I’ve been eating readybreak for years when I’m home. I’m not really a fan of breakfast: it’s something to get out of the way before the day starts. Breakfasts at university re rather cool, but at home, the meal is kind of dull.; so I have readybreak, and have eaten it since the great wheetabix rebellion. Whoever’s about just pours the powder into a bowl, adds milk and some flavouring, and bungs it into the microwave.

However, this morning mum put too much milk into the mix, making it slightly harder for me to eat.

I was thus eating this sloppy stuff, listening to radio four. I rather like radio four – it keeps me up to date with the world, at least until I check the news online. This morning, there was a segment about a chap who wants to bring back grammar schools, and I listened to it intently.

Does he have any idea how damaging the two-tier education system was? It helped maintain the class system in this country, making sure only the privileged got an education. The privileged being children who had parents who could spend time teaching their children enough to pass the eleven plus, that is, those in the middle class. Thus, the system was self for filling, and helped perpetuate the class system. The secondary moderns were dumping grounds.

The parallels with special schools are obvious, and you can see why I was so incensed by this guy on the radio, especially when he pronounced ‘social inclusion was a nice idea, but it does not work’. What? And this guy is supposed to be educated. Where – a midden? The principals of inclusion can and will work. They must work, unless we want a return to the class system. I’m not suggesting that the disabled are a class, per se, just that we have as much right to a good education as anyone else – a right that we are currently being denied by being sent to special schools, and that many will be denied should the grammars be brought back.

‘Idiot’ I said, to my bowl.

Suddenly, mum looked aghast, and dad looked angry. Mum’s face seemed to say ‘I’ve already apologised for making it so sloppy.

I realised what had happened. I waited two, three seconds, then smiled ‘I meant the radio, mum,,’ I said. She smiled.

I bet the guy on the radio couldn’t make readybreak!