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boys’uniform comprised grey wool shorts, a sky blue vest and gold striped tie. The girls wore a pleated navy skirt and pale blue blouse with a round collar. In summer, both boys and girls were required to wear a straw boater displaying the school crest on their way to and from school. Milli’s boater was already looking rather battered from having been mistaken by Stench as part of his bedding, and she hadn’t even worn it yet. Both sexes also wore the mandatory grey blazer and black lace-up shoes. For someone as free-spirited as Milli, St Erudite’s felt like an institution. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of one teacher, the whole experience would have been even more alienating.
    Even the most conservative of schools often make allowances for those involved in the performing or creative arts. It is generally thought that these individuals occupy more rarefied fields and thus must be permitted greater freedoms. Milli’s and Ernest’s homeroom teacher, Miss Mildew Macaw, fell into this category. The most obvious thing that set her apart from the rest of the staff was her dresscode. She wore silk scarves, sometimes in the place of a belt or wound around her head like a turban, oriental skirts that almost trailed the floor and jingled when she moved, tights with jungle patterns, and flat silver ballet shoes decorated with bows or sequins. She also had a rather extensive collection of embroidered vests. Mildew Macaw liked to wear handcrafted jewellery (mostly made by artist friends) such as polished wooden beads as large as chestnuts or brooches in the shape of tropical flowers. Sometimes she wore clothes pegs painted in assorted colours in her hair. Often, when she needed her hands to be free, she stored her paintbrushes in the coil of her silver bun. In short, she was a character; although less enlightened students preferred other terms, like ‘Mad Macaw’ to describe her.
    Milli and Ernest loved her. Miss Macaw was thin, of medium height but long-limbed, with bony hands that she waved about whenever something excited her, which was often. She loved to share little confidences with her ‘special group’. On the very first day she had told them about her past life as an accomplished potter,the collapse of her disastrous marriage to a German baron who had absconded with her inheritance leaving her virtually destitute, the digestive problems of Buster her bull terrier, and her determination to eat only home-grown vegetables. She also informed them that these days her artistic endeavours were confined to school holidays as the more important business of teaching took up the bulk of her time and energy.
    Aside from being their form mistress, Miss M, as she was eventually dubbed, took them for Ceramics as well as a subject called Conflict and Catastrophes, which covered a mishmash of topics from the Battle of Hastings to tornadoes and other natural disasters. Ceramics was by far Milli’s favourite class, even though Miss Macaw insisted on playing Gregorian chants in the background for inspiration. Even Ernest didn’t seem to object to donning his smock and sinking his fingers into a clump of moist clay. In Ceramics they learned to sledge and slurry as they made masks, chimes and coil pots. Miss Macaw was a veritable mine of information when it came to art history. Various pieces ofinformation would be dropped like pebbles into whatever discussion they might be having at the time.
    ‘The ancient Greeks were fine ceramic artists,’ she rhapsodised one afternoon as she strolled around the art-room, stopping to give artistic advice as she went. ‘We use much the same techniques today some two thousand years later. Now, isn’t that amazing?’ Miss Macaw stopped by Milli’s table and bent over to show her how to smooth out the lumps in the food bowl she was making for Stench. As Milli listened to her explanation, she happened to look out of the classroom windows at a rapidly greying sky. Just for a moment she