Occasional Tales

What? Really? Vlad bailed out. He turned up one Monday morning, and while I was otherwise occupied announced his sudden and precipitous departure. We have no idea why, and no one who might know has ever said, which suggests that the only person who knows is Vlad himself. Did he take his mistress with him? That’s a moot point, but, I think, he’d be cold-hearted enough to dispense with her. We were certainly expecting him to last to the end of term, and it’s possible that some personal business affected his decision. He also left leaving various threats in his wake, but like the story last year, it may not be till sometime in the 2020s that the story emerges. No time was wasted in dispatching his replacement, who may not have scrapped all the mandatory extras we’ve been lumbered with, but who has got rid of some of them. He also listens to people (or does a good job of feigning it) where Vlad merely seemed to be waiting for you to stop talking and made you feel that everyt...

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...