The Bursar roars out a Slade song in grotesque karaoke. Raddled ruins attempt louche indiscretions with pretty NQTs. The Head of Pastoral is the wrong way up and the Head of Media is deconstructing the Spanish exchange teacher’s chest. Most revellers seem an Action Plan too far.

These aren’t sights upon which Drudge cares to linger. He needs another hit of bourbon. But he must not. He must stay sober enough not to deck Management. He just doesn’t belong any more. Not to this party, the office, the school or the whole teaching lark. So he has a triple hit from the hip flask, leaves it all ... and falls into a pitch and swirling night.

Henry Drudge, a cross between late period FR Leavis and late night Shane MacGowan, reels down the Portobello under the cold blood moon. Just another frolick drunkard in a bleak midwinter night. The snow falls down like Government Initiatives. The wind bites like an OFSTED Report.

Long ago, wild of hair and ideals, young Henry Drudge had rocked and reeled down these very streets, full of spring blossoms and Hendrix. Bliss it was to be alive. To teach would be very heaven. So he did. He would be useful and change the world.

Drudge has been on the blunter edges of Pedagogy for the last thirty years. Generations have called him “Sir”.

But these days to teach is very Hell. He feels useless and worse. He has changed not a thing.

Drudge wanders under the Westway. Fires burn in bins under the thunder of the traffic. He has fallen into Infernal Night, lashed by the snow in the howling storm. And by paper. Blizzards of paper. White and Blue and Green and Black and Sugar Papers all shrieking threat and menace. Action Plans and Lesson Plans and Schemes and Strategies and Working Parties and Workshops and Think Tanks and Resource Banks and Brain Storms and Dull Forms and Plenaries and Mappings and Minutes of Infernal Meetings. Gargoyles in shiny suits - Consultants, Mentors, Inspectors - wave clipboards behind pillars.

There’s Woodentop skulking in the shade. The oleaginous Baker hatches Curriculums, and there’s Melanie Phillips as blue as her stockings. Ghosts wave slates like Infants on a Literacy Scheme - or ice skating judges. Nul Points! Classroom Management Bad! Fail! The Sack.

Drudge has a double hit. An OFSTED Report whacks him on the skull. He falls down full of Guilt about the Coursework he left on the Circle line in 1975. The Coursework he left in the incinerator. The Coursework he might merely have weighed. The set texts bluffed and skimped. The books cooked. Registers faked. All those retrospective lesson plans.

And the marking. Always the marking. So much of it cavalier or worse. Some of it still not returned. For decades. He can’t really ring the pupils up. For how long can you be mulling things over? They might have passed on.

He passes Beggars and Winos and Junkies. Former pupils? “We could have been someone!” they seem to croak. If he’d planned their lessons.

Stray headlights illuminate Assessment Targets on walls. His only Target these days is four o’clock still sane.

One more slug. Registers fly past. Thirty years of them. He catches one. It’s from 1977, a blizzard of names. The faces fall like snowflakes.

There’s Charlie Valdez! A sweet, decent and lost boy who found himself a runner for the Harlesden drug gangs. Charlie would sit in Drudge’s lessons and shake with fear and amphetamines.

He was sent to Miss Limpet - a trader in the Infant Mind - for some therapy. Charlie was beyond therapy.

Miss Limpet would perch next to the poor boy all the way through “The Ancient Mariner”. Charlie was well irked.

“Have we done our homework?” she cooed.

“No we fucking haven’t!”

“And why not?”

“No home as such, Miss.”

He’d wink at Drudge through the whole lesson.

“Can’t you get the old bat off my case, Sir?” And there is Charlie, running across the swirling night. There’s the Limpet zooming after him, still trying to mug that sweet boy with tender loving care.

There’s Cordelia Swansong! She used to sit at the front of his class and read Camus and Kafka and understand them and smile like a saint through the mayhem. Drudge wanted to apologise and place her in a Grove of Academe. She just kept on smiling as they discussed Camus and the Clash. Now here Cordelia sits at a desk with snow upon her lustrous hair.

Can that be Ronald Crumlin? Son of Billy? So tiny that his mum had to give him Growth Shots. Every week she attacked him with a syringe. To little effect. They made a bad impression on his mind. So bad that he tried to kill himself. In a lesson. Drudge was droning Stig of the Dump. He’d looked up and Crumlin wasn’t there. All Drudge could see were the whites of Ronald’s knuckles on the window sill. On the fourth floor. He was trying to top himself. Drudge crept deftly towards the window. He must not be seen. Crumlin might associate him with a place of Learning and choose oblivion. Drudge could have killed the exhibitionist little midget. But he pulled the Erring Nitwit in to prevent those headlines: Left-wing loony sixties hippy teacher throws Tory dwarf out of skyscraper showpiece comprehensive Rhodes Boyson blames liberal teaching And now there’s Ronald! Still dangling from his digits in the cold moonshine.

Drudge throws his silver flask into the darkness. He won’t going back. He’d rather have the sack. He made no difference.

He goes home and slams the door shut against it all. School, bleak midwinter nights, and Christmas.

Three days later. Christmas Eve. The singing gets louder. There’s a knock at the door. Drudge opens it. The snow falls prettily on Dave Mania and Ingrid Shriek and Sammy Johnson, all carrying candles. Usually a dread Trinity, tonight they look like Angels and sound as sweet as King’s College cherubs. They’re good. They should be. They’ve spent years bunking and busking outside Holland Park tube.

“And the Bells rang out for Christmas Day!” Ingrid’s descant is better than the Pogues.

Drudge reels back inside. The room is rich with Christmas light. A computer glows, luminous and shaking with flakes like a snow scene bauble. He has conjured up Friends Reunited. The screen is full of faces from so long ago. The Generations who have called him Sir.

There’s Cordelia Swansong, now Professor of Linguistics and Higher Gibberish at Girton. She’s still smiling. She lives in libraries and still loves Joe Strummer.

“Without you Sir it couldn’t have happened. Merry Christmas! Love Delia.”

There’s Charlie Valdez. He’s given up the drug running. And the shakes.

“I’m now a Doctor, Sir. Without you I don’t know what would have happened. Greetings to the Limpet! Happy Christmas! Love Charlie.”

And here’s Ronald Crumlin, Billy’s son. His face surfaces through the drifting snow. He’s a Gym Teacher. A Weights Instructor and Personal Trainer to the stars. He hails Drudge across the years.

“All right then, Drudge? You saved my life. You did though. When I was bonkers. When you pulled me back. Have a good one! Bless us all, eh Sir?” Drudge can’t see any more. He wipes back a tear. This is the best of Christmas Eves. He puts on the Phil Spector Christmas album and leaps about. He might even go back to school. Might not even get the sack. He opens the door and leaves the sherry and carrot out for the reindeer.

The snow falls and the carols sing and the bells ring out for Christmas Day. It’s morning. Henry Drudge gazes at the Christmas tree lights.

Someone has called. The sherry is drunk and the carrot eaten. And there’s a big sack. Huge, plump and bursting.

Drudge opens the sack and empties it under the lights.

It is all the marking he has never done. Thirty years of it. Henry Drudge has been visited by the Ghost of Marking Past.