Dear Eric, here I am again. Not cured, regrettably, but it is now clear, that if I wait for that to happen, it will be autumn before I put digit to key again.

At least we now have Spring weather to cheer us up. We also have 2,000 saplings in the ground; 15 Guinea Fowl - (not Pea Fowl - as I inadvertently wrote) - all G-fowling away in the inner hazel plantation; 14-hectares of newly-sown White Clover; a quite extensively renovated house - & a building site's worth of debris to clear up. Not to mention a fine coating of cement dust everywhere. 

I'm far from a fan of our Grant & Subsidy system, which seems to me to be a big con to keep hordes of overpaid bureaucrats in cushy jobs manipulating tax-payers with their own money, but in all honesty, there is no way we would have undertaken this operation without the carrot of the Grant & the stick of the deadline. 

A major Spring Clean looms - but I can postpone my bit of this a little while longer if I immediately get down to the episode of the transubstantiation of our First Headmaster. This will be a bit rough & ready - but better an R & R something, than a P-(perfectly) P-(polished) nothing. Especially, as this is not trying to be a book. Let us regard it as a kind of Intelligence Report knocked out on the hoof, while dodging enemy pursuit. Not, perhaps, too unlike the efforts of the incomparable Patrick Leigh Fermor, reporting - (belatedly, though not as belatedly as me) - to SOE HQ in Cairo from wartime Crete.

THE Battle of the Bleeding Rabbits

By the early fifties, the numbers of rabbits introduced into Australia had reached pandemic proportions.  The no-nonsense Aussies fought fire with fire. To counter one plague, they introduced another. In this case, Myxomatosis.  

Virally contagious, this left infected rabbits bleeding from eyes, nose, ears and mouth and incapable of seeing, hearing or scenting. Unable to find food, they grew ever more feeble, until they eventually died of starvation. Of course, no predator would kill them. 

Smitherman organised most of the middle and lower school into squads equipped with wooden battens and detailed us for mercy killing. We duly assembled on the Sunday morning ordained and milled around waiting to set off. Eventually, our Captain strode up to lead the troops. Eyes blinked and jaws dropped in astonishment. 

 J. S. H. was accoutred from top to toe in full and obviously expensive hunting-gear and carried upon one shoulder an equally obviously grandiose and expensive,  shot-gun of no small bore. Stifling our qualms - more or less - we all marched out behind  our leader to do battle with Evil.

I seem to remember we ended up on sloping ground somewhere not far from the school. The ground was clear enough to easily see and swipe at very slow moving rabbits, but there were still plenty of tussocks, clumps of long grass, shrubs, bushes and so forth, into which the doomed creatures often seemed to blunder and get stuck. These gave them enough protection from our light battens to make it surprisingly difficult to get a good whack at them.

The boys set about their work with no great enthusiasm. It did not, somehow, really seem like an act of mercy to wallop a little creature giving out forlorn little whimpers as it crawled along inch by inch on its stomach. Also, the rabbits were entirely unaware of our presence and were, in any case, quite unable to take any form of evasive action. This was not exactly the Three Musketeers versus the Cardinals villainous henchmen.

There was also something else disturbing us. We didn't want to put it into words, but the thought was undoubtedly not too far back in every boy's mind. What was our Headmaster intending to actually do with the large gun that was no longer on his shoulder? Surely, he could not seriously be thinking of emptying one - (or both?) - barrels into any of these defenceless bunnies?  Why, if he were to squeeze one - (God forbid both!) - of those triggers while the barrels were pointing at a bunny, the concept of "overkill" would be instantly redefined. On the other hand, most of us knew that where J. S. H. was concerned, it was very unwise to consider any possibility quite unthinkable.

Without saying a word, we drifted surreptitiously on paths that left around our Headmaster a wider and wider space empty of boys. The whimpering and crawling continued. The whacking gradually petered out to a stop. Our Headmaster's gaze seemed to get beadier and beadier. The whimpering went on. The barrels fastened on an approaching intruder and followed the unsuspecting creature with professional steadiness as it came nearer and nearer. Boys - (and, surely, not a few birds and insects) - held their breaths and bit their lips. On and on came the whimpering bunny. The barrels followed it with remorseless purposefulness as, inch by inch, it came closer and closer. Sweat spurted on brows. Hair stood on end. "Whimper" went the rabbit. "BANG!" went gun. Boys gulped and gasped, aghast. A deep and savage groan blotted out the sounds of the rabbit-filled slope as our Headmaster keeled slowly over like a hump-backed whale falling back into the sea after breaching and lay flat on his back on the rough grass. Dying but unscathed, the rabbit, let out yet another uncaring whimper and crawled on.

The same thoughts flashed through every mind."Oh, no! This cannot be! But yes! It is, it really is! Smitherman has pulled off the unthinkable! Yet again! Our auguste Head has shot himself in his very own foot with his very own very large gun!"

At once and in less than the twinkling of an eye, the entire slope was cleared of boys. Only crawling rabbits, emitting intermittent squeaks and whimpers and the huge and stranded whale, emitting deep, marine groans at strangely regular intervals, remained. Behind every clump of grass and tussock and shrub and bush hid a boy, quivering like a jelly as he strove manfully to strangle the laughter in his throat.

It took at least a quarter of an hour before anyone could master himself sufficiently to head back to the school to bring help. To the boy's of Woolverstone's Spartan Era, this was a sort of last straw. Whatever was left of Smitherman's credibility after his Commandments and his Cricket was lost for ever among the doomed rabbits of that now almost forgotten field.

So there we were - about 360 boys from various, usually somewhat deprived backgrounds, but with a good sprinkling of outstanding results from the infamous 11+ exams, holed up in a muddy backwater on the outer fringe  of, perhaps, the most neglected rural area in England, shepherded by a staff of, shall we say, "interesting", Masters and other ranks and presided over by a Headmaster who was an incurable fantasist.

In the towers of power back in London, Conservative MPs regarded Woolverstone Hall School as a thorn in the flesh and the thin end of a wedge that threatened to undermine the entire Public School system of the United Kingdom. They even went so far as to "ask questions in the House"!  These struck panic in the heart of our J. S. H. Smitherman and spurred him into launching an all-out drive to gain as many places at Oxbridge as possible, as soon as possible. He wanted irrefutable proof that his school was an academic success. (Regrettably, even I did not manage to wriggle out of his dragnet.)

At the same time, the then mighty - (annual budget exceeds that of Pakistan!) - London County Council defended and championed the school as an experiment in egalitarian education that was rich with promise. (How on earth the L.C.C. came to administer the school and how people like J.S.H. got appointed - presumably, by that in several periods nigh on Communist institution - should be something well worth knowing.)

Time passed. The injured foot was milked for all it was worth as a heroic war-wound - but eventually recovered. Earlier, simpler vintages of Head Boy, Prefects, Blues and Seniors grew out of the school and moved on. Masters left and came. Winds of change began blowing through the halls of British Academe and stirred leaves even as far down as distant Woolverstone.

Modern, advanced, experimental methods of education and attitudes to pupils were much discussed and some were even tried out in practice in various places. The names - (which at this moment escape me - "Summerhill", perhaps?) - of several modern, advanced, experimental schools were much bandied about and mulled over. Newer, more subversive vintages grew into Head Boy, Prefects, Blues and Seniors. 

Two new houses were established exclusively for "Noodgies" in their first year and operated as sort of prep-Houses for eventual ascension to the Senior Houses of Hall's, Hanson's, Corner's and Johnston's. In the last flowering of the Spartan Era, the school seemed to attempt a much more civilized, sophisticated, mature - not to say, modern, advanced, even, at times, dare we say - experimental - approach to things. Seniors, certainly, seemed to behave more like young men than older boys.