What a pleasure! Just back from the second day of the school's 50th Anniversary weekend with Alumni returning from their many different walks of life.

I catch up with Oscar, Marcus, Alexes D & S, Ben, Matihilde, Andrea, Dapo, Dominique, Metodi, Taya, Pia Maria, Axel ... the list goes on. Everyone seems to have some key text or moment that has lodged in their memory - 'that' scene from Gatsby, that bloody albatross in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 'Waterloo Sunset' ... one ex-student tells me that every time she sees Nigella cooking on television she thinks of me (apparently I gave them a recipe to analyse as a text type). I'd completely forgotten that one.

Talk these days in education is infested with Learning Outcomes, percentages of added value & other such expressions of the managerial mindset.

That after five, ten, fifteen - eighteen, even - years a person wishes to shake my hand & say how much they enjoyed the hours we spent together is the best 'outcome' I could hope for. Calculate that.

Thanks to every one of you.