Blessed release.

Once a week, I have to do a break duty; I stand outside the kids' toilets at playtime, and deny them entry. It's a more efficient lock-down than a prison. Of course, it doesn't make any logical sense, and the hour after the nineteen screaming arguments tends to be somewhat unproductive, but this is the way Everyone Else In The School voted it should be, so who am I to point out that there's no need for it?

Today, 308 fifteen year olds had to stand by the toilets gearing up for a practice examination. And forty twelve year olds stood in a row selling their angel cakes for charity.

My function - saying NO - was invalidated.

Armed with seven butterfly cakes, I retreated back to the kettle to recoup.

The twelve year olds showed an unerring instinct for the british sales technique as they took my sixty pence. "You're greedy."