Sounds a bit l like a Wikileaks exclusive doesn’t it? The title must be said in a breathless BBC false excitement rising falsetto type of voice, and the word “groundbreaking” must be used somewhere, along with “multiple” instead of many, numerous, twice or other such words.

It is dull and a little bit rainy here today, so garden work may be put on hold whilst I post multiple posts in a post breaking sort of way (rising inflection ending in a Ausy-style question mark)?

First up is: It is 1962, July, and I am at Branston at the house in Hillside Crescent. My “O” levels results were due to be published in a fortnight or so and just prior to that my parents had sent me on my hols to visit David and Edna and Cecil. Unknown to me, Edna must have kitted David out in his new uniform to start at this new school in September – North Hykeham, I think it was comprehensive then, but it might have been a grammar.

I knew David was bright, far brighter than me was my observation and I feared my results knowing in my heart that I had failed miserably, as you do. No amount of hype from my parents, or the promise of a Parker pen, nor the wind-up that Edna insisted on, could hide that fact. It was only during the enforced hospitalisation that David endured, and we all tuned into him on the Facebook group pages that his intellect fully presented itself. There was this unspoken competition between us fuelled in part by the sibling rivalry that came from my Mother (Ivy) and Edna – (“she’s my best friend but I hate her”, is a gross exaggeration, but you get my drift).

So, off piste so I’ll stop, here is David’s receipt for the uniform.