The Green Gates of Mordor

If you think school budgets are under pressure think again. We now have automatic gates across from the Tardis, opened and closed by unseen hands, as vehicles seek to enter and exit Fortress Doom, otherwise known as Coppice and Langley Schools.

We celebrate 30 year in the Tardis this weekend and it is only now that the powers that be have decided to complete a ring of steel around the school site across the road. Like Sauron and the Black Gate of Mordor it is a toss up as to their purpose: to stop the teachers and children getting out or to keep us marauding residents from getting in.

And what a performance of drilling, grinding, banging,wiring, painting, head scratching, more drilling and more wiring before it was all finished. Teapot even took pity on the  workers out there one day and fed them with tea and Timelord's special biscuits (whilst at the same time noting the secret codes which control these contraptions)!

So I confidently expect that after a few twists to recalibrate the sonic screw driver that the gates will open and close at my command from our control room overlooking the spot. It is a moot point which will occur first. A confrontation between the gates and the refuse wagon or the imprisonment of the head's car over a weekend. Milk deliveries have already been left forlornly outside the gates with lonely pintas hoping to catch the eye of the first teacher gasping for a pre-school cuppa.

Truth is though that like its Tolkien counterpart the Gates do not secure all the means of entry. So any Hobbit out there who wants to find his way in knows where and who to ask.