ABSTRACT
Lying restless in bed, my mind full of the previous night’s discussions, with the arrival of daylight I resolved to rise and walk. Instead of a radio to relax or to stimulate, I decided to take as my companion a tape recorder to try to capture some of the inner thoughts and stirrings. Here I am now walking along a beautiful Australian beach at 5.00 am, dictating what might be a chapter of a book. With a group of principals on holidays, I had shared a good meal, good wine and good fellowship until a late hour last night. As we sat and chatted, the conversation came around to a discussion about the principals that we are, have been and, of course, the principals we have known. It was fun doing this. The similarity and dissimilarity of the two words principal and principle had encouraged us to think laterally as well as personally and professionally. We had talked about the absent principal, the paranoid principal, the Humpty Dumpty principal, the moral turpitude principal, the lazy principal; the proper principal, the peremptory principal, the crowing principal, the humble principal and there were many more. We even contemplated what would be the collective name to be used for a group of principals. We decided that it might be a ‘lack of principals’! For personal sanity it is important to be able to laugh at one’s profession and at oneself. It is equally important to be able to undertand one’s profession, to see the challenges and the risks and to be able to choose a mature path between them.
