Dear Headmaster, It's really NOT my fault . . .

I ONCE wrote a letter of such toe-curling obsequiousness that I still flush with embarrassment at the memory of it. I wrote, at my mother’s command, an apology to my headmaster.
Invited to his home to be fitted for a dress for my role in the boys’ grammar school production of Pirates of Penzance (and that‘s all I‘m saying on the subject), I clumsily knocked over and smashed a vase which had been their wedding gift.
His wife instantly forgave me. My headmaster, the following morning, was livid. Hence the letter of apology. It was an undertaking I vowed never to have to repeat and I never have . . . until this week.
Yes, another toe-curling apology. To ANOTHER headmaster. That disaster should strike twice in a lifetime is almost as unbelievable as the facts contained in my most recent mea culpa. Judge for yourself . . .
TO: Mr Bernard Trafford,
Royal Grammar School,
Newcastle upon Tyne
Dear Headmaster,
This letter is by way of an enormous apology/explanation for my non-arrival at your Governors’ Luncheon last Friday. Bear with me: it is 47 years since I had to supply such a long-winded series of excuses to a grammar school head.
First, let me assure you that I was ALMOST at your table, as per your directions: at one point Jesmond Parish Church flashed by just fifty feet BELOW the flyover on which I was travelling and then was gone, never to be seen again. But my misadventure began long before then…
My car’s satnav, loaded with your postcode, brought me as far as Gosforth before suddenly giving up the ghost, its arrow locked immovably onto a road island with the dying words: “In fifty metres enter roundabout and take the…”
So, no satnav; and soon, no petrol. I had left Crookham with a low tank but enough, I reasoned, to get me to the RGS. Once I became lost (is this not beginning to read like Hoffnung’s tale of the barrel of bricks on the building site?) a warning light flashed on, followed a few miles later by a written warning from my onboard computer, then, finally, by the ultimate alert for the terminally stupid (hence apparently illiterate) motorist: a Lowryesque stick illustration of a perspiring driver filling his petrol tank.
My priority at that point was to find a petrol pump. Mere survival had become marginally more important even than lunch. But that priority quickly changed when my body’s own ‘onboard computer’ began ringing alarm bells from the region of my bladder.
I was by now careening around north Newcastle. Wild-eyed, screaming at traffic lights, honking desperately at queues of cars in front of me, I ignored women with prams and pensioners waiting patiently at pedestrian crossings. I even overtook a police car in a thirty limit in my search for petrol and a pee.
At this point, I must confess sir, you and your governors and even lunch were far from my mind. At last I spotted a pub and, screeching to a halt in the car park, sprinted inside shouting “Large Scotch!” at the alarmed landlord as I dived straightway into the Gents where I unbuttoned with but a micro-second to spare.
By the time I had performed, scrubbed up, paid for my un-drunk Scotch (which with gratitude I donated to a still-bewildered landlord) I was 45 minutes late, certainly too late to appear at table.
I faced, therefore, an unenviable choice: explain my predicament to your secretary – which, given the personal nature of my story, did not seem an attractive option – or beat a dishonourably furtive retreat, pointing my car, its tank now full of petrol and my bladder evacuated to a comfortable level, homeward.
I have learned my lesson, headmaster. I beg your forgiveness. More than that, I offer you and yours lunch or dinner, at your convenience.
PS: I should rephrase the last bit . . . conveniences are in short supply, I’ve found.

First published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, February 19, 2010