She would give her class of two intermediate Spanish learners sweets at every lesson. Yes, every single lesson. For the first few weeks, they were sweets from Spain.
The school bag would rattle with lollipops. Squashed chocolate bars would stick to folders and bags of squidgy jelly sweets would flow in abundance as she handed out at least two packs per lesson.
Over the two years of learning Spanish, I lost count of the sweets that came home. Often they wold end up in the bottom right- hand cupboard in a bowl, eventually becoming a solid sticky uneaten mass before being thrown away.
Well, the sweets grew en masse during revision and were consumed along with fizzy drink and cake. The Spanish teacher kept her class fuelled on gloop and sugar. I let it pass.
She was very much loved, not for her generosity in sweets, but in her attentiveness to teaching Spanish. Her pupils were 'A' standard, not surprisingly.
Today I have been nuking the kitchen and found 2 lollipops and a packet of liquid filled creatures. Yes, curiosity got the better of me. I opened the packet and found a dozen good-sized transparent frogs, beetles, mice and spiders. I cringed, but of course had to try one.
Hmm, quite nice. One chomp and straight in to the liquid centre. They are of course, the type of sweets that could probably be melted down and fix the gutters with. I tried another one. Yuk! Almond-flavour centre....wrong!
We'll miss the influx of sweets and the wonderful Spanish teacher. She was the only teacher who would call to talk about progress, and was a lady of true character. Good luck to her next pupils - they will have a lot of fun.
