I set an exam this afternoon for the third form (that's Y9, normal dudes). I thought I'd give them a piece of poorly written and wordy text and ask them to make it shorter, more readable, clear and elegant. Where, oh where, was I to find some suitable bullshit?

After about three seconds' thought I logged on to the school website to find the online version of the newsletter and download a few hundred words of the Headmaster's deathless prose. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the CyberCop monitoring software wouldn't let me look at it, the "weighted phrase limit" being, apparently, "exceeded". As the article I wanted was entirely non-sexual (rather like its author, I suspect), I can only conclude that the writers of internet filtering applications have pulled off the remarkable feat of teaching their products to identify bollocks.

The original article has been removed since this afternoon to make way for this week's edition of the newsletter. By way of alternative I offer the following sample of the boss's oeuvre. Collectors and connoisseurs will note that it is from the newsletter dated 11 Nov 2004:

"Y*RM SCHOOL HOSTS HMC HEADS' MEETING
On Tuesday of this week I was proud to host the North-Eastern Divisional Meeting of HMC Headmasters. The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) is the professional association to which I belong and at which I represent Y*rm School. There are 240 schools in membership throughout Britain, including famous public schools such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester etc. Membership is only awarded according to strict criteria and Yarm School is the only Teesside School in membership. Within this region, which extends from Sheffield to the Scottish border and includes Cumbria, there are famous schools such as RGS Newcastle, Bradford Grammar, Leeds Grammar, St Peter's York etc."

[Y*rm gets an asterisk to fox the search-engines. I'm willing to bet HM is an enthusiastic ego-surfer. And as this page is for a select few, I don't want it popping up too much on Google....]

Anyway, by the standards of the vandalism he can inflict on the language, this is relatively inoffensive.

I am freely slating the HM - a man, in truth, that I rather like - with a clear conscience, as by 5pm tomorrow I will have spent 73 hours in the service of School this week. It's (yay!) the Christmas Craft Fair, and School's "highly acclaimed jazz band" (his words) is on duty all day. I must say, I don't know who is responsible for all this alleged acclamation, but it's the first I've heard of it. Though we are pure class, of course.