Students at City University in London are now banned from wearing any kind of wristwatch in exams, those at Southampton must place all watches in a clear plastic bag on the desk, while at Goldsmiths watches have to be stored under desks.
Comprising three once grand houses, and furnished with antique mirrors, desks, cabinets, clocks, statues, lamps and paintings, it's like an underfunded museum with comfortable beds.
But the increasing school rolls have not been matched with resources, despite ambitious government targets to cut the ratios of pupils to teachers, desks and books.
In a wave of postwar optimism, everyone would work together on clusters of desks scattered across undivided floor-plates.
Some of the 1930s furniture is still there, but much has been replaced by unprepossessing office desks and chairs.
It also donated desks, textbooks, sports equipment and other items.
"On the ground, workers manning the Tiger desks wear no identifying insignia, as if part of some airline staff witness protection program".
It isn't necessarily vindictive: it's partly the legacy of the demise of local newspapers; the result of cuts to national newspapers that have left journalists increasingly chained to their desks; and the fact that many of our top hacks – over half of whom went to private schools – may as well have grown up on a different planet.
Maybe all is fine at 32 pupils, but what about at 34, or 38, or 42? Which is not a hypothetical example, by the way, but the actual size of my own primary school class in the early 90s (complete with windowsill desks).
In these offices, twentysomething graduates work quietly at desks on an industry that is "weightless".
Genuinely, they should pay us for using their rubbish broadband and getting people through the door, or at least get us some desks so we don't do our backs in – have you ever tried designing a website in an armchair?
