Back to the Chalkface

I'm always sick with dread before meeting a new class and giving my first lecture of the year. I have the same start of term classroom-related nightmare: I'm standing in front of a class for which I have not prepared and have no knowledge (like quidditch, or accounting). The students are throwing paper aeroplanes at me. And I'm naked (think embarrassing rather than creepy).

(That bit about the paper planes used to happen regularly to an ex-colleague. My class was timetabled after hers in a large lecture theatre seating four hundred students. Every week I had to wade through a sea of Spitfires, Concordes and Fokkers to get to the lectern.)

But as always happens, the students turned out to be a bright and affable lot. Here they are doing their best to look excited about the prospect of studying accounting for the next year. I'll soon wipe those smiles off their faces.