Between Halloween and Christmas, urging the deputy principal to be more bossy became a regular pastime. It was an inclination borne from a belief that in a very successful school, those appointed to leadership positions should lead and that staff should act according to the direction of those deemed competent by the Board and should not be subject to the tyranny of staff room moaners, whose penchant for criticism of what has been suggested is never matched by a capacity to offer constructive suggestions.

In days among the ranks of …

The Barfleur, it seems it is only thirty years old, it seems older. Google says it once snapped the chain of the Sandbanks ferry, today Poole Harbour is exited without incident.

Awareness of being on a boat is undeniable; the walls and floors are vibrating as the engines of the vessel power us toward Cherbourg; a wake runs from the stern in the unusually calm waters.  The ferry spends most of its time neither in one place or the other; a self-enclosed world where there is nothing to do except …

My exploration of the pages of the Ancestry website reveal the family tree to be more a hedgerow than a tree, cousins of varying degree intermarrying so that relationships can be stated in various ways. Uncle Jack, a man who joined the army at the age of sixteen and survived appalling privations as a prisoner of war, appears not only as the husband of my Aunt Augusta, but also as my second cousin twice removed.

Among the intermarrying cousins was an Alfred, son of a great great granduncle who married, …