Occasional Tales

The rupturing of the triumvirate. This week, Dmitry has been off having a nice holiday… sorry, enhancing his employment pro­spects. I’ve now heard from a fairly reliable source that Rasputin really is leaving, and I have first-hand evidence that far from being Vlad’s keen and eager lackey, he would appear to be somewhat contemptuous of him. I’ve also heard that Vlad is looking elsewhere, which may be partly motivated by his dislike of the place and by the departure of his two substitute sons. I imagine that he doesn’t want to find himself without that extra, contrived layer of management. So far, the only certainty is Dmitry’s departure, but officially, there has been no word about Ras­putin. Sarasvati tells me that he wants to do the introduction to the new EE to the IB1s, but I can’t think why someone who’s never been involved in the process would want to muscle in on my turf. I do, however, suspect that he’s possibly doing this so that he can claim to have been an...

As long as it lasts. It’s no secret that Dmitry wants to be his own petty tyrant, and with posts for local despots having been announced, he’ll be applying for at least one of them. But what’s Vlad going to do if his favourite lapdog departs? You’d think this might be the moment I should’ve taken about three years ago when I was offered the HOD post, but declined it (didn’t want the stress, and was sure the High King of the Petty Despots would never allow it; still think this is the case), but I’ve been told Vlad doesn’t want me to be HOD. That’s probably because I’m too academic and not sufficiently shouty for Vlad’s liking. Assuming Dmitry gets promoted (which I doubt, but you never know), that’d mean we’d have to have a new HOD. That buggers up my plans because I was thinking that I might throw my hat in the ring once Vlad and Dmitry have gone. If the latter does leave, that’d put an end to my plans for at least another two years. I could only hope we had a proper HOD, wh...

At least in the mind of a sheep. The sense I’ve had of headmasters for some time now is that they’ve lost sight of the difference between their staff and schoolchildren. To them, everyone is merely a pupil waiting to be chastised. Vlad had another tantrum at us on Monday, which was entirely unnecessary if he was half as competent as he likes to think he it. If he’d had the HODs to dispatch a few forget-ye-nots about things that we have to do on a regular basis, we might not be in a position of having scramble desperately to catch up. Better still, he might recall that we lost quite a few old lags last year, but he seems to think that a bunch of jet-lagged newbies will recall what they should be doing, having been told about it a single time. He also seems to forget that the notebooks are unwieldy things to have to deal with. The plastic covers are probably the worst part, but the size (A4), the spiral binding, and the weight don’t help. B5 (B4? Not quite sure about B-siz...