Julie Jay: Parents, like doctors, should take blood in their stride

A catalogue of recent calamities has left me feeling like I am a card-carrying member of the Royal College of Surgeons

Julie Jay: "When I enquired what had happened to Number One, I was told he had walked into a bin — an occupational hazard of professional dance. Number Two, it materialised, had fallen while outside the dance class."

Years ago, I befriended a young Italian student whose English was brilliant, but she enlisted me to help her with prepositions — the one part of the language on which she was a little lacking.

Despite having a third-level degree in English, a postgrad, and ostensibly a Tefl qualification, which cost me the whopping sum of €75, my first step in teaching this lovely girl about prepositions was to find out what a preposition was.