Shortly after my arrival as a boarder at prep school (we are talking here round about 1953) the Headmaster died and was succeeded - in the manner of any self-respecting modern dictatorship - by his son. The son's name was Crispin. Although he later got married, I think it safe to assume this move had little to do with satisfying his sexual needs.

Anyway, the old headmaster had died but not of course his wife, who we all called "battleship", on account of the vast and complicated cantelevered structure that she wore as a sort of harness in front of her presumable gigantic bosom. Battleship of course was Crispin's mother. You might describe her as the power behind the new headmaster's throne, except that no throne would be large enough to hide her.

Crispin was rather a weedy looking man (although he did cane me occasionally, and from the point of view of a ten year old he did seem terrifying) and he certainly lacked the authority to banish his Mum from the school. (Years after I left, some parents apparently bandied together to lay down an ultimatum, and so she spent her last years in exile.)

Every mealtime, she sat at the top table, near her son and surrounded by a rota of little boys, far too embarrassed to come up with any suitable topics of conversation. Occasionally, she would cause a flurry of activity when she asked the boy next to her to pass the salt and he passed the message on. Once or twice a meal she ask one of us a direct question - I suppose about school games or the like, frankly I have forgotten - and the boy concerned would splutter our a few contorted words of reply. But, invariably, and usually before the boy had finished speaking, Battleship would announce: "Fascinating! Absolutely fascinating!" A true conversations stopper.

Her main function in the younger boarders' lives was to read aloud to them on Sunday evenings. While Crispin read the eleven pluses vigorously male yarns from Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan, his mother chose things like Alice in Wonderland. But often she got bored, and switched - mid paragraph - from reading to extemporising a long, convoluted anecdote of which I've retained no memory.

Once a term she would surpass herself, and simply order the boys in her care to laugh. We were meant to laugh for a very long time, to show we were happy. Later, when I had been promoted to the headmaster's room upstairs, I remember he had to pause his reading of The 39 Steps, as the treble trills of pretend amusement drifted up from Battleship's drawing room below.

Fascinating.