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!