‘Do You Have to Go?’ ‘The Tide Is Waiting.’

The arrangement behind it was this. Holy Island is joined to the mainland by a causeway that the sea closes for hours at a time. In 2004 the island school had five pupils, who went by taxi to Lowick first school, nine miles away, for as much of the week as the tide allowed, roughly half their time; the rest they were taught on the island. Sometimes, the seven-year-old admitted, it was scary going across when the water was right up at the road.

Their head, Moira Frankland, ran both schools for nine years. She once had to reach the island by 6.30am to beat the tide, and sometimes could not get off it until 7pm. But she had never, she said, made a last-minute dash “with the tide lapping at my wheels”.

Nine years of causeway and not one dash. I cannot get to a Year 3 assembly without a dash, and there is no water involved.

The sea still has a say in the timetable. A 2022 head’s report to governors lists weekly guided reading “tide allowing”, and maths mastery about three times a week, depending on how the tide falls. The schools’ curriculum policy says island children join Lowick when the tide permits and are taught on the island when the causeway is closed. Most schools run on a bell. These two run on the moon.

I first used the line in 2006, to leave a sixth birthday party at a soft-play centre in a business park. Since then it has got me out of a PTA AGM, two book clubs, a Year 6 leavers’ disco and a conversation with a man selling solar panels. Nobody argues. People nod gravely, as if they too have a causeway.

Last month I used it to leave the quiz-night committee at 9.40. The chair, who teaches geography, got out her phone, checked, and told the table that the nearest tide was at Littlehampton and it was going out.

I left anyway. You do not argue with the tide.