One of them, in particular, is there every morning, without fail. We test each other upon which pupils will emerge from which cars and we are both rarely wrong. What has become obvious to me is the uniqueness of everyone arriving and the way in which they are so very much themselves. There is the pupil who runs for dear life all the way down Brewer Street arriving at the gate completely out of breath. “Am I late?” he will ask almost inevitably (he never is by the way, partly because he has run so fast). Another boy jumps out of his car and then slams the back door as hard as he can by way of announcing his arrival in dramatic fashion. Then there is the pupil who will not leave until he has given his parent a bearhug (he is of the age where the bearhug is only knee-high). We often see the pupil who arrives with the enormous shadow of a cello on their back as if he were about to trek across the Andes. And then there is the new pupil who walks slowly towards me up the street, stands stock still right in front of me, looks me directly in the face, and smiles broadly for at least 30 seconds. I asked him this morning what he was most looking forward to; “Everything!” he responded. What an inspiration for us all! The strongest societies are, in my opinion, made up of individuals who feel confident in themselves, who feel confident to be themselves, and the wonderfully idiosyncratic nature of our pupils tells me that they are happy here. They bring themselves to school every morning rather than an image of themselves, or as TS Eliot put it so powerfully “Preparing a face to meet the faces you meet.” Here we meet one another as ourselves.

I have not mentioned the Pavilion for a very long time. That is because, as is almost inevitable, there have been some last-minute snags. There is a new site foreman who seems to be a man of action. I hope appearances are not deceptive. He assures us that the end is almost nigh, or should I say the beginning, that glorious moment when we will have a pavilion which we can use. Almost certainly we will be using it by the summer. We plan to have an official opening on Sports Day which is on the 28th June. Please make sure that you are able to come on that day, both to witness the athletic entertainments which are one of the highlights of the Trinity Term but also because it will be an important moment in the life of the School. I feel incredibly nervous having written that and am reaching for any piece of wood that I can touch.

Over the holidays we had a new surface put down on the small playground. There is also an area of astroturf which has been a rather less hard-core football area than in the past. It really has made a huge difference to the playtime experience and we look forward to developing the area further over the next few months.

Pre-Prep assembly is always one of the most entertaining moments of my week. It is a place where the imagination is allowed to run wild. If ever one begins to fall into the trap of imagining that the School is an ordinary school in an ordinary place, which is not a temptation I frequently fall into, I only have to visit Pre-Prep and am reminded of the truly extraordinary nature of the School. This week Pre-Prep have left their classrooms and have been sailing the seven seas, chasing a terrible Pirate Chief, Mr Robeard. All the children seem now to be speaking in a west country accent, uttering such nautical phrases as “Yo ho ho!” and “Ooh arhh me hearties!” while a conventional looking playground surface has been a lava flow through which people in Form 2 have been carefully picking their wary way. The mind is capable of extraordinary journeys and it is the role of schools like ours to take our pupils on them. As one of those marauding buccaneers may well have said – “Yo ho ho and away we go to sail the seven seas!” Have a good weekend - whether on land or sea!