Stawley School, Back of Beyond

Today's subject is geography. Question one: How do you find Stawley School near Wellington? Well, for a start, don't go to the village of Stawley, because it isn't there. Go to a tiny pimple on the map called rather cutely Appley Cross. Question two: How do you find Appley Cross? Not with my Sat Nav that's for sure. I plumbed in the post code of the school, usually more than adequate for my Sat Nav. It just looked at me and went "and....?" It had never heard of it. So I tried typing in Appley Cross. It hadn't heard of that either. Similarly it hadn't heard of Stawley, all points south of Wellington and Rock Hyraxes. In the words of Spike Milligan: What are we going to do now? Drastic measures were needed. This was a job for Doris. Doris is my semi retired and semi knackered old Sat Nav from my previous cars. She only works on batteries now and doesn't last very long when she does. I plugged her in and put in the post code -she found it straight away!

Appley Cross is as sweet and dinky as the name suggests. Stawley School is microscopic - blink and you would miss it, even if you were walking past with both legs in plaster and carrying some phenomenally heavy shopping. However, I was very warmly welcomed. It turned out the day was being shared between two schools, Stawley and Stampford from just up the road - but this still only gave us a grand total of about 30 students. But it was a great day despite the cramped conditions (no school hall so that whole day had to be done in the largest class room in the school). After a fun and frantic morning I wandered to the teeny tiny shop perched by the school gate to get some lunch. Did they have sandwiches? No. Did they have pies or pasties? No. Any cold meat and rolls? No. This was a time to improvise. Therefore my lunch ended up being two bananas, a can of Diet Coke, a packet of Kettle chips and a Twix. I am wasting away now - down to my final few hundred tons.

The afternoon joust was very different. As there was not enough room for two teams to joust at once, we had one team jousting at a time, while being timed on a stop watch. It made for some interesting results. In the main final the ladies went first and clocked a time of 1 minute and 4 seconds. The gents then went and clocked a time of 1 minute and 7 seconds! The ladies triumphed. We then had a teacher's race which saw a teacher's group romp home in just 54 seconds - surely a world record!

I got home and flaked out for the evening. For the following day I was due back at Trull.