At junior school the headmistress was rather a scary woman who terrified even the boys. Our usual easy going teacher was ill one winter, it was snowing and i think the miners were on strike (c1966) as we couldn’t get any coke for the boilers. To make matters worse we had the headmistress herself teaching us.
Halfway through the afternoon she had to leave us alone for ten minutes so she left the monitors in charge with strict instructions that the names of any talkers should be reported to her. Well when the cats away the mice will play and we threw caution to the winds and we got noisier and noisier. When she came back she was furious and asked the monitors who had spoken.They made matters worse by saying they hadn’t seen anyone.