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drunk himself at the expense of the old man, and when I made the obvious mistake he became very sour. He came into the kitchen next day and fingered the meat cleaver thoughtfully. ‘I thought you were clever,’ he said, and I never saw him again.
    There was a sex maniac in charge of the cooking; he was called Pio, and was like a stage Italian. In the middle of most confusing orders, when I would call, ‘Pio, could you give me two liver and bacon and three cottage pies,’ he would put on a vulpine smile and roar, ‘I geev to you if you geev to me,’ and everyone would laugh as I rushed out the In door and back in the Out door, in sheer fright.
    But, still, I think I liked it. I liked John, the sad Irish waiter, and I liked Julie, who was described by everyone as a tramp, as they gave her cigarettes and leaned forward breathlessly to hear her latest adventures. I liked all the food, and the fact that I saved £73 in eight weeks, which I never did before or since. I learned a great deal about Life, and, more important, I learned never, no matter how great the temptation, to send back a dirty fork. Not every under-chef might have such hygienic hair as the one I knew.

Back to School
21 August 1969
    I have been so long on the other side of the classroom that I almost forget what going back to school was like for the pupils. To me it was always a hectic rush in from the dawn flight or the mailboat, and a total disbelief that the long hot summer had really become a matter of timetables, homework, corrections, schedules and textbooks once again. If I got through the first day without remembering that I had left my suitcase at Milan or that I had lost the address of some sinisterly handsome Yugoslav, it was a miracle. I never had the least sympathy for the unfortunates in front of me. All that came the second day of term when we had more or less settled in.
    But then I didn’t have to deal with four-year-olds. All my kids were jaded, yawning sophisticates of 14 and upwards. I had to divulge only the new and terrible text of Livy we would be attacking, and try to pretend that this one was better than the others because Hannibal would be sliding up and down the Alps instead of having endless parleys with everyone at the foot of the mountains. I had to tell them that Otto and Henry the Fowler were really swinging people once you got to know them, and to utter a few hollow remarks about clean sheets and new leaves and all being forgotten since last term. I could never have coped with four-year-olds.
    I would see them arriving up to the school door, little hands clutched in the nervous hands of nervous parents. I would see the faces pucker up, the hostility, the forced cheer on everyone’s part, and wonder yet again was there any possible way to make the First Day any less harrowing for everyone concerned. About 20 minutes before school began the first howl would be heard from a cloakroom. It may have been caused by some perfectly reasonable cause like not being able to change one’s shoes or mummy saying something idiotic like ‘Don’t cry now’ to a perfectly happy child, but there it would come anyway, and like brucellosis it’s catching. ‘Why is he howling?’ was the immediate thought that flashed around everyone’s mind, ‘this place must be howlworthy in some way,’ and then everyone would start.
    There was one mother that I really admired. She had about five children at the school, and from the time they were three years old, those children were used to the place. They would come in and deliver elder brothers and sisters, they would come and collect them again in the afternoons. They knew when others didn’t know that school was not a place where one would be abandoned forever with a brand new school bag one day by a weeping mother. When this mother had a chance she left her three-year-old casually for an hour in the back of the tinies’ classroom anyway, and said, ‘Get on with your colouring book, I want to