I hope you will forgive me a slight detour from my chronological memoirs. I recently found a list of children I taught as an EFL support teacher and then special needs teacher. It explains the change in role.

My memory is not as good as it was so this will be an aide-memoire for me, too. Back in 1985 I was asked to take on three little French children at St Bedes RC County Primary School in Cuddington. They were Eric, Claire and Marion Dufour. I was made very welcome there by the staff and made a good friend in Sister Dolores, a delightful nun. We corresponded for many years afterwards when she moved down to the south coast and elsewhere. She had a thing about magpies and I wrote a poem for her about it. She would not leave the staffroom until she'd seen the right number of magpies! I was there for a year.

Once a week the parents would make cakes to sell at school for school funds. I have a prevailing memory of the parish priest with a handful of cakes: somewhat ironic during Lent!

In February 1986 I was given two German boys to support. Arne Richter was a pupil at St Nicholas High School and his younger brother Bjorn attended Cuddington Primary School. They lived on Delamere Park at Cuddington and we were invited round by their parents on one occasion which was lovely. My memory is of two handsome  blonde boys , both dressed in white. Arne didn't need much tuition but I carried on teaching Bjorn until April of the following year. He was quite a character, correcting my pronunciation of Tatton, bless him.  He preferred the southern version. We read Enid Blyton adventures which he seemed to enjoy.  They were both  very bright boys and I'm sure did well in later life.

At this time 1986 I spent a very happy year at Great Budworth Primary School teaching Usman Sddique. We all knew him as 'Manny' and he was the cousin of our old neighbours in Burgamot Lane, the Chouhdri family. There I got to know  teacher Mrs Cynthia Hubbard a lot better. She actually lived two doors from us in Marbury Road , Comberbach with her husband, Fred. His family were from Great Budworth. Two interesting characters!

 Hoping to get back to my blog after a long time. I still don't really know what I am doing so forgive me if I mess it up.  I am  eventually going to go back to my schooldays and also my teaching 'career' - brief as it was. I was recently accused of 'nepotism' but I was able to point out that I was the only candidate for the job when I went to teach with my Father as was the case in every job interview I   ever had.

In February 2025 my brother David and I went to the Wade Deacon Grammar School Reunion organised by  ex-pupils David Hopkins and Ray Trivasse. It was only one morning but was organised so well by the school and the pupils it ran like clockwork. We had to be there early on the Saturday morning and we had to be gone by 1pm as the gates were going to be locked. Archie drove me there and the weather was kind as it was early in February so might well have been snowing. 

The school main hall was set out as if for a wedding, tables for nearly 200 people. There was a display of photographs and documents and a screen on the wall showing photos of staff members and newspaper articles. Our Father , D J Huntingford known to the boys as Tally Ho appeared on the wall as if to greet us - 24 years almost to the day that he died. 

We were looked after by the pupils, plied with drinks and cake and taken in groups on guided tours around the amazing new building. From the road the facade of our old school looks unchanged but behind that there is a new building which is just amazing. The young people were a delight and their teachers must have been very proud of them. All of them had given up part of their weekend to look after us.

None of my fellow pupils were there, sadly but I did meet up with some of the boys that I taught in the year 1968/69, now old men themselves. I was 21 when they were 11 so we were only 10 years apart in age. That year of teaching with my Father as my Boss was wonderful. I was married by then so we had different names and he really looked after me. Woe betide any boy found outside my classroom . He made a point of walking past the room where I was teaching. Not that I had any discipline problems as the boys were very well behaved and a delight to teach.