Jimmy grinned and shook his head. I expect he thought I was joking. But a good Headmaster knows his staff before he takes the helm of the ship—and that means the cleaners, the Porter, and the ladies who make the tea. A good Head values the rank and file at least as much as the officers. But since his appointment in early June, sightings of the new New Head have been infrequent, to say the least. We know him by name and, to some extent, by reputation. But only a privileged few have seen his face. Rumours abound, however. Meetings held behind closed doors; whispers of insolvency and academic failure; all compounded by a far from friendly School Inspection which, added to the most appalling set of exam results in St. Oswald’s memory, has brought us to this all-time low; a Crisis Intervention.

The dreadful events of last year; the murder of a schoolboy, the stabbing of a member of staff, and the scandal that split the Common Room still reverberate, even now, and there have been many casualties. We lost our Second Master, Pat Bishop, as a result of those events, and since his departure there has been unrest, unease, and downright rebellion among the rank and file, while Bob Strange—the Third Master, a clever administrator, but with no flair for people—tried to keep the old galley from sinking with the help of computers, management courses, and internal assessment.

It didn’t work. Our Captain, the erstwhile New Head, unaccustomed to command, began to flounder. There were mutterings in the ranks; some staff deserted (or walked the plank) and finally, in June, came confirmation from the Governors of what they called an “emergency management restructuring.” In layman’s terms, the hemlock bowl.

Not that I cared much for the man. Suits come, Suits go, and in sixteen years he’d achieved little for us, and still less for himself. St. Oswald’s tradition dictates that a Headmaster shall always be known as the New Head, until he has earned the respect of the crew. The old New Head never managed this. A state-school man in shades of gray, whose tendency was to dwell on the smaller transgressions of St. Oswald’s dress code rather than turn his mind to the general health of the corpus scolari.

The new man, rumour tells us, is very different. A Super Head, trained in PR—and sound, according to Bob Strange, which makes him eminently qualified to take the helm of our leaky old ship and to steer us triumphantly into happier waters. I personally doubt this. He sounds like another Suit to me—and his absence throughout the summer term, when he could have been getting to know his staff, suggests that he will be one of those men who expects the menial work to be done invisibly, by others, while he enjoys the benefits; the publicity and the glory.