I am at best exhausted and at worst bewildered. I was away from teaching for what? Ten weeks? Yet I cannot remember the tiredness, the chaos, the sheer juggling that seems to define this job, as being so bad in June. Selective amnesia, maybe? I look at the 30 bodies before me, rigid in their antiquated desks - fourth class alone taking up half the classroom, leaving fifth and sixth to form an uneasy coalition on the other side.

Where do I start? Revision is always a good bet in September. Hit the maths and watch it all come flowing back to them. HCFs, fractions, all the hardy annuals. So why am I standing at the board with one group huddled around me looking dazed, despairing as I realise that there are chasms in their knowledge that need not only repair but total rebuilding? A steady stream of others come and go proffering copies and confusion.

Then, my saviours, sixth class, who should soar above the trivialities of how to rule copies and what notebook to use for writing down their homework, have started another racket. They have seemingly decided to forget everything I have ever taught them and re-define the quasi-order that we established last year.

By afternoon, the combination of a 15-foot square classroom and a stiff new school shirt is cancelling out the excitement of the brand new English novels - our reading texts for the next few months. Still, we've sorted out a few things vital to our mutual sanity.

You put your hand up when you want me, as opposed to saying "Hey!" You never throw a rubber at the person who asks you for the loan of it. Not if you know what's good for you. And most important of all, you shut up when the teacher is called to the phone outside the door. No point in broadcasting your rebelliousness to the world. So that's something.

Rome wasn't built in a day, eh?