They sprung a surprise on me today and I didn’t get wind of it until about five minutes before it happened. I was sitting quietly in a corner doing some processing of “Charlie” pics and I was suddenly aware of a heated discussion going on and my name being mentioned. I pricked up my ears but they all just looked at me with beautiful, angelic smiles. Ho Hum!

We were all called into the next classroom where my littlies who I’ve been teaching phonics to for the last few weeks are based. I sat down and found myself in the midst of a little thicket of girls, all wanting to sit really close to me. I smelled a rat in the nicest possible way!

Then a deputation swept through the door carrying cards and presents. This one is the one from my little phonics group – fourteen wonderful children between the ages of 5 and 7 who I have taught for a big-ish chunk of their phonics for the last 13 weeks. My tiny angels made me a card and I have green hair and am extremely colourfully dressed. I LOVE my green hair – do you think it’d be a good look for me as an ongoing style?

One thing occurred to me today. I was looking round at the audience last night from my stage wings position at the packed audience and I realised that I actually knew about two thirds of them. Mums, Dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends of the family who come to the school gate, discuss their children’s day and exchange pleasantries about the weather and other such subjects. Being a teacher in a village school really makes you a part of the community in a way that is probably only surpassed by the local GP (perhaps even more so). I have spent my whole life trying to find a place to belong and it has comprehensively eluded me so far. As from tomorrow I will no longer belong to them, nor they to me. I am bereft. Oh and needless to say I cried like a baby - floods and floods of tears - but it's hard to say sobbing when you are playing musical statues with half a dozen children hanging off your arm!