who were very clearly non-residents. I decided something had to be done and contemplated it while watching “Les Triplettes de Belleville” which had been for sale in the market for £1.50 – the highness of the price being excused by the stall holder on the grounds that “it’s foreign”.

Sunday

Last night saw the start of yet another season of Saturday Night Quizzes at The Toppled Bollard. To our amazement and amusement (in equal numbers) it appears that Billy “The Dog” McGraw, our publican (and resident Elvis impersonator) sacked Jermaine Haskins-Haugh as quizmaster following an altercation during the Easter recess. Details on the event were sketchy, but as a result Jermaine has set up his own team “Bollardic Reunited” – the purpose of which seemed to be to heckle the new quizmaster Sara Hythe-Finch, throughout the evening.

“Educators Extraordinary” (that’s us) came second, as we always seem to do. Reunited came last, but they did jolly the evening along a bit. I had been contemplating breaking away from the old Saturday night routine this term, but I think I shall give it a bit longer to see how things work out.

During the quiz I told the team of my parking problems in the day. Janice offered to use of her traffic warden fancy dress costume and suggested I prance up and down my street in it. It was an offer I immediately accepted.

Two packages have been left in my front garden, each labelled toxic waste.

I saw the man near my house who was there yesterday. He was carrying a tape measure, binoculars, pen and notebook, while speaking into a microphone. I’m sure I saw him at the council offices last year when I went to demand a refund for the tax charged on my house. They dismissed my claim that I should be in a lower band on the grounds that the sun shines in the sitting room window and makes it hard to watch daytime TV during the February half-term. Maybe they are having second thoughts.

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11/04/2008 by April First.

Ms Felixstowe from French brought into the office a collection of items that appear (according to Mrs Marchmount) once to have been a car alarm. Ms Felixstowe said that she found it outside and felt it could not be left there. She declined to inform us where she thought we should put it.

A vigorous debate ensued.

I typed up a message for all staff that the office is not an appropriate area for depositing books, rubbish, coats, plastic sacks, old boxes, unwashed coffee cups, newspapers, boxes of exercise books, and last week’s Private Eye (although I’ll make an exception for this last item).

After discussion it was decided that we should print off some “Toxic Waste” labels and stick them on all items left in the office. These items will then be pushed into the corridor so that everyone approaching the head’s office will fall over them.

Mrs Marchmount claimed such an approach was childish, but then she tripped over a box that had contained (according to the label) “biological interactive whiteboard software” and I think she may change her mind.

At 2.30pm Blinky Allthorpe crashed into the office. She was hot, flustered and decidedly bothered.

Eventually she told us the horrific story. She had heard the bird again. And Charlie Carfor had heard it too. I made her a cup of tea.

We decided that such issues were best left until a Friday.

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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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08/04/2008 by April First.

Last year we ran a few extracts from the Diary of a School Administrator - the daily jottings of a colleague somewhere in the Midlands.

This proved so popular that we’ve decided to pick up the diary entries again - only this time in their complete form, day by day, as the world unfolds around the school office.

We’d like to hear your comments and thoughts - and indeed your stories relating to life in school administration. There will be an email address at the end of each diary entry, so please do write to me. And if you don’t mind April referring to your comments in her diary, just say so.

The first diary entry will appear here within the next 24 hours.

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