Oversleeping is an unacceptable excuse for being absent or late unless there is a highly original reason which no one could have foreseen. The following come into this category:

1 You woke up at 6 am with a blinding headache. You fumbled in the drawer of your bedside table for a bottle of Panadol and took three. Only they weren't Panadol, as you discovered to your lasting embarrassment at ten past six that evening when your husband/wife returned home from work and woke you by slapping your face and applying cold flannels to various tender parts of your body. They were Mogadon sleeping tablets.

2 You set the alarm of your new, wafer-thin mini-calculator for 7 am and turned in early. Some time later, your wife followed you to bed and saw on the bedside table what, in the half-light, she immediately recognised as an After Eight chocolate mint. She was horrified, since you are both on strict diets, and removed temptation from your side by flushing the 'choc' down the loo.

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