23/07/2008 by April First.

Two wizened old-timers turned up, claiming to be the school’s auditors who were investigating a missing £700,000 on behalf of the government.  Janice sat them outside the head’s study where they promptly fell asleep.

At 12.30 I woke up the auditors for lunch.  I wondered what the link was between wizened and wizards.  Not to mention witches – a topic which now dominates the local news.  Lots of worthies on radio and in the paper saying that we need to stop this nonsense now and two clerics wandering around decontaminating buildings with holy water.  I wonder what else we can make up?

A hubbub in the office.  It appears that the bursar has opened the safe (an interesting point – none of us thought he knew the combination) and found last week’s dinner money still in its envelopes (apart from payments from families that think it highly amusing not to use the official system and who simply drop money in the box without any indication who it is from).  Demands for explanations were made as to why the money had not been checked, entered, cross-checked, bank-booked and banked. 

“Cashless catering,” we said in unison. 

This woke up the auditor-wizards who entered the room and promptly set about counting the dinner money.   I watched them carefully.  It appeared that after a few seconds the money was moving by itself.

At 2pm we saw the deputy head enter the bursar’s office. 

Havoc-Blythe dropped by to inform me that Cosi Fan Tutti was being performed tonight and would I care to attend with him.  I said I was going dancing.   

So now I have to.   Blinky Allthorpe said she fancied coming along so at least I have an ally.

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22/07/2008 by April First.

With term over we are able to focus on the finer things of life. Such as what will happen about the SATS. At the moment we are sitting on a range of papers, some marked, some not, and some of which have nothing to do with us. (The Philosophy Degree Papers which belong to a university in Chicago are particularly interesting I feel).

The secretary at the Dept for Cushions and Soft Furnishings has, it seems made a statement to the effect that we need a “thorough investigation” into the problems, and thus being ever helpful we have decided to write up our own report.

After due consideration we feel that the witchcraft that is now sweeping our town is indeed responsible for the whole saga, and that someone somewhere has put a Curse on our school, and on the secretary of state. We have written to tell him and suggest that he bathes for a week in the blood of an ox while eating a sherbet dip. That should do it.

Apparently 30 per cent of Key Stage 3 English results are still unavailable - which is fortunately no problem to us, because 30 percent of our children can’t read.

It seems that in many schools the headteacher is coming in to check and re-calculate the marks of the papers. I sent an email to Mr Berlosconi and asked him if he was coming in, but as he appears to be out of the country he did not reply. Janice put all the incoming calls into our “press the right number” system, with 99 being the number to press if you have a complaint about SATS. That then redialled the call and sent it to the Dept for Cushions and Soft Furnishings, which I thought was rather clever.

I received two text messages thanking me for dealing so promptly with the incident in town yesterday, and a letter from O2 acknowledging that my identity had been stolen, and asking me to confirm which station I had reported the incident to. I wrote back and said Kings Cross.

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21/07/2008 by April First.

Now that the story of the head falling out of the Toppled Bollard at lunchtime is common knowledge (and what with Blake’s being directly opposite the Bollard) the crowd of regulars from school who attend the coffee bar of a Saturday morning has grown of late.

This Saturday there was much talk of late of nefarious activity in the haunted underpass just off the town centre – and an interest in the growing discussion in the local press about witchcraft making a comeback.  I was particularly interested in the notion expressed by Blinky that the underpass itself had reached terminal velocity, and it suddenly struck me that I ought to be writing these things down ready for my interview with MI6. 

No sooner had the thought landed in my brain than Mrs Marchmount suggested that language was losing its appeal for her and that she no longer found it necessary when communicating with her lovers. I rushed out and bought a notebook in Woolworths opposite.

Upon my return the self-same Mrs Marchmount was introducing her new “beau” to the team – he carried a large tome he had apparently just purchased in the market and it was unclear if he intended to read it or hit Mrs Marchmount on the head with it. I asked him if he lived locally, and he said no, he had come into the area in order to investigate our underpass for psychic phenomena. Mrs Marchmount stayed quiet throughout the whole exchange. Havoc-Blythe suggested later that her gentleman friend had put a spell on her.

On Sunday evening at the Bollard I decided to give post modernism a rest and to stay with witchcraft. It was widely agreed that we had a major problem in the town. Dr Havoc-Blythe suggested there was also a Cult of Merlin issue locally but not everyone was sure on this point. Blinky Althorpe said the cost of peanut butter is a major issue, although I was not quite sure how this fitted in either.

We were in the middle of that conversation when a message turned up on my mobile telling me that there had been an unconfirmed incident in the high street and would I go to cover the situation. I walked down to the town centre with Janice and looked around but there was nothing out of place. I pondered the call.  Why me?  Cover what?

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19/07/2008 by April First.

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.

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18/07/2008 by April First.

We are officially a SATs  school – meaning that we have SATs results.  They started arriving by courier, special delivery, another courier, the same courier as the first courier but with a different driver (who was quite nice, wore an interesting hat and asked me out to the pub for a drink – which I declined, on the grounds that us secret service agents need to keep a cool head), by first class post, second class post, and a little man on a bike who said that one bundle had got delivered to his home address but he wasn’t a school, honest, and didn’t want the police coming round.   I asked him why he didn’t want the police coming round, and he looked at my in a shifty manner, pointed at Mrs M. and said, “ask her”.  I did ask her but she just shrugged while Janice fell off her chair.

Rather as we expected, none of the SATs papers were ours.  Some were for a school in Chicago, and we read those papers with interest, noted the curious spelling and the high level of violent imagery and sexual content among the papers by the 6 year olds.  There were also some degree finals papers in physics, and the manuscript of a book about a woman who keeps finding herself in 1910, which was rather disconcerting.

We were still working through them when the deputy head walked in and said, “ah school office.”

Janice replied “ah deputy head”, and on cue Mrs M, Deborah and I said, “ah….”

Binky came in and said, “ah…” and then looked at us all expectantly.

We got a very strange look from Mr Fixham, before he said, “cashless catering,” turned and bumped straight into Havoc Blythe, always on the spot when not required, just to the right of Binky..

“Cashless catering?” said HB.  “These good ladies know all about that.”

Now there are some people I can take being called a “good lady” by… no actually there is no one who can get away with calling me a good lady.  And the doctor is not one of them.  (I am not sure if there is not a double negative there, but what I mean is, if HB says that once again I am personally going to put him in the next bag the couriers deliver and pack him off to the bread shop in Caracas from whence he came.

The deputy head stood in the doorway, uncertain of what to do.

We went into a huddle and ultimately confessed that our knowledge of the issue was, on a scale of one to ten somewhere around minus three., largely due to the fact that no one would tell us anything about it, although, Mrs Marchmount helpfully added that her new boyfriend was a restaurateur. 

“That little fellow who came in on the bike with the SATs?” asked Janice.

“That was yesterday,” said Mrs M derisively.   Today is a new country.”

“We have SATs results?” said the Deputy Head, surveying the wreckage of the wrapping paper and test booklets.

He took a semi-step into the room (an ancient measurement, equivalent to 3.7 inches).  “Why,” he asked, adopting a tone of voice that I have heard him use with year 7 classes before they tumble him, “do you think you will lose your jobs?” 

“Because,” Janice told him, copying the tone precisely, “we are the ones who collect in the dinner money, count it, allocate it, bank it and chase up non-payments.  Take that away and you take away quite a chunk of what we do.” 

The deputy head looked at Janice, and then at everyone else in the office.  Then he left. 

A minute later he was back.   “What,” he said slowly, “do you know about the DfES?” 

“Don’t feed Energetic Seals,” said Janice. 

“Doris feels Extremely Silly,” I said. 

“Dover and Fenchurch Engineering Society” said Deborah who comes from the south.

“Ultimately replaced by the Department for Cushions and Soft Furnishings,” I added.

“Who organise SATs” said Janice.   

He turned and left. 

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17/07/2008 by April First.

The story in the press that SATS results for children have been unmarked because the children are recorded as absent.  In fact if you have been reading this for any length of time you’ll know the battles we have had in school in our attempts to get the registers accurate.

In fact (double fact in fact) since the fight that I reported here, matters have not improved much and Janice reported to the head that we could no longer call the parents of pupils in certain classes because the registers were inaccurate, (as I had so dramatically proved with our invented pupils.)

The head of course has done nothing about this, so the matter lies dormant.

But this is everyday: pupils marked absent when they are here – it was bound to make the news sometime.  In a sense it is mildly amusing to watch the ministers at the Dept of Cushions and Soft Furnishings squirm because they say absolutely, totally, that the SATS are all marked, and the immediately people from hundreds of schools phone the papers and say “Oh no they’re not”.

Started to feel that one of my out-of-work activities ought to be true if I am going to get this job with MI6 (and why should I not get such a job – they have been putting cards through my door for weeks).  For one second I almost  wished I had put “going to the pub on a Saturday night” as a hobby but immediately better sense kicked in.   I am joining military intelligence in order get away from that life.   I have to act positively, and have decided Dancing is to be my Hobby That I Actually Do (as opposed to the ones that are just a Front for my Undercover Actions.)  Dancing will go with my Hat and my Scarf.   When interviewed by military intelligence I will thus direct the discussion towards the world of dance.  I am not sure which part of the world of dance, but I shall resolve that anon.

I checked the internet during the morning - there are dance classes everywhere – I had no idea it was so popular.  I thought you only Brucie on TV did it.  I could go every night of the week, and learn one style, or a dozen styles. 

I will start.  But perhaps not tonight.  No point rushing these things.  Us spies are cool about ventures like this – needing to “case the joint”.  I am surveillant (a rare but useable word, according my Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles which means the act of carrying out surveillance).  Us spies like rare words.

Moments later the deputy head came to the office, and amazingly almost (but not quite) entered the room.  “What,” he said, “do you know about cashless catering?” 

To a woman we shrugged, and typed meaningless phrases into our computers, as one does.

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