It was Red Nose Day today! I managed to arrive at School sporting a blue shirt and yellow tie having forgotten temporarily about the importance of the day. But help was at hand! The front office popped a plastic nose onto my everyday one and Mr Berry quickly appeared with a red top hat which he seemed to have lurking around in his classroom. Is there any occasion for which a Reception teacher does not have a prop? There were any number of red clothes in evidence today including a beautiful Chinese silk top emblazoned with two glorious dragons and some red trousers covered in big black spots. When I complimented the wearer of the spotted trousers, he pulled his anonymous jacket back to reveal a shining red top with a glorious ladybird on the front. The trousers now made perfect sense! The most original piece of red impedimenta was the pair of red glasses being worn by a boy who arrived dramatically on his bicycle. “I’ve had a very interesting journey. My red glasses transformed the colours of the traffic lights. The red looked brown, the yellow looked green and the green looked blank!” I was relieved, I have to say, that he had arrived at school with everything, including his glasses, fully in tact.

World Book Day is one of my favourite occasions. Pupils you know so well seem not to turn up that day while there is a stampede of characters from books, dressed in their clothing, many clutching wands and staffs. I arrived, dressed this year, as Dumbledore! “Oh look,” said one boy as he approached the school, “it’s Father Christmas.” I spent the rest of the day trying to ensure that everyone knew who I was and, indeed, I found myself getting carried away. I was using a perfectly sized stick as my elderwand and was attempting to bring about magical transformations by brandishing this twig. One of the many Harry Potters who had decided to attend our school, said, as he flourished his plastic wand in front of me, “Well yours is not a wand, it’s a stick - unlike mine!”