At 55 I was teaching at my last and favourite  school - a middle school near Great Yarmouth. The best part was that they ran a secondary type timetable so that staff could 'specialise' in the subjects that they preferred - well, most of the time, depending on the constraints of the timetable.

When I started there I was fortunate enough to have lots of music lessons and the rest of my timetable consisted of Maths and English with a bit of History, Geography, French or R.E. from time to time.

It was a huge relief not to have to do anything remotely ressembling Sport or Science but every spare lunch time was taken up with Music groups - recorders. Windband, flute and clarinet. Eventually, I became a 'floating teacher' - in other words, I didn't have a class responsibility so I was able to fit in more music before Assembly while everyone was doing their register.

 By 1999, however, with ever worsening eyesight, I was beginning to find life difficult. The problem was that I needed such strong correction (-17 and -19) that it pulled my eyes into a squint - particularly when I was tired.

An operation to shorten a muscle(?) didn't help much so I had to live with undercorrection and therefore far from perfect vision, despite wearing contact lenses plus one of several pairs of glasses for various distances.

Life became most uncomfortable and I had to go for early retirement. The head obviously didn't realise how bad things were because she was amazed when my application was granted. I wasn't even allowed to finish the school year and left at the end of June 2000.

I thought this was because the LEA was too mean to pay my salary through the Summer but when I saw my dossier at the hospital I realised that my specialist had said I was as blind as a bat - though in more technical terms!

After retirement the thought of living a Derby and Joan existence with Bear was a pretty unappealing prospect and having failed to 'escape' on the previous occasions when I'd walked out, I decided to plan carefully for a new life in France.

It took the best part of a year to arrange things but on October 6th 2002 I left home and started a new adventure across the Channel. You can read about it in the Dear Diary section.