We had to stand at the front of the library and greet the future flotsam and jetsam of our  student body pass through our doors today. Four hours of Open Day, by the end of which we felt once again that the world was going to hell in a hand basket. The parade of life forms before us was not always encouraging. More often than not, it was the parents who frightened us most. One look and you knew their kid never had a hope in hell.

I had locked open the automatic doors to cope with the flood of humanity (we had a couple of hundred tromp through our new library) and at one stage I had to actively restrain myself from putting the doors back on automatic in the hope of crushing the slower ones and putting them out of the possibility of our future annoyance.

To be fair, there were some lovely ones; cute smiley polite children that gave every impression of being quite agreeable, now, but give them a year or two before they come our way, and I just know they will have turned into apathetic, lethargic, resentful teenagers. We will be expected to undo the sins of the parents, the parents of the parents and every generation before that.

For our troubles we got a free hamburger (meat patty, a slice of tomato, a slice of beetroot and a sprinkle of lettuce on a white bread roll) and a sad can of soft drink. I got peach iced tea as there was less than nothing to choose from. I drank it because I needed the 17 grams of sugar that it contained to maintain my composure and not run amuck screaming at the creatures to stop their children jumping on our new couches ( it rained heavily last night as one would expect before an Open Day) We are also getting a day off in a couple of months, on a day that used to be a day off, but this year isn’t a day off, but is now a day off.  Yes, it made no sense to us either. We know we are being jibbed in some way, but as we barely have the strength to plot a revolution let alone execute one, we shall just accept our wage slavery and wait for a wet Wednesday to end it all.