Today’s episode is about teaching, including what it’s like to be a teacher, plus the impression we might form of our own teachers. Features:

• A story of teaching in Japan and trying to melt the ice with difficult colleagues
• The performance of teaching gone wrong, plus trying to balance pet and family life in the background
• Burning out and leaving the teaching profession, including the responses of colleagues, and the guilt
• An almost unbelievable tale of a primary school trip to the sewage treatment plant – coordinated by a teacher who truly must have drawn the short straw

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Today’s episode is about school and a little about hard luck – negotiating the slings and arrows of a boarding school in the nineties, and finding the humour in all of it. Features:

• Some background notes on what school is really for
• The story of a duckling, a Vauxhall Viva, and the deep irony of trying to do the right thing but making things much, much worse
• An examination of a really, really big nose, and how (strangely) it was excluded from the bullying canon

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Today’s episode is about names – the names we choose for ourselves, and how we might “make a name for ourselves”. Features:

• The story behind the name “Without a hitch”
• A troupe of guys all called John, how I distinguished between them, and my attempts to make a name for myself amongst “the Johns”
• The hilarious and odd pet names we decided against, after a democratic process to decide on a name for pet #12

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Today’s theme is impressions. What feelings or impressions do you get when you first meet someone, or experience something for the first time? What things stay with you, and what effect do they have on you?

Features a housesitter called Digby and a comprehensive list of flatting horrors.

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