It was then that the choir set off for California on its tour to San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was, purely for the fact that the Choir had been away for so long, a lovely moment. But its impact upon me was even more pronounced given that it was the first service of the new Organist and Director of Music, Peter Holder. In 2026 the choir will have been in existence for 500 years. Almost all of that time it has sung the service of evensong, a constant over the changing centuries. The words of the service are the same as they were since the creation of the Book of Common Prayer in the mid 16th Century. But as time has gone on, this tradition has been adapted. New music has been composed, new styles of performance have been developed and above all, organists have come and gone, bringing their own stamp and character to the choir. Yesterday, we got a sense of what Mr Holder’s choir will sound like. The choir sounded remarkably accomplished, particularly for a first service which included five new choristers. It was a remarkable musical performance, one of grace, beauty and poise. We are so lucky to have one of the country’s leading organists and all bodes extremely well.

This week, most of the Prep School have been undertaking CAT 4 tests. These give us an idea of pupils’ abilities in various areas including verbal, mathematical, logical and spatial abilities. It allows us to see how these abilities are affected over the years by our teaching and it gives us a helpful steer in terms of selecting future schools for our pupils. We are also running an ISEB Pre-Test mocks, part of our detailed preparations for senior schools. As you may know, increasingly, senior schools are using the ISEB Pre-Test and it is very important that our pupils have as much practice in this test, and other entrance exams, so that they acquit themselves as well as possible when apply for senior schools. We are very proud of the calibre and variety of the schools that our pupils go to and have excellent relationships with the Heads and Registrars of so many of the best-known schools in the country.

I was delighted that today was the first session of our new enrichment programme. A great deal was going on. I took part in a litter picking expedition to the nearby streets. The crack-force of eight CCCS refuse removal officers were clothed in High Vis jackets and armed with special mechanical litter pickers. After a good hour of street-cleansing, we had picked up numerous objects (532 objects, one of the operatives had calculated) including various types of wrapping paper and even the base of an old kettle. Several of the local residents were kind enough to congratulate the boys. Oxford is a cleaner place since the unleashing of this crack-force!

On Brewer Street yesterday I was debating with some of the new Form 8 boys who were standing with me to greet the pupils and parents. We were wondering how far it was between the end of Brewer Street and the School. We all independently came to the conclusion that it must be about 100 metres. Remembering from his physics lessons that there was a relationship between speed, time and distance, a boy volunteered to run the distance. He walked slowly up to St Aldates, turned around and, as an arm dropped, he sped off as fast as he could. As he arrived seconds later at the School, the time on the stopwatch registered 9.05 seconds! Was this a new world record for the 100 metres? Usain Bolt’s world record was 9.58 seconds. Had Oxford witnessed another great smashing of an athletics record to rival Roger Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute mile at Iffley Road in 1954? After careful reflection, we thought that that was unlikely and that we had overestimated the distance involved. I then paced out the distance myself and found it to be between 55 and 60 metres. How our senses had deceived us! Experimentation is clearly the road to the advancement of knowledge!