PT

In the emails I sent to the school whilst organising my trip out to India, I was asked if I had any special skills or talents. Now instead of writing the real answer to this (the capacity to remember an abundance of facts about football, wrestling and soaps), I chose to say that I love sport and would love to help teaching it.

The result of these emails were that I am in charge of the PT lessons 4 days a week. I haven't yet found out or indeed asked what PT stands for but for most of the children it's probably Physical Torture. My role is to largely serve as a mediator in proceedings and to make sure they don't take everything out of the cupboard, kick all the balls over the low fences or have great big brawls.

But it is made difficult because the boys and the girls, for various cultural reasons, won't play with each other at all. So when the boys say they only want to play football, I give them a football and then fob the girls off with a tennis ball or a game of snakes and ladders. This is because if I give the girls anything interesting like tennis rackets or a basketball, then the boys suddenly decide they want to become the next Yevgeny Kafelnikov or a member of the London Towers. Of course, the boys then win the scrap over who gets what and the girls then have the hump with PT and retire to the swings.

So, slightly fed up with trying to keep a balance between the two feuding camps, PT has turned into what I initially suspected it would; me vs them. This may involve playing cricket and only letting myself bat for 'health and safety reasons' or bouncing a basketball too high for these plucky seven year olds to reach. The only thing that matters is that I win...a lot.