As you probably know, the quality of an English public school can best be judged not on anything as ridiculously unscientific as exam results or its position in a league table concocted according to some arcane formula by some civil servant in thick-rimmed glasses.
No, the proper basis on which to judge a private educational establishment is the cost per minute of a pupil's time spent there.
Or, put another way, the time a pupil actually spends at the school should be inversely proportional to the amount of money his or her father is shelling out.
On this basis, Hogwarts must certainly figure amongst the best half dozen schools in the whole of England.
If you need convincing - please, indulge the PO and pretend that you do - consider only this :
- After a vacation that began in the deep midwinter with snow on the ground and ended a full two weeks after the beginning of the cricket season, the BW finally returned to school last Thursday.
- After two doubtless extremely strenuous days back, he was at home again on Saturday - his class had the day off, on the tenuous grounds that the rest of the school was on a so-called "field trip".
- Then, yesterday, just as the rest of the school were getting back to their trigonometry and irregular verbs, the BW and his classmates from the Gryffindor 2nd form went on their own field trip to Sheringham on the Norfolk coast. The BW's summary of this experience ? "Clifftops; swimming centre; lunch; beach; seal-watching. An easy start to the term."
Of course, it's hardly the BW's fault if Dumbledore and his fellow Dedicated Professionals decide in their wisdom that the PO's hard-earned cash is best spent on driving his son a hundred miles to the seaside, then making him swim in an indoor centre. And to be fair, even if he does seem to have been on holiday as long as the PO can remember (which is not actually that long, his memory not being what it was), the BW does have a very stressful couple of weeks coming up :
- From next Wednesday to Saturday (May 3rd to 6th) he will be sitting the Hogwarts scholarship exams (he was hard at his revision when the PO called this evening, honest)
- The very next week (beginning May 8th) he will be taking his Piano Grade VII
- And at the end of that week, on Sunday May 14th, he will be participating in the next round of the EPTA piano competition in Oxford (if the PO's memory serves him right)
In the meantime, it seems that something of his field trip has rubbed off on the BW. Not only was he very keen to tell the PO about the 15 tadpoles that his sister Button is proudly raising in a bowl filled with rocks, foil (or was it soil ?) and leaves, he was also unusually forthcoming about the fact that the lambs that live in the fields around his house have all gone ugly and turned into sheep (well, have you ever seen a good-looking sheep ?).
When the BW told him that he went to feed the sheep on Saturday, the PO wondered at first whether there was something sinister about this new obsession with all things ovine. But then he realised that his suspicions could not possibly be founded.
After all, we all know that the BW has never been one to worry.
Dear PO
I think you will find that there is an additional cost for the Norfolk coast jolly, which will be added to your bill....
Thank your lucky stars/the BW's brilliance for that scholarship!
Best
Mrs Mop
Posted by: Mrs Mop | April 25, 2006 at 02:32 PM