Some days are talking days.  Some days are silent days.  Some days are telephone days.   Yesterday, the last day of the school year in terms of teaching, was a chaos day.

Parents phoned us asking about SATs results.  The office staff went into a conflab. and ultimately decided on a policy.  We told all callers that we were the people who marked the SATs test, and schools were needlessly wasting our time by telling parents to call this number.

After ten minutes the head made a rare appearance.  He would not look at Janice or me, which left him looking at Mrs M and Deborah.  He told us to stop whatever we were doing on the phone because he had every national newspaper in the country calling his private and personal number.

“And what have you told them?” asked Janice.

Looking the other way the head said, “The truth,” of course.  He said it with a straight face and Deborah starting coughing a lot.

“And what’s that sir?” said Janice.

Despite himself, Mr Burlosconi looked at her.  “What?” he said.

“What are SATs?”, said Janice.  I mean, what does “SAT” actually stand for?”

There was a lot of herumphing, muttering about “not being cross-examined by my own staff” and so forth and the head turned to leave, at which point he bumped into Dr Havoc-Blythe. (How does he do that?)

“Ah Havoc Blythe!” said the Headmaster.

“Ah Headmaster,” said HB.

“You’ll be with us next term?” asked the Head, as the rest of us sat open mouthed at the utter improbability of Mr B actually knowing the name of a member of staff - even one so famous as the Doctor.

“Hard to say,” said Havoc-Blythe.  “Manchester United are in for me, and there’s talk of a move to Arsenal.”

There was silence.  Utter silence, punctuated only by the sound of 14 phone lines ringing at once.

Havoc Blythe had cracked a joke.  Not a very good joke, but still a joke.  After 20 seconds we began to applaud.

After lunch two work experience students came in and said they had been sent over as part of their Diploma course from the College.   Janice told them to go and play in the park.

The bell rang.  Term ended in chaos, and I began to ponder my future.