A short time ago I happened to meet someone whom I had not seen since we were at school together. Now he is a Headmaster, and a strict one too, as far as I could judge. If you had listened in on our conversation, you would have heard something like this:

As we spoke, and old memories flooded back, I was suddenly able to see in my imagination this Headmaster in his school blazer and shorts, the knot of his tie halfway towards his left ear, his hair over his eyes, ink on his fingers, and dirt on his knees. I recalled the scene of one morning assembly when, in the pin-drop silence that preceded the final prayer, there came from the back of the hall a sharp ping, followed by another, and another, and another, the interval between each growing less and less until the sound resembled the sharp rattle of hail. Then, as this sound was dying away, it began again as loudly as before, and then again. All this happened in the space of no more than twenty otherwise noiseless seconds. My friend, his mind straying from the morning service, had been toying inside his blazer pocket with three large ball-bearings. Suddenly one steel ball had jumped higher than he had intended and was bouncing merrily the full length of the gangway. In an attempt to catch the first ball, he had withdrawn his hand from his pocket, and, in succession, the other two had rolled from his nerveless fingers.

A. Perhaps you would like to re-create, in a short dramatic dialogue, the scene that followed, as my friend gave to an irate Headmaster his account of what happened.

Scene: The Headmaster's study. There is a timid knock on the door. It is so quiet that the Headmaster fails to hear it. It is repeated, rather more loudly: Headmaster [angrily): COME IN!

I cannot think that anyone that day, or for many years to come, would have dared to forecast that my friend would within thirty years have become a Headmaster himself.