Over the past week, I've been gathering anecdotes. Not deliberately, clearly. Am I the sort of bounder to go around stealing the interesting moments in other people's lives to illicitly reprocess into fiction of my own? No.

Honest.

Sadly, there's not many I can share. One in particular is perhaps the single most juicy rumour I've heard in all my years as a videogame journalist, but it would involve me being sued into penury if I even dreamed of writing it here, so I can't.

Instead, I'll give you this little one I picked up when visiting Sheffield for my Brother's birthday. House party, including a smattering of young teachers from across the country.

The story goes like this:

Teachers, clearly, are just as bad as everyone else. You knows this. Teachers will gossip about the pupils relatively failings and graces behind staff-room doors. They're only human, and it'll be foolish to expect anything else.

The main problem, my young teacher explained, was that Schools are big. Pupils are many. It's not always easy to explain which gonk-nosed hormone-case you're talking about at any particular time. This teacher, being admirably resourceful, invented a code: If they want one of their peers to see someone, they send them on an errand to their friends' classroom with orders to fetch some scissors.

If a child arrives at your classroom asking for some scissors, it translates as "I think this geezer's pretty funny looking. What do you think? Talk about it later in the staff room".

This is very cruel. And funny.

The hand that rocks the cradle, rocks.