Staging posts to Lovely land

It's sickness time at school, enabling the staff to combine two of their favourite pastimes - bringing in home made cake and symptoms and passing round both with equal enthusiasm.

In fact, there are occasions when the whole place resembles some sort of anti-miracle storytelling event. No sooner is one teacher off her crutches than another gets some instead. The place echos to the sound of slow, portenteous footsteps. Add a couple of wooden legs and we could stage several simultaneous performances of 'Treasure Island,' with me, cast by Sasha, taking a cameo role as the Black Spot of doom.

This morning, reception has embarked on a bit of music and movement. The children jog on the spot, freeze, and proclaim the virtues of regular exercise, while I shuffle from foot to foot in order to create the illusion of frenzied activity.

As the song finishes, Pete puts up his hand. "Miss," he says, "My finger hurts." "Just as well you don't sing with your finger, then," I say, in my least plausible jolly voice which grates so much that I half expect the vibrations to cause a flock of small songbirds to be struck dead in mid air and plummet to earth.

The children ignore my voice and instead brandish limbs at me with the gusto of trainee lepers, accompanied by many gut-wrenching moans whose vigour and clarity outstrips anything they've produced during the rest of the lesson. Some hastily pick at cuts so historic they've been listed by English Heritage to try and wrench off remaining scabs, and hold these out to me as well.

"Miss, my hand," "My tooth," "My leg,"

"MY GOD!" I say, rather more loudly than planned.

There's a sudden silence, possibly caused by the fact that this is the first and only time they've ever heard me say anything that's filled with genuine, raw emotion.

"Right," I say, making the tactical error of assuming that underneath the pain, they've been enjoying leaping round the room. "Anybody feeling really ill had better sit on the bench." Within seconds, the whole class is fighting for a seat and the moans and groans are now mixed with screams of genuine pain as skirmishes break out over the last space.

There's a courtesy knock on the door and - "We take music very seriously," Sasha is, inevitably, saying, and looking backwards as she does it towards the group of prospective parents she's bringing round the school on a guided tour.

This is a mistake.

The parents' expectant looks vanish. Music is clearly not a staging post on the way to Lovely Land - not this morning anyway.

Pete, finger troubles apparently forgotten, jumps on top of Clifford, with the clear intention of squashing him to death - forgetting, of course, that in an expanded state, Clifford will take up more room on the bench.

"And on to the library," Sasha says, smartly executing a 180 degree turn, and disappearing again.