Tuesday I must decide whether a voice at the end of the phone - a teacher in Toronto, Canada - is up to covering a term’s maternity leave. But what of the advertisement, the shortlisting, the fair criteria-based interview followed by the question: “Are you a firm candidate?” Tough. Tried all that, we’re desperate.

Wednesday I spend what passes for my breakfast thinking about our Canadian.

Let’s take a risk - nice voice, and she likes Hamlet. I muse on the practice in this part of the UK of giving management points out like sweets and wonder whether the fire service could have avoided industrial action for longer if it had used the same smoke-and-mirrors trick. Perhaps an incentive to keep the hosepipes neatI Thursday Leadership group day. I remember a management course where they told us we should touch documents once and then “action” them. I’ve yet to master this, probably because it rests on the premise that one knows how to “action” the thing - or that one knows what the verb “to action” means.

Friday A colleague has a tradition of whistling the tune to The Great Escape each Friday while reading the TES jobs sections. Maybe he sees himself as a Steve McQueen figure, opening the throttle on his stolen German motorcycle and making a dash for the Swiss border, just to end up tangled in barbed wire and frogmarched back to the POW camp.

Benedict Lee is a deputy head in a Catholic comprehensive in the south-east. He writes under a pseudonym