Before I was a mummy, I was a teacher. An English teacher, to be precise. My love of correct grammar and punctuation was actually important, and something I could inflict upon others and be paid to do so. I loved teaching. I especially loved teaching my lower ability classes. At the end of each day I felt I had achieved something. With one class it might be that they could all now use an apostrophe correctly; with another it could be that they were able to construct brilliant introductions to their essays and understand how to include quotations; with one class, it was a successful lesson if I had got them all sitting where I wanted them to, and been able to do the register without interruption! It's amazing how thankful those little things could make me. And I rarely felt that a day had gone by without anything to be thankful for. Even if the kids had been difficult all day, my colleagues were fabulous. (Note here - I'm not talking about working at that dreadful school in Yateley, but the wonderful one in Winchester.)