Being made surplus again

Good news was that I am no longer being sent to bandit country but have been fortunate enough to gain a place in a school that's even handier for my son's nursery.

Bad news is that it's the school I went to as a pupil! And the answer to the question everyone asks is, yes - there are still teachers there from when I was a pupil.

Ask not why, out of all the schools in Scotland's biggest city that I could have ended up in, I end up working in an institution in which I've received corporal punishment; the bureaucracy does this sort of thing for dark, comic reasons of its own.

I went for a wee visit on Friday, during which I met one of the staff who unfortunately remembered me. She said she recalled me being an ok pupil but with a "mild attitude problem".

I was most taken aback - I'd always been under the impression that my attitude problem was more impressive than that!