The real world

This is what's fantastic about living out here, in the real world. As opposed to the cossetted, controlled, risk-averse and safety-obsessed place called your local school, where a nervous head spends their day fretting about liability and insurance more than they do education. (With regret, he must therefore ban running in the playground, and the extreme sport called conkers.)

Out here in the real world, a place of practical application, plenty of imagination, and a group of kids wondering how best to spend an afternoon together, Ditta finds a box of matches, leans over the balcony, and shouts, Do you want kerosene? Then the firestarters dig a pit, load it with dried wood, and set about making charcoal. Sam the chemist teaches everyone how to cool burned items quick with sand, and Tiger's towed off twenty charred sticks as tools for her art.