I appeared at the Oxford Literary Festival the other week with Penny Dolan (seen here outside the Junior Common Room of Christ Church, where the festival took place). I’m telling you, we were both as nervous as anything. Our talk ‘Reality vs Fantasy’ was timetabled for 10.00 a.m. on the Saturday morning. I mean, who’s up at that time?  Surely everyone would be too busy finishing breakfast in the amazing dining hall? (The dining room at Christ Church being a bit different from your run-of-the-mill college canteen. You know the mealtimes in Hogwarts? That’s where they were filmed. And we ate there.  Holy smoke, Batman!!)

Luckily, we knew at least four seats would be taken for our session. Jackie Atkinson, who organizes the Kids’ Lit Quiz, had arranged for the winners of this year’s regional heats, Oxford High School for Girls, to ask us questions. If the worst came to the worst, we could sit there for half an hour asking them questions too!

O ye of little faith. Plenty of people turned up in the end and I can honestly say neither of us were related to any of them and only three were kidnapped on their way to a seminar on CS Lewis’ wardrobe malfunctions.

I reckon we gave value for money. We were pretty solid even if I do say so myself.  I thought our idea of pulling out giant aces to back up our individual talks was, frankly,  inspired. Penny’s aces included Roald Dahl and JK Rowling. I had Enid Blyton (excluding the Noddy years) and Michael Morpurgo.

So a big hello to everyone who came to our session that day, a huge thank you to Sue, Jo Kendrick, Jackie, Margret and OUP Jo.  Good luck also to Tacita, Anneka, Ella and Lucienne in the next round of the Kids Lit Quiz. You’ll romp home, I’m sure… although I’ve heard that Kirklees lot know their Arkseys from their Elboz! Did you see what I did there? Arkseys from their Elboz. I’m so clever.

Danny's 'school'

Unless you live in Besthorpe, Nottinghamshire, the news that the village school has closed won’t mean much to you but I’m pretty sad about it. My book ‘There’s Only One Danny Ogle’ (OUP 2001) was based on my teaching experiences at Besthorpe Primary School in the early 1990s.   I taught there three mornings a week and had the entire junior school - all 15 of them. The infants, in the next room, numbered around 11. You’d think such small classes would be a doddle to teach but actually it’s more challenging because having such a wide age and ability range meant I had to prepare six lessons in one.

I loved it though, even if we were a little hampered if we wanted to compete against surrounding schools in sports.  See the huge horse chestnut tree in the playground? Imagine how interesting netball matches were with that as wing defence!

In ‘There’s Only One Danny Ogle’ Danny moves from a large junior school in Huddersfield where he’s been trying like mad to get selected for the A team to tiny ‘Westhorpe’ where there is no football team at all.  The story revolves around him getting a team together under trying circumstances. Mrs Bulinski, the head, detests sport and Mr Spanner, the caretaker, has taken advantage of this by turning the playing field into his own private allotment, with clematis growing up the goalposts.  The inside of the PE shed leaves much to be desired, too.  ‘Plastic hoops had been left scattered amongst tangled skipping ropes and soggy beanbags. A rusting netball post lay sideways across, as if struck by lightning. Then, in the far corner, I saw it. I let out a gasp of horror and stumbled forward…’

Poor Danny. Poor Besthorpe Primary School (1879-2009) RIP

PS: The good news is you can still buy the book!  A bargain at £4.99.