In Da School

As mentioned the other day, mrs househusbandnot and I went down to my godson's parents evening last night. (His parents live abroad.) It was...well I don't really know what it was (and neither did the organisers/staff at the school).

Ostensibly, it was about hearing how the school is preparing the pupils for exams when they are 12 or 13 for their next schools. (I should qualify at this point that this is all about private schools, so anyone interested in education in general - rather than the rarefied population that is those who are going through private education and their eager parents - should tune out here.)

But the organisers couldn't really decide how they wanted to pitch their pitch. In an introduction, they were keen to say that their school had a good track record of getting kids on into the better schools, but also that there was no shame in not going to those better schools, and that there were scholarships to some schools, but that you shouldn't get too upset if a decision is made that your kid is too thick to try a scholarship, and that there is enormous competition to get into these schools, but you should also be aware that - and they didn't say this overtly but it was implied - if you have a load of cash your kid/godkid will do okay if you give your kid/godkid loads of extra tutoring in the holidays.

The main presentation was led by a nice safe middle aged woman who (I thought I heard) was introduced as Mo Da or Moz Dev or something, assisted by a nice safe middle aged man who (I thought I heard) was introduced as Mr Bore. I have to confess Moz Dev had one of the most soporific voices I have ever heard, and 10 minutes into her presentation I was jabbing a pen into my thigh to keep myself awake. mrs hhn, being mrs hhn, was taking eager notes at this stage, until 10 minutes later she too was hit by the gentle sleep inducement that was Moz Dev's voice. (Incidentally, if you are thinking we were failing in our godparenting duties by nodding off , it was pretty apparent from the outset that this presentation/event was not particularly relevant to the situation that my godson is in, which is having been asked - as you must be through a pre-exam exam process exclusive to the school his parents want him to go to - to sit exams for that school. So he is three quarters of the way through the hoop already [if he manages to figure out in the next six months that playing the electric guitar with his teeth will only ever win over half the world, and that the fact that he can hold a very civilised conversation about the relative merits of starting a conversation when there is nothing to say {a characteristic of his about which I am deeply proud btw} may disarm some grown ups he comes across who would like children to be a little less self aware and chilled out about the world].)

Anyway, Moz Dev had some slides to keep us awake. I had tried to listen to her voice and look at the slides, but that BBC research about people only being able to take in information from one information source at a time is right. So I concentrated on the slides, which included some pretty random messages: 'Listen To Your Children'; 'Sleep Is Important'; 'Friendship', 'Pressure'; 'Don't Panic'; 'Keep In Touch At All Times In This Crucial Time'; 'Role Models'; and (most inexplicable of all) 'Broad Church In Autumn'. I think the idea was to let us know that Moz and the gang have our children's/godchildren's best interests at heart (which I am sure they do btw), but on their own the slides were a bit too Gilbert And George for me, and full of euphemisms and half threats qualifying themselves as guidance. (My favourite euphemism was 'Captain Of IT' which in my day was 'Computer Geek'.) So I tried to listen to Moz Dev again with the old pen in thigh trick.

Eventually - what seemed like many many many minutes later - a colleague of Moz Dev's (not Mr Bore who had obviously gotten stage fright or had dozed off and missed his slot) stood up and summarised in four minutes what she had been saying in four thousand, which was that they will do anything they possibly can to get our kids/godkids into the schools we want them to go to, and that if they don't then they apologise in advance.

mrs hhn and I left a little dazed and confused, and spent a very jolly journey on the train back into town taking turns at playing her bomb game in her Blackberry, and playing what is your favourite sandwich. It was an hour's journey so we extended the sandwich game to include choices for toasted and open as well as your standard sandwich. Answers in my pigeon hole by lights out please.