Back To School

I was invited to talk to a class of children at one of the local primary schools today about what it's like to be a journalist. I'd actually been to the class once before, during the by-election campaign when the youngsters were visited by all the main candidates. Before getting there today, the teacher told me that the kids remembered me. Well, they remembered G, who had spent much of my previous visit crawling around causing chaos.

The only difference this time was that she can now walk around, which meant she was harder to keep track of than ever as I got ready to give my talk. I decided it would be better to strap G in to a chair and give her some food to keep her quiet as I started speaking. This worked for a while, but when it came to ask the children if there were any questions and some of them started putting their hands up, G copied them. When everyone laughed, G obviously thought this meant she was doing something very clever, and kept giggling and putting her hand up.

And so, not for the first time, she managed to completely upstage me. But given the choice between cooing at a toddler or having to suffer someone chunter on about being a reporter, it's not too difficult to see why.