A remarkable true story
In my twenties, as a newly qualified teacher, I worked in a classroom that had a kitchen in it. It was as odd as it sounds: about a third of the classroom had been partitioned off by a half-wall so that cookery lessons could happen there. As you can imagine the noises and the smells were a bit distracting when I was trying to teach but in reality it was only for about a quarter of an hour a day (as most of the lesson happened in the lunch hour). The one advantage of this set-up was that the wonderful woman who led the sessions: Sheila used to sneak me little freshly-out of the-oven treats. I was in that room for three years. Towards the end of that time Sheila, who was generally a private person, started to open up and chat more and more. I got to the point where I felt I could ask her why, when she was German, her name was Sheila. 'Oh it's not really Sheila, it's Gisella. I felt a need to change it when I first arrived here in England.' And then she told me her rema...