Do you ever bother to look at the spam that you are sent? It is getting pretty interesting.

First of all, there’s the obvious stuff: apparently Romana’s roommates are out of town and she’s feeling lonely, so she kindly sent me her phone number. There are also many single women who want to meet me, and I don’t even need a credit card if I want an introduction. (Good job - I prefer the type of woman who has her own credit card, and an income big enough to cover the repayments.) Some of these single women apparently have their own websites as well as phone lines and email campaigns, so I think that if they’re still single after all their pro-active pursuit of boyfriends, there must be something wrong with them. The fact that they are chasing a married man might be a clue…

This morning, in a perfectly timed piece of spamming, I was invited to “Try A Revolutionary Coffee Experience” - but as this was directly below an email asking if I wanted a free trial of a colon cleanser, I declined the offer.

The entrepreneurial programmes on offer seem tempting, if a little bit obvious: “Send me $100 and I’ll tell you the secret of earning thousands of dollars a day.” Let me guess - it starts by sending out loads of emails…

And there is no shortage of lifestyle coaching programmes on the electric internet. Apparently the only people who achieve their personal goals are those who pay for life coaches. I think these emails should be linked to the ones telling us how to improve our computer’s performance: upgrade your spam filter.

When senior Labour Party advisers are describing people as “oiks” then it is evident that the party is about as connected to the working classes as Lord Fauntleroy.

(Did you see what I did there with that pun in the title? Instead of writing “Slumming it” I wrote I.T. because… oh well, I can see you aren’t interested…)

Anyway, Darling Wifey needs a computer that runs Windows because the government agency that she marks GCSE exams for decided in their infinite wisdom to set up the software to work in that one platform only. So I bought one of these. It’s a lovely little machine…

Yes, you’re right - there is a “but.”

1. Going through the setup procedure for a new computer took four hours
2. While it logged on to my home wifi no problem, it threw a hissy fit when I plugged in my mobile broadband dongle. Problem status: not yet fixed.
3. Four attempts to get our copy of MS Office working all failed. We gave up and installed Open Office.

But I’m going to stop there, and list everything good about the machine:

1. It weighs next to nothing
2. The only moving part is a fan
3. The screen is excellent
4. There are two memory card slots, three USB ports and more than enough internal memory
5. The nine-cell battery pack we’re ordering should give it ten hours battery life
6. And it cost just over two hundred quid. It would have been a lot less if we could have had the Linux version.

Back in 1999 I bought one of these - I wrote my MA thesis on it. This Acer, which is only slightly larger, reminds me of that little machine.

Every Sunday, I make the same mistake.

Bedding gets laundered; towels need washing and drying. It’s underwear washing day. But most important of all, school uniforms need to be ready for ironing when I get up at 5:30.

And every Sunday, without fail, at 10:30pm, I am still up, waiting for the tumble drier to finish so I can put the last load of school shirts in to dry while I catch some ZZzzzzzz.

It’s because every week, without fail, I start the laundry on Sunday morning.

Why can’t I start on Saturdays? I am educated to postgraduate level; I manage staff; my IQ was once measured at 143 - just one point away from an offical rating of Genius (laugh and I’ll kick your shins!) But I still leave things until it is too late; I still do all my best work at the last minute, when the pressure is on, and when I need sleep.

I think it is because the deadlines are too early.

Why did you choose to buy this freezer today?

1. Brand
2. Environmental Rating
3. Style/Appearance
4. Build quality
5. Other (Please State) It is in stock, it fits in the back of my car, and there is £300 worth of meat in my dead freezer at home. Can I go now?

Well, compressed air, to be strictly accurate.

This morning I noticed that my little car had low pressure in one of the tyres, so I stopped at a local garage to check all four of them - only to discover that their air compressor is now coin operated.

Stuff that. I have been giving them fifty quid a week for diesel for the last three years. I am not paying them 20p for ten minutes of compressed air.

So I drove on to the next garage, and then another one, and another… six garages, all now sporting brand new coin operated air compressors on their forecourts.

Why? A quick search on the Electric Internet reveals that coin operated air compressors cost about £10,000 more than free ones. Which means that in order to pay for themselves, they need to be used fifty thousand times. Get your calculator out - that would take a year of constant use, 24 hours per day, by paying customers.

And that’s not going to happen in a place like York: first because there are only 75,000 cars in the entire city, and we know that there are at least six places trying to charge customers to check their tyres; and second because Tesco are selling electric tyre pumps that run off your car’s power point for £4 each.

The GTCE has announced a new code of conduct for teachers in which they can be held professionally accountable for their conduct when off duty and not in contact with children.

And I’ve decided that I am in favour.

But you know me by now: I have also decided that there are preconditions to this.

1. Let’s apply a code of conduct for politicians and others in public life, too. If they do anything that "brings the profession into disrepute " then sack them, immediately. It would be fair.
2. Due diligence. It’s about time that the GTC and the teacher-bashing industry as a whole adopted this. Ofsted, as we know, described Haringey Council as "outstanding" just weeks before Baby P was murdered while under one of its child protection orders. Ofsted then complained that Haringey gave it "misleading" data. In an interview with R4 last week, the Chief Inspector of schools, Christine Gilbert, said that she had asked all authorities to "provide assurances" that they would not mislead Ofsted - and she was satisfied with their answers. Oh yeah? I can assure my wife that I will not look at another woman’s arse again - do you believe me? My point is that anyone who has endured half a dozen Ofsted inspections knows how schools and authorities mislead inspectors and, more importantly, how inspectors knowingly look the other way. It happens all the time, and denying it only makes those in charge look like two-faced twats.
3. How about a code of conduct for teachers when on-duty? In fact, let’s be specific - a code of conduct for headteachers when on duty. Did you know, for example, that a teacher’s complaint about their headteacher can only be made to their headteacher, and is investigated at the discretion of the same headteacher? Conflict of interest, much?
4. Repricocity. If a teacher can lose his or her job for not living up to the standards expected, let’s apply the same test to parents. Every school has them - parents who train and support their children to disrupt lessons, undermine the educational opportunities of classmates, and ruin the health of their teachers.

This news hit the headlines this week.

Workmen at the University of York had to call in experts to help them to identify an unusual object found on campus - it turned out to be a human brain.

Dr Sonia O’Connor, research fellow in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford added: “The survival of brain remains in this environment is extremely rare.”

There was no-one available for comment at the University of York.

Tiny Flirt has just lost his first tooth. So he was told to put it under his pillow and, as he carefully instructed us, we emailed the Tooth Fairy. (Don’t you just love 21st Century children?)

Here we hit a snag. Tiny Flirt has started sleeping under his bed - and the tooth was not put under the pillow he was sleeping on. No - Tiny Flirt, a great fan of the Horrid Henry books, had hatched A Plan.

The tooth was under a pillow he had hidden somewhere in his room…

I just don’t understand.

I like eggs, and for 30 years I have cooked them in a variety of ways without problems: poached, fried, scrambled, boiled.

But for some insane reason, I am suddenly unable to crack an egg without covering myself in albumen, or leaving it so pathetically chipped that I end up with eggshell in my dinner.

Is this an aspect of your 40th birthday that no-one ever tells you about?