A flying cat screeched as it swooped over us, the tips of its ears glowing fluorescent green in the darkening sky at dusk. It landed high above us in the canopy of the bare winter trees, only just visible as a silhouette.

We wondered whether it was a witch’s cat. When a huge semi-naked red-haired woman brandishing a stick next flew past, our suspicions seemed to be confirmed. She landed on the ground, and called my name. When I stepped forward she set about beating me with her stick. I begged her to stop. “Not until you work out who I am!” she shouted back at me.

Eventually I realised that this was my school friend JB, and that she had flown in the for the school reunion at the pub in Stockton-on-Tees. The reunion was now a weekly event and with every Saturday the participant numbers grew and grew. Former pupils came from all the schools that I had ever attended with the result that there was a real mix of people in attendance. I astonished others with my encylopaedic knowledge of the details of our 1970s childhood, and my detailed responses to the question as to why I had spent so much of life in education.