As a Director of Studies, I naturally spend most of the time in my office, playing on my computer, while the parapet of paper around me grows higher by an inch or two each day. Occasionally I feel obliged to return to the real, troublesome, messy world of timetables, tests, leave applications, lesson observations, student complaints, budget deficits, defective tape recorders, defective lavatories and, of course, defective teachers. Such sporadic visits are deeply depressing and soon I am back on the Internet, “looking for lesson materials”.

The other thing I do that looks vaguely like work is dream up ludicrous marketing ideas.

The fact is nobody wants to come to your school. It is in the wrong part of town. The fees are too high. The building smells. The carpets boast a fascinating ecosystem that somebody really ought to study. The equipment is antique and so are the teaching staff. Meanwhile right next to the classiest shopping plaza in town is a spanking new school full of gorgeous young teachers (where on earth do they find them?), gleaming computers and luxuriant pot plants. Its lobby is always crowded with teenagers bearing banknotes.

You have an annual marketing budget that could buy five hundred monochrome leaflets on the sort of paper that disintegrates in a sweaty palm. So what do you do? You play the Fantasy Marketing game with the office manager.

The rules of Fantasy Marketing are simple: you have to come up with progressively more absurd, but just about conceivable, marketing ideas. Why not sell tea cosies with the school logo? Couldn’t we write and record a School Song? What if we had a special offer for pregnant women (foetuses attend free)? How about a TOEFL for Toddlers class? Why don’t we force all the teachers to participate in a semi-spontaneous Fun Happening in the shopping plaza car park?

The other person says things like, “Brilliant!” or, “You never know, it might work.” Then you both mull over the idea for a few seconds and realize it is doomed. In the end you settle on the leaflets, which the secretaries will have to thrust at passersby in the rain. However, you comfort yourselves with the thought that your rivals will soon succumb to the universal law of entropy. Their paintwork will flake, their computers will break down, their pot plants will wither and the gorgeous young teachers will move to greener pastures.