I'm slowly but surely falling for the English NQT. I can tell because whenever I see her I have the urge to hide so that I can avoid saying something stupid. It's a strange kind of logic but I think I have a better chance with women the less I actually see of them because there's less chance of me blowing it. You know the story... boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy makes a prat of himself, girl breaks his heart, boy crawls under a rock and wants to die.

I first realised what was happening when I saw her talking to another male member of staff a couple of weeks ago and I felt the overwhelming urge to throw very sharp things at him - a sure sign of romance if ever there was one.

The terrible thing is that the more you fall for someone the less coherent the things you say to them become. It was okay a few weeks ago - talking about general NQT stuff or Christmas stuff but when I saw her in the staffroom today I started babbling about photocopying and how many credits the maths department got through, and - ha - how I probably accounted for half of them. All of which delivered at one hundred miles an hour. Give me a few more weeks and I'll be wowing her by listing my favourite shades of grey.

So I've come up with a plan - I'll push these feelings deep down inside of me where they can't do any harm. No one needs to know. If only she wasn't so lovely...

Sigh.