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Monday 24 October

High Times For St Nonnatus Caretaker

A local school caretaker was arrested last night on suspicion of cultivating a ‘substantial’ cannabis farm on school grounds.

Douglas ‘Dougie’ French stands accused of using a disused potting shed on the St Nonnatus Primary School allotment to grow multiple plants of the Class B drug. Officers were called to the scene around 7.30pm when the shed caught fire due to an electrical fault.

‘It was chaos,’ an eye-witness reported. ‘The whole lot literally went puff. Thank God the kids weren’t here – you could smell it everywhere. Firefighters were wandering around the playground calculating the square root of a ladybird. The pensioners’ ukulele club in the hall went from “Living La Vida Loca” to “Comfortably Numb”. And when Ahmed’s Curbab Van pulled up outside, you had more chance of getting the last lifeboat off the Titanic than a chicken shawarma.’

‘Mr French’s employment has been terminated with immediate effect,’ confirmed long-serving headteacher Claudia Stitchwell, 63, on the last night of the half-term holidays. ‘I will not tolerate vice of any kind at St Nonnatus. School will open as normal tomorrow and I will be broadening my exclusion policy on harmful substances.

‘From Monday, the following will be strictly banned from the grounds: chocolate, crisps, ice cream, football, skipping ropes, stickers, post-colonial children’s novels, merchandise from Smiggle, the Guardian , the oeuvre of Taylor Swift, discussion of Netflix sitcoms and Liberal Democrats.’

But many were quick to defend Mr French, a much-loved member of the school community who has been tending the grounds for over thirty years.

‘Dougie’s totally harmless – he just can’t tell his grass from his elbow,’ one parent insisted. ‘He thought he was growing oregano, bless him. Which, now I think about it, might explain the immense popularity of his spag bol at the church’s last potluck supper. And why five of us then signed up for a timeshare in Giggleswick.’

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