Last year when I went to Signhills School to do Florence Nightingale for year 2 (3 classes in succession) - I was greeted with "Hello Lissa, nice to see you" by the school secretary (Anne Osborne as was - now Pickup), then by the headmistress (Jane Casujuana - now Powell) and finally, as I sat down for a cup of tea, another teacher handed me a photograph of a truly dreadful play we had both been in about 1966/7 with the Hackforth twins, Bridget and Diana Campbell, Elizabeth Bellamy, Heather Horne, Angela Favell, Karen Jary and a load of other people whose names I don't quite remember.

The school was being ofsteded, but I gather the comment by the inspector on what he saw of my bit was "I can certainly see why you have her." - so that was all right. Actually I thought that the children, especially in the first group, were so well behaved that open questions were a touch lost on them; on the other hand, they had been very well prepared and answered the closed questions excellently and were very friendly and polite.

Well, obviously the Ofstedders weren't the only people who thought that I was worth inviting back, because I was back again today. The children were still as well behaved and well informed, the school was still running calmly and smoothly, the staffroom was still as friendly, the old friends were still there, and we had another excellent day. This time I had Kristen with me so that she can learn the workshop, and the children were not slightly over-awed by the inspectors so the open questions worked better from the start.