The letter when it comes, late on Tuesday afternoon, is electronic. The content and style are peculiarly bloodless and the tone is wrong. I am used to the garbled messages that emanate from the school: the mixture of management-speak and muddled syntax that through obfuscation – deliberate and accidental – reveals a holier-than-thou defensiveness that sickens me. They are, it seems, always hiding something. My father, who believes in a good-quality sealed envelope and headed writing paper, would blame the medium, and perhaps, in this instance, he would be right. There is a lack of respect in the paragraph that pops into my inbox under the strap-line, Important Announcement. The writer, or committee of writers, has taken pains to give as little information as possible. The result is puzzling. I am left wondering whether Mr Child succumbed to a sudden mysterious illness or was involved in a road-traffic accident in the vicinity of the academy. Nothing bad happens on the premises. A casual reader might think he was alive but unable to continue in his chosen profession.
What do You think about Another Mother's Son (2015)?
