"Yes," I said, "and if you drink all those bottles in one go you'll never stop your armpits twitching."

By this time the Deputy Head had arrived to check that Paul had turned up. "You're always here, son," he snapped, "shall I issue you with a season ticket!" This produced the very smallest and sliest of smiles on young Paul's face.

Finally, after all this attention, he got down with reluctance to writing out those boring rules. Every so often he glanced up and looked with satisfaction at his four bottles of cherryade. They were his consolation.

The whole school detention room was also the Home Economics room. Jane was putting the finishing touches to some profiteroles as I supervised young Paul. Her friend Jill walked in. Earlier in the day she had been looking sorry for herself and sighing because her boyfriend wasn't paying her enough attention. She had come to inspect Jane's profiteroles as her fickle admirer played football on the school field. They were very plump profiteroles squishy with cream. As Jane dipped them into silky liquid chocolate she began feeding them to her friend. "More! More!" cried Jill, "More! More!" That lunchtime profileroles were Jill's consolation.

We all understand this. Small treats bring consolation at a superficial level: 'Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.'

One week Songs of Praise came from the Palace of Westminster. The TV camera took us down into the bowels of the building to Tony Benn standing by a broom cupboard. The veteran leftwing MP said that he had been very sad that there was no memorial in Westminster in honour of Emily Wilding Davis, one of the heroines of democracy. So he decided to erect his own memorial. He fixed a plaque on the inside of the broom cupboard door in honour of the suffragette who was trampled to death at the Derby when she threw herself in front of the Queen's horse. It was Tony Benn's consolation. He had done what he could. I don't agree with Tony Benn's views but the thought of him puffing at his pipe and working quietly away in the broom cupboard with his screw driver is very endearing. He did what he could.

I think it is very sad that Jesus is not given greater honour in our country. I am always bitterly disappointed by my pupil's regrettable lack of enthusiasm for the annual carol service at Debenham Church of England High School. My only consolation is to honour him as best I can; to put my plaque in the broom cupboard; to name the name in all my assembly talks.

In George Eliot's sad but wonderful novel, 'The Mill on the Floss,' Maggie Tulliver's father, the miller, was a foolish, hot-headed man. He brought ruin upon himself. The shame of being declared bankrupt induced a stroke. George Eliot writes this of Maggie as she goes into her father's sickroom where he lay prostrate in bed:

Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Maggie hated blame: she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers. Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or bear anything for his sake.

Maggie's great consolation in life was the support her father gave her. When others blamed and condemned her, he always defended and excused her.

My greatest consolation is to know that I have a Champion in heaven; one who defends and excuses me, his follower; Jesus Christ the great high priest who ever lives to make intercession for me and all those who believe on his name.