Workers and students are heading back to their labours after the holiday season. I pictured a sixth-former, instructed on the final day of last term to report to the Headmaster after assembly on the first day of this. “A few weeks contemplating the consequences of your actions should help to focus your mind,” he’d explained.

She’d be trembling as she walked through the school gates this morning, wearing her thickest skirt and praying that he wouldn’t want to cane her on the bare. Contemplation had indeed been the order of the day during the festivities – seasonal joy tempered with the recurring thought of what would follow, imagined by now in so much detail.