Yesterday was one of the worst days of my life

When I got an email from the Evening Standard’s education correspondent at 06.29am yesterday I had no idea that my life was about to turn to shit. She had just read an interview I’d done for a magazine called Schools Week in which, among other things, I said that I was standing down as chief executive of the group of free schools I’ve helped set up. She wanted to talk to me about why I’d made this decision. At that point, I made a terrible mistake. I asked if I could send her an email explaining why I was stepping down rather than talk to her in person. The reason for this is that I’m in the midst of a terrible bout of summer flu. So I dashed off a quick email It became clear just how stupid that was when I noticed that I’d started trending on Twitter at around noon.