Module 1: "Hangman" (from Black Swan Green) by David Mitchell

Most people think stammering and stuttering are the same but they're as different as diarrhea and constipation.

The only way to outfox Hangman is to think one sentence ahead, and if you see a stammer-word coming up, alter your sentence so you won't need to use it.

I told Mrs. de Roo how I'd heard Eskimo kids spend time under artificial sunlamps to stop them getting scurvy, 'cause at the North Pole winter lasts for most of the year.

I already had done, I told her, and this is what he’d said: “We must all face our demons one day, Taylor, and for you, that time is nigh.”

Then Mrs. de Roo got out her Metro Gnome: Metro Gnomes’re upside-down pendulums without the clock part.

Talk about the gift of the gab! Craig Salt dropped by while I was there to instill some God-fearing discipline into the troops, but Danny had him eating out of his hand in five minutes flat. Executive material, is that young man.

Dad asked what Mrs. de Roo’d thought about his diary idea. Her comment that it was “most informative” fueled his good mood. “‘Informative’?Indispensable, more like!..."

The principle, O daughter of mine, is a universal constant. If you don't keep records, you can't make progress assessments.

Up in my room I started my homework on the feudal system for Mrs. Coscombe.

Saturday morning classes? This Ewan must be a Worcester Cathedral School kid. Posh.

“No, I certainly will not be bringing him. Thing spends his Saturdays skulking up trees or hiding down holes.”

One hundred and fifty minutes of life left, that was all. I could already see the rows and columns of faces in my class, like a screen of space invaders. Guffawing, puzzled, appalled, pitying.

Truant officers and their sniffer dogs'd be put on my trail.

School was all skiddy floors this morning, damp steaming anoraks, teachers telling kids off for screaming and first years playing illegal tag in the corridors and third-year girls trawling the corridors with linked arms singing some crappy pop song.

It was ahead, ajar, and cigarette smoke billowed out like fog in Jack the Ripper's London.

"Petitioning me to grant a last-minute act of clemency.”

"Am I to understand that you anticipate this morning's form-assembly with a level of trepidation one might describe as 'debilitating dread'?”

"Am I to understand that you anticipate this morning's form-assembly with a level of trepidation one might describe as 'debilitating dread'?”

“Yes Taylor. It seems your dedicated speech therapist holds the opinion that a postponement of this morning's trial by ordeal may be conducive to a longer-term level of self-confidence vis-a-vis the Arts of Rhetoric and Public Speaking. Do you second this motion, Taylor?”

After a few seconds that felt like a few hours Mr. Kempsey said, “Your spirited defense of established protocol is commendable, Drake, and, no doubt, altruistic. However, I possess reliable intelligence that Taylor's vocal apparati are in an unseaworthy condition. Thus, your classmate is excused on quasi-medical grounds.”