THIS morning, I would like my regular reader(s) to sit back and take a deep breath. What I am about to say will come as a deep shock. But, as the chronicler of Beggarsdale affairs, it is my duty to report it. So here we go ...

Old Tom and Teacher Tess had another row this week. Nothing new there, of course. But absorb this: they ended up in agreement!

This, as far as anyone can remember, is unique. Such rows usually end up with Tess storming out of the Beggar's and staying out until her disapproval has been duly noted.

But the truly staggering thing about this collision of wills (and worlds, for that matter, for these two should really live on different planets) is that it ended in harmony after starting in anger over that thorny old chestnut, the world of education.

Tom, you see, never got much of that, having started full-time on Hard Rock Farm aged 14 and (no-one is quite sure about this) was whisked off to fight Rommel before he was 16 (he lied about his age, you see).

Formally lacking education though he might be, however, Tom is no yokel and is an assiduous reader of posh broadsheets. These, he regularly cuts into shreds to take cuttings down to The Beggars' as weapons of incitement.

And, of course, it is Tess, deputy head of a tough school in the inner city, who he loves to incite most.

This week's attack came in the form of a report from David Bell, the Government's own chief schools' inspector, who says that "a disquietingly large" number of primary school children can't dress themselves, eat with a knife and fork, or hold a conversation. They have spent their entire young lives, you see, plonked in front of a TV set by parents who never talk to them.

For Tess, that was an easy one. "That's bad parenting," she said airily. "You can hardly blame me for the behaviour of children before they get into school."

But, and this was where the situation took its unexpected twist, this time Tess had come fore-armed. She was able to produce a cutting of her own and this one stopped Tom in his tracks.

It pointed out the Government had just appointed its 500,000th extra civil servant - in other words, half a million more pay-packets on the taxpayer's bill since this lot came to power.

Now a lot of people know that, and are very, very angry about it (apart from the lucky half million, that is) but the puzzling part here was that Tess should choose to file away such a fact: she is normally in favour of anything Saint Tony and the Archangel Gordon do.

To cover his desperate search for an adequate retort, Tom fiddled with his foul smelling briar. It was here that Tess delivered her coup de grace.

"For once in a lifetime, I agree with Tom, " she announced to the bar as a whole. "You see, of all those new civil servants, 88,000 went to the education department - and only 14,500 of that lot were teachers.

"Yet this weekend, my head teacher and I must decide which two teachers we must make redundant this summer. We've overspent our budget, you see..."

A hush fell over the Beggars'. Some of us thought that Tess was going to cry. Then Tom put his arm gently round her shoulder and snapped at The Innkeeper: "Ah think we need one o' them there chardonnay sprinters. The lass deserves a drink." And he paid for it, too!

o The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village