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Western Power and the Energy Team from County hall have insisted, yes insisted that they need to replace our three (yes three) electrical meters with new all singing all dancing ones. "We have deadlines" they say, and yes, the power will have to be turned off as each meter is replaced and no, they don't know where in the school will be effected as each one is switched off. We HAVE to come in on the 24th. So we agree to this as long as it can be started at 7.00 in the morning.

So we arrange for the Site Supervisor to be here at 06.45, which he was. We arrange for staff to teach lessons that don't use their laptops and interactive whiteboards (sharp intake of breathe there from colleagues, but they change their planning accordingly), Pete our Network Manager spends a lot of time the previous evening shutting everything down, and believe me that's a lot a shutting.

I turn up the next morning as usual at about 07.25 and proceed to have what started as a normal conversation with John, our acting-Supervisor. He tells me that the power company have not arrived as arranged and  no, it wasn't a cat but a hedgehog under the printer. Now call me old fashioned, but I like my early morning conversations at our new Academy to not include random commentary about cats and hedgehogs. I will admit to you that I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about but, being a Principal, I am used to hiding really well that I don't understand what people are talking about and proceeded to fume about the power company not turning up. But then, as we get that reassuringly normal conversation out of the way and I put the wild animal reference down to an early morning glitch, when John says that it wasn't a cat it definitely was a hedgehog like I should know all about this.

Look, I have only been at work for 5 minutes and its early, and I already am not sure that I have actually woken up yet. So  I ask which printer which I am not sure is particularly intelligent but it had to do. So he took me into the centre of the school, at easily the most hedgehog proof and inaccessible (for wild woodland animals) area in the school, in the middle of a long corridor, and points to a small gap under the printer. It was in there he says, since Tuesday we think. Not only this I find out a little later that staff had thought it was a cat and one teacher had brought in cat food this very morning for the specific purpose of feeding the phantom feline. As I consider this development I am still seriously wondering that I may wake up any second now and none of this will have happened. We have a phantom cat in the school so we bring in cat food to feed it? Let's hope that it was Purina Gourmet pouches and not Felix or dried stuff, I find that our cats prefer it and we all know how fussy cats can be.

Anyway, thankfully we didn't have a stray cat on-board, it was a hedgehog and it is now free. It isn't April 1st yet and reassuringly we don't have foxes in our fridges, cats in the cupboards, nor bats in the belfry, and Western Power have still not arrived.