So spring is officially here – not that you would know it yet from the weather, though I’m hoping we are in for a few more sunny days in the weeks to come! I have to get up very early in the morning for the Breakfast Show and it is so much easier to get out of bed when we are out of the dark days of winter. There really is no better feeling in the world than starting your day when the sun is rising and the birds are singing!

With summer just around the corner, you may have heard me on the Breakfast Show talking about my strict new diet regime and my new project to try to get into shape. We asked listeners for some tips on the best ways to get fit and their suggestions were hilarious!

One female listener said she does a unusual secret exercise when she’s driving her car - clenching her bum cheeks while sat at traffic lights. It apparently gives you the ultimate toned behind! I must admit I have started trying it - and will let you know if it has any impact!

Apparently cleaning is another great way to get into shape. Mopping floors works your shoulders and biceps and burns around 112 calories in 30 minutes, hoovering for 30 minutes works your arms and biceps and can burn up to 240 calories, while gardening for an hour works your arms, legs and core and you can burn a whopping 258 calories! And if you’re like me and crank the music up and dance while you’re doing it, then chances are you’ll probably be burning a lot more!

I’ve also started working with a personal trainer. You may remember that at Christmas my co-host Rob Wills was forced to get into shape after we set him the challenge of posing topless for a charity calendar! He needed more than a bit of help so we got him a personal trainer and after seeing the results, it’s made me take the plunge.

I’ve been training for two hours a week with Michael Tuohy who offers sessions all over Kent from the comfort of your own home or at LA Fitness in Maidstone. He is also a nutritionist so is advising on me on how I can change my diet to make sure I’m eating the right foods but still have a few naughty treats.

The great thing about having a personal trainer is it gives you the motivation you need to keep you going and when you start to see results it’s really satisfying I’ve had one hour session twice a week for three weeks now and I’m already noticing the difference.

My body fat has gone down and I’ve lost six pounds! Before I started the sessions Michael gave me a full health check and we began charting my weight and body fat so that we could set goals for me to achieve. I’m improving every session and I feel like I have a lot more energy. Why join if me in getting fit? Let me know how you get on.

No issue has proved more toxic for politicians in recent years than the scandal of their expenses.

Rightly, the disclosures of how the system was being widely abused led to much-needed reforms in an effort to "clean up" politics and restore public faith in our elected representatives.

But the issue is back centre-stage and one of the county's MPs is at the middle of the latest maelstrom.

Maidstone and Weald MP Helen Grant has been left to fend off criticisms of her own arrangements that have left many not just perplexed but deeply irritated.

Let's be clear. Helen Grant's expenses are within the IPSA rules, odd though they may strike many. But that is precisely what causes resentment and prompts cynicism among voters.

As MPs discovered to their cost first time around, that kind of  justification does not wash with the public and is even more tenuous if it appears their claims are regarded as being outside the spirit of the rules.

MP Grant caught up in expenses row>>>

To hear the same 'yes-but-it-is-in-the-rules' justification trotted out after the latest set of revelations involving not just Ms Grant but others suggests that particular lesson has not yet been learned.

And it is even less credible at a time when MPs are - rightly - incandescent about the very same justification that large corporations are using to account for their evasion of corporate tax bills in the UK.

There are several aspects to the situation that Helen Grant is in that make it especially damaging.

The first is that her principal home is in a constituency - Reigate - where the sitting MP is disqualified from claiming a second home allowance because it is deemed to be near enough to Westminster for an MP to commute to.

On top of that, it has struck many as strange that she herself no longer has a home in her own constituency, especially in the light of her pre-election declaration that she intended to maintain one.

Constituents are very sensitive - some may say too sensitive - about this sort of thing. 

While they may tolerate their MP living just outside their constituency, they are reluctant to countenance the idea that their MP should live in an entirely different county miles away. It has not helped that the disclosures follow the news that the Maidstone MP is considering closing her constituency office.

It has allowed the impression to be created - and it is one vigourously denied - that the MP is neglecting her constituency.

Equally pernicious is that a large number of her constituents have to endure a daily commute to London to work and pay heavily for the privilege.

To discover that their MP is able to claim for a flat in London to help her with her duties, and that they are, as taxpayers meeting those costs, has unsurprisingly stirred up further resentment.

Plenty of those commuting from the County Town do jobs that involve irregular and unpredictable hours and late-night travel and have to do so because they have no alternative - much as they might like to have one.

And the claim that MPs are often detained at Westminster by late night sittings is over-egged. True, they sometimes do but much less than they used to because of reforms designed to make their working hours more sensible.

I accept that MPs do work long hours and are genuinely committed to the job. So, too, do people in many other professions.

The issue is that perceptions matter in politics. MPs cannot afford to be seen to be out of touch with voters. And rightly or wrongly, this episode has created a perception problem for Mrs Grant for all sorts of reasons.

She has certainly forfeited some goodwill among her hard-pressed constituents that may take a while to recover.

The real story of the council elections is not the advances made by Labour and the slide of the Conservatives and Lib Dems.

It is, or at least should be, the fact that the turnout was so appalling - the lowest, so it is said, for ten years.

Hundreds of councillors have been elected on turnouts of about 30% - meaning two thirds of potential voters simply weren't interested. Hardly a resounding mandate.

In one ward in Maidstone - Parkwood - just 18% of voters turned out. Even in Tunbridge Wells, where you might have thought there would be a greater interest, turnout was around 30%.

You can call it apathy, indifference or disillusionment. But however you describe it, it represents a significant and profound challenge to our politicians who have - on all sides - singularly failed to come up with ways of resolving this long-standing crisis afflicting local government.

Thatcher thought the solution was to hit voters in their pockets via the poll tax - a kind of shock therapy that did indeed get people interested in councils but not quite in the way she intended.

Labour tried implementing cabinet government and executive mayors. The argument was that people would know where the buck stopped and greater accountability would transform the public's appetite for local democracy.

More recently, the coalition has gone for a transparency revolution with equally mixed results. There have been various attempts to make it easier to vote.

All have failed to effect any kind of revolution and appear to have left as many of us as indifferent and disinterested as before. This is not to say people are turned off by politics. They are often engaged in issues that really ought to mean that council elections matter more than Parliamentary ones.

Somehow they don't. Why? Many councillors do an admirable job taking up constituents' interests but I am often struck by how inward looking many are - often seeming to consider that in serving 'the council' by attending lots of meetings, they are somehow serving residents.

Political interests are often elevated above those of constituents, with members fearful of uttering anything that could be perceived as being disloyal to their party or damaging to the image or reputation of the authority - let alone damaging their prospects of preferment and a possible job in the cabinet.

Politically, the result is that every party begins to sound the same.

Despite endless consultations and PR, councils are  still too often seen as doing things to people, rather than with them or for them. They suffer, like national governments, from the perception that they are distant and remote, patrician bureaucracies that ask us to accept implicitly that 'they know best.'

Of course, council elections are seen through the prism of the national political scene. So, we see the line trotted out that the apathy factor is more about discontent with the government of the day than lack of interest in the local council. (I accept the media falls into this trap, too).

Note how defeated local councillors are directing their ire at their national representatives and how the party leaders are rationalising their results by talking about Parliamentary mid-term blues.

But if politicians spent as much time discussing how councils could better connect with residents as they did in a blame game explaining away their electoral losses, perhaps we might get nearer to finding a way of resolving this lack of interest.

The antidote to apathy - worth a watch

A majority of people who see so-called 'big cats' in the wilds of Britain, are usually walking or driving alone. When these people report their sightings they are ridiculed, but on the occasion there are sightings which involve two or more witnesses. As I mentioned in a previous post there have been numerous sightings over the Easter period of so-called 'big cats' across the south-east and I've received around 10 sightings in three days, 9 of these have been in broad daylight. A majority of these are under investigation. However, when I receive reports of 'big cats' people often ask me if their children are safe to go out in the woods. I can understand why some parents are unsettled by the possibility of a large, predatory cat roaming their backyard. Today was one of those days. In the last two days I've had 3 reports of exotic cats involving small children. One of these came from the wooded areas of Sittingbourne, and involved a group of small children playing in woods near their houses. All of them came running home screaming, telling a parent they'd seen a large cat. One of the children said it was a "jaguar". Now, there are no jaguars roaming the UK, but after speaking with the worried parent it became clear the children had seen a lynx. Interestingly enough they all described, separately, the white underside of the animal as it gazed at them as it sat on a log. They all described a yellowy-orange coat, which had unusual mottled markings. (Left - Mick Cole claimed these wounds were inflicted by a lynx he cornered)

The lynx was said to have been eradicated from Britain's a woodlands a few thousand years ago. Some researchers believe it was an elusive enough animal to have hung on until modern times, but this has never been verified. We do know, however, that in the early 19th century a lynx was shot dead toward the West Country, and many 'big cat' researchers often quote naturlist William Cobbet who in his Rural Rides book spoke of seeing a large cat in a tree at Waverley in Surrey a few centuries ago - although this animal may have been the wildcat, now confined to Scotland. The lynx is a beautiful leggy animal, known for its short almost tuft of a tail, its tufted ears, and striking mottled coat. I had the fortune to share a cage with a lynx a few years ago whilst working with the BBC, and these animals are incredibly elusive.

It's highly unlikely the lynx seen in Sittingbourne was eyeing up the children for dinner. The animal was seen not far from a pheasant pen, and such birds would be ideal prey for a cat. I can certainly understand the concern of parents though when their children run home screaming they've seen a big cat in their woods. Parents want people like me to do something about it, but I cannot take the law into my own hands and build a cage and attempt to trap an animal. It's a catch 22 situation. I always advise that people do not approach, corner, injure such animals, and yet at the back of my mind there is always that worry that one day, just one day a large cat will strike at a child. Take for instance the case a few years ago now of Gravesend man Mick Cole who allegedly walked into his back garden and saw what he first took to the be a fox with a rabbit in its mouth. Mick, an optician, approached the animal which allegedly took a swipe at his hand leaving several nasty gashes. Some would say the witness should have gone to Specsavers, but joking aside, if this really did happen then we have a problem. The animal was simply defending itself, no wild animal should be cornered. Fair play to Mr Cole, he said it was his own fault, but if this had bene a child can you imagine the uproar it would have caused, especially when you consider the controversy recent alleged fox attacks have caused.

In 2005 a man living in Sydenham, south-east London, claimed that he was leapt upon one night, by a black leopard, which was in his back garden cornering his domestic cat. There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest this story was nothing more than a hoax but it didn't stop the press and the police swarming the scene looking fot he 'beast of Sydenham'. There was also a report over Easter concerning a young girl who whilst walking home to her house in rural Maidstone saw a very large black cat pacing back and forth near a dead tree. The girl was petrified and told her parents who phoned me. Then, several more people reported seeing a massive black cat near Blue Bell Hill. The animal had been quite happy to visit a few back gardens.

I'd hate to think what the response would be if a child claimed they'd been scratched by a large cat. Mind you, a few years ago a Josh Hopkins, who lives in Gloucestershire claimed he was scratched by a black leopard which clawed him across his face. Interestingly, apart from the newspapers, no-one else seemed to respond to this alleged encounter. Are the authorities happy for this to continue, or are they waiting for the time when a large cat actually attacks and eats a child ? In the United States with cougar, and in Africa and Asia, with leopard, attacks are rare but they do occur. Strangely, in the UK most attacks on humans, especially children, are carried out by dogs, and whilst these cause uproar, there appears to be no real against people owning such dangerous animals. Leopard and puma are, of course, a different matter, they shouldn't be here. At the moment such animals seem very comfortable with the UK wilds, and there is easily enough prey to support a viable, albeit small population. A few years ago I liaised with professional animal trapper and tracker, zoologist Quentin Rose (who sadly passed away) and he always looked beyond the silly mystery and scepticism regarding these 'big cats' and was concerned about the rise in numbers and potential attacks on humans. He believed that such animals required an official investigation but also stated quite categorically that this would involve trapping such animals and either shipping them to zoo parks or destroying them. I don't condone either of these methods and this seems unlikely to happen due to lack of time and resources from the groups concerned. Even so, an attack on a person, especially a child may change all this.

For now, there are only two opinins on 'big cats' in the UK - they do exist or they don't, and it doesn't go anywhere beyond this. Official groups, such as 'Natural England', have stated in the past that there's no evidence to suggest such animals exist, this is a rather worrying statement considering the amount of evidence that does exist. Sceptics state that these stories are made up yet haven't a clue about what 'big cat' evidence looks like, and then there are the believers, most who are quite genuine people who've simply gone out of their way to report something unusual. Of course, the situation brings with it the weirdo's and conspiracy theorists and paranormal views, and most mysteries do have that effect, but when you cast aside the nutcases, hoaxes, and misinterpretations, there's still a significant body of evidence to suggest there are black leoard, puma, lynx, and some smaller species of cats roaming the UK. As I always state, no evidence is good enough, and even if a child - perish the thought - is attacked, I'm sure someone will scoff, or dismiss the case or claim it was simply an escapee. One part of me hopes the dreaded attack will never occur and that these cats are left alone - in that case the sceptics can continue to bitch, but there's another part of me that wants to see official investigations, which will cost enormous amounts of money, and possibly involve trapping some of these cats for the sake of science.

I recently read another of those predictable blog posts from someone claiming that 'big cat' sightings were hyperbole (exaggeration). That's fine by me, it's your opinion, but try telling that to four screaming kids and a terrified and deeply concerned parent. I'm sure there are many people out there willing to laugh at 'big cat' sightings and my research, but when I present evidence such as deer found high up in trees, rams and their fleece rasped off, large chains of scat consisting of deer fur, scratch marks 10 feet up a tree, enormous paw prints unlike a dog, then I expect the sceptic to tell me the alternative as to what did this and instead of sitting behind a PC saying what can and cannot be, try getting out there and looking at the evidence and interviewing the witnesses you claim are insane or making all this up. At the moment, my money is on the very likely possibility there are large cats around. I'll prove to you there is, but can you prove to me there isn't ?

 (Left - lynx shot in Northern Ireland in the 1990s)

After two blissful weeks back on home soil with family, friends and a roast duck, I once again find myself in Frogland (no offence intended there...), ready to face the final straight of my year abroad as an English language assistant.

I have to admit, being in England was a welcome relief. Before this year began, I definitely took for granted just how amazing the feeling is of being entirely understood by those around you.

From an intense family debate over a board game, to the effortless ordering of takeaway, to just walking down the street and comprehending snippets of conversation, there really is nothing more satisfying than successful communication.

However, I’m not sure this is something the people of Maidstone necessarily realised last week, as my relentless grins and chummy stares drew more than one fearful look as I strolled gaily down Fremlin Walk swinging my giant Primark (Primarni) bag and trying not to engage everyone I passed in ecstatic English babble. I may aswell have been belting ‘Rule Britannia!’

Anyway, with the help of large mouthfuls of a Boots meal deal duck wrap, I somehow resisted the very real temptation of hollering ‘HELLO EVERYONE I AM ENGLISH’ at passers-by, and my shopping experiences went largely without a hitch.

My bank balance, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Due to the incredibly poor variety of stores in Le Havre, I had not managed a full clothes splurge for weeks, and as a result went slightly retail-crazy, or as the wise Mumma Dove would say, O.T.T.

Of course, moving between France and England will always illuminate cultural differences, yet fashion was not one I really considered before my arrival. I’ve already mentioned the unofficial dress-codes of my two schools, what we English could sum up as Chav vs Rah (by ‘rah’, I of course mean Jack Wills and gilets; or the ‘I’ve-just-got-off-a-horse’ look, I’m sure you know what I mean...), but as for the rest of Le Havre, now that is a whole different can of worms just waiting to be flung open.

I think ‘trendy’ outlet ‘The New Yorker’ summed it up with their seasonal t-shirt which loudly stated: ‘I kiss kiss kiss my boyfriend on valentine’’....I know. Just, why.

Apart from the misplaced apostrophe, my main observation here is the incessant love of such ridiculous (and often nonsensical) slogans, all the better if they’re written in English, as of course in a Frenchy’s eyes that makes them ten times more chic.

Equally guilty is women’s clothes shop C&A (not to be confused, as I often do, with C&H Fabric, Maidstone), whose window currently displays two mannequins with red and white striped jumpers, each sporting the glittery gold logos ‘Funny’ and ‘Cool’.

More than once, I’ve contemplated buying the latter of these, more than anything purely to prove that I am also the former, however I’m not sure the French would necessarily pick up on this subtle dose of irony. In fact, they are probably more likely to compliment me on my à la mode garment choice.

I loved the recent moment when one of my students hesitantly asked me if I could explain what the words on her top meant. Tempting as it was to say ‘I’m trying too hard to be cool’, I helped the poor mite out, and in fact the direct translation was something like ‘Teenage Princess’ or words to that effect.

It could have been a lot worse, but I can’t help but wonder exactly what brings a French person to buy a t-shirt emblazoned with a huge sequined motto that they don’t understand. Luckily for them, the ever popular Maidstone slogan ‘if you think I’m a bitch you should meet my mother’ has yet to cross the Channel.

However, if you do fancy cottoning onto this overseas ‘trend’, my advice is to take a peek into Maidstone’s Internaçionale or even First Avenue (if you dare) stores. A similar range of t-shirts will most definitely be available, and all you need to do is pick up your nearest ‘j’adore Paris’ tee and combine it with a trackie and beret for the latest Parisian Chic. Voila.

When I conduct lectures and write books about my research into 'big cats', people often come up to me and ask me why I became a 'monster hunter'. Mind you, some people also ask me, "How the hell is being a 'monster hunter' a full-time job ?", haha! As I've mentioned previously, I began collecting data on 'big cat' sightings across the south-east when I was about 9, and through one or two full-time jobs I continued to write and to investigate as well as research sightings of a more folkloric nature. 'Big cats' in the woods of Kent, etc, are very much real animals, but I was always interested in monsters as a kid - as most kids should be - unless today of course they get sucked into the atrocities of programmes such as The X-Factor! Anyway, a few years ago I walked out of my appalling day job and realised there must be more to life than the 9-5 and the stresses and strains, and it was whilst working one day that I heard myself on the radio that I thought to myself, "I can't carry on doing this...." So, as Christmas came I collected my thoughts, and went back to my job...for a couple of hours....then walked out, and never looked back. I'm of the opinion that if you can find a niche in life, or at least have a shade of originality then you might get somewhere doing the things you love. Mind you, the biggest inspiration of all, came via my dad and grandad who, as a kid, often told me ghost stories. Everybody - whether you believe in them or not - loves the idea of a mystery - unless one is blinkered by what newspapers and tv programmes tell you. Even so, I come from a big family where there is lots of tradition and old fashioned values. As a kid three things changed the course of my life. One was a movie called The Legend of Boggy Creek, a '70s US flick made in a docu-drama style way which, so many years ago, was way ahead of its time and paved the way for modern films such as The Blair Witch Project. The Legend Of Boggy Creek was a creepy, low-budget movie about a Bigfoot-type monster roaming the river bottoms of Arkansas. Around the same time I was given a book by a relative of mine, and the book was called A Dictionary of Monsters & Mysterious Beasts, and was written by a Carey Miller. The book was an a-z of bizarre creatures, mostly mythical, but some allegedly true, such as the yeti and the Loch Ness monster, and I devoured it greedily as my mind worked overtime. However, the main turning point for me came when one dark night my dad took me to a place between Rochester and Maidstone called Blue Bell Hill. Now, I'm sure most of you readers have heard about the Blue Bell Hill ghost story, in fact if you type it in on Google or look at a majority of British or Kent-based ghost books you'll get so much information. Sadly, much of this information is incorrect, but the story - when I was a kid - freaked me out but also intrigued me. The village of Blue Bell Hill and its surrounding woods is ancient. The village is divided, by a dual carriageway, into two parts, the Lower Bell (where there is a pub) and the Upper Bell, near the crematorium.

According to my dad, and so many people there is a ghost story attached to this old hill which concerns a phantom hitchhiker. The legend is that many years ago a girl - who was due to be married - was killed on the hill in a terrible car accident - which also claimed the lives of two other women, her friends - whilst one girl survived. This is in fact a true event which took place in the November of 1965. It would seem that since this accident people have encountered a girl on the hill, and they say that she wears the bridal dress (or according to some people the ghost is one of the bridesmaids) she never got to wear on her wedding day. The main ghost story which people have passed down over the years is that a girl in a whitish dress thumbs a lift on the hill but vanishes from the backseat. According to the legend when people go to the house where she asked to be dropped off, they find out that the elderly couple who own the house "get this sort of thing all the time" but then go on to mention that the girl is their daughter....who died many years ago. A great spine-tingling ghost story and a tale that stuck with me for many years, until I found out that most of the details are completely incorrect. It seems that in most cases, what actually happens on the hill is that people knock a girl down in their vehicle but when they look under their car there is no sign of a girl (two separate incidents which took place in 1992 involved an Ian Sharpe and Chris Dawkins who knocked down a girl on different parts of the hill). The woman they describe does not wear a bridal gown of any kind. Now, many people love this story but it's not until you delve into some mysteries that you find that the facts are in fact far stranger than the fiction many reporters, authors and ghost story tellers would have you believe. It's highly unlikely that the girl on the hill is the spirit of the woman (or women) that were killed in 1965, especially as there are accounts of a girl from the hill dating back several decades before the crash. I believe the Blue Bell Hill ghost story - which changed my life - is a product of urban legend in most cases and that over the years the local newspapers have unintentionally embeeded the idea of athe girl in a bridal dress into the psyche of the Kentish community. It became a Chinese whisper.

When I heard this story as a child I became obsessed with Blue Bell Hill and now I know the place like the back of my hand and spend many days and nights there investigating reports of a creature that, rather hilariously became known as the 'beast of Blue Bell Hill'. during the late '90s. Blue Bell Hill is a rather strange area, steeped in history it harbours the fascinating and ancient Kits Coty House and Little Kits Coty House - mysterious sets of stones. There are many legends pertaining to these stones. The village also harbours several other ghost stories, one concerning a very young girl who was knocked down in 1974, another from 1993 in which an entire family whilst travelling up the Old Chatham Road encountered an old hag-type horror - a figure that has been seen a handful of times on the hill. There are also tales of phantom hounds, a giant hair-covered creature (not just the local flasher on the loose!), a flying jellyfish and crop circles. Sure, most of these tales are far-fetched but they add to the mystery of the hill. The old, overgrown quarries - the dark, spooky lanes, all add to the atmosphere. Add to this a legend or two of a large elusive 'big cat' - and yes, there are one or two in the area, then we have an ideal area for what ghost-hunters would term paranormal activity.

Blue Bell Hill is a lovely area, but the ghost story - like so many ghost stories, has become a classic yet stale legend. A good friend of mine named Sean Tudor has researched the ghost sightings on the hill for many years and uncovered some amazing facts and folklore which stretch way beyond the handful of hitchhiker tales that many of you have been fed over the years. His website www.roadghosts.com looks at some of these tales, but at the moment he is writing an enormous, in-depth book about the spooky hill. It's also worth noting that in my recent book Haunted Maidstone I devote a segment to the Blue Bell Hill area and its levels of high strangeness, but if anyone is brave enough, then please do book a place on my Blue Bell Hill ghost walk, www.bluebellhillghostwalk.blogspot.com  I decided to run these walks on the 2nd sunday of each month but am getting a lot of groups wanting private night tours which are far spookier. The walk lasts two hours, and we go into the woods, around the old stones, and I speak about the ghost sightings as well as look into the reports of 'big cats', and other strange phenomena. If you gave any queries then you can email/call the details on the ghost walk website.

So many places across the world, and especially in the UK have a peculiar aura about them, and Blue Bell Hill is one of those places. If my dad hadn't told me the ghost story when I was a kid, then I probably wouldn't have ended up the person I am today (some would say slightly unhinged ha!), but it's important that kids are given mystery and imagination in their lives, rather than being the product of ignorance. Kids may think wildlife or history, let alone ghost stories, are dull because their idea of entertainment is being put in front of a PC or tv screeen for hours and forced into a trance-like state by a computer game. Nature offers us some real magic, on our doorstep are so many marvels, and who knows, when I'm long gone, I hope deep down that a child may continue to carry the torch and write about and investigate the stories I did when I was their age. And who knows, maybe a trip to Blue Bell Hill could change your life, or at least open your eyes to the mysteries and marvels of nature that lurk just around the corner...

If you've seen a ghost on Blue Bell Hill, or heard of any unusual stories about the area, get in touch at: neil.arnold@live.com

‘Sorry I can’t come out tonight, I’ve got school at 8am tomorrow’ sounds like a rather strange response for a 20-year-old university student.

Yet this is my usual answer these days when turning down social gatherings, a reply which does in some ways feel like a regressive step in my journey towards ‘maturity’ (cough cough).

Whose bright idea was 8am classes in France anyway? The teachers themselves show significant reluctance in being there as they huff, tut and down large cups of black coffee in the dimly lit staff room, and more often than not I find myself with at least three students who decide that these early lessons are a good lie-in opportunity.

As a result, the back row is unofficially labelled as a form of ‘sleep zone’, where grunting, tracksuit-clad lads and girls with smudged mascara slump against the wall with hoods pulled over their faces or flop onto the desk with a textbook propped in front of them in an attempt to avoid detection.

I’ve got to admit; I usually leave them to it. After my first few weeks of desperate cajoling were met simply with blank faces and exaggerated yawns, I soon realised it was much easier to let them be than enforce their concentration.

Futile arguments with an attitude-fuelled 14-year-old at 8am on a Wednesday morning? I’d rather not, thanks.

It is moments like this that really highlight the differences between French and English schooling. When I first arrived here, my initial perception of the French education system was that rules would be 10 times stricter and more formal than my own experiences.

I think the previous example provides adequate proof of just how wrong I was. For a start, the teachers wear jeans. This may not seem a big thing in itself, but couple that with the lack of school uniform and seeming non-existence of any dress-code rules (apart from ‘no religious slogan t-shirts’ - the French schools all being completely secular), and a whole different atmosphere is immediately created.

Now, I work at two schools. One of them is in what I can only describe as a ‘Desperate Housewives’ area, whilst the other is in a district made up of blocks of flats and 2am mopeds.

The fashions of each are fascinating to me; shirts and high heels versus full-on Adidas with matching slanted caps and trainers for both the boys and the girls.

Yet in both schools, discipline is often questionable. Many teachers simply cannot control their classes, meaning every lesson becomes a game of ‘who can shout the loudest’. If the staff member in question is a mouse, they have absolutely no chance.

Luckily, I’ve derived a clever strategy for commanding silence, whereby I simply speak as quickly in English as I can, forcing even the most cocky ones to realise that actually, they are not quite as ‘trop forte’ (too good) at English as they think....works like a charm.

Even in what I’ve taken to referring to as the ‘posh school’, there are problems. The majority of students there definitely have an air of ‘Mummy and Daddy will do whatever I ask’ about them, so their issue is not so much talkativeness as a blatant refusal to listen if they happen to decide that they don’t want to.

However, this attitude (and indeed that of the other school) has yielded some incredibly amusing moments; moments which, had I been their usual class teacher, I probably would not have found half as funny.

For instance, one 14-year-old has taken rather a shine to me (no doubt just because I’m the youngest staff member and a female), and after countless attempts at discovering my phone number/address/if I had Skype, moved onto a different wooing tactic by proclaiming in the middle of his class; teacher present, that my eyes ‘sparkled like the sun’ and later, when asked about his hobbies, that he liked to ‘make the love’ (though he actually used a much ruder French equivalent).

If this had happened back in good ol’ Maidstone, I’m sure there would have been serious repercussions not to mention a significant amount of paperwork and letters to parents, but no, not in France. Instead, the teacher simply laughed, and went back to her marking. Crazy.

I have many, many more anecdotes and language faux-pas like this which I will proceed to share with you over the coming weeks, but for now, I think I’ll leave you with this. À la prochain!

Trading results are not usually a case for emotion, but I am always saddened by bad news from HMV and Waterstone’s.

So many happy hours have been spent browsing – and occasionally spending money - in these shops, especially in towns without a decent bookshop.

Many music retailers have already shut up shop in recent years, clobbered by the internet and the trend to downloading. I have not the slightest interest in downloading. I know it’s cheaper but there is absolutely no substitute for the feeling you get from handling and examining a real object.

That applies as much to CDs as the previously cherished vinyl LPs. I was a bit surprised by HMV’s 13.6 per cent sales decline after standing in long queues before Christmas and the New Year. But I guess the bad weather stopped people from going out and buying presents and perhaps they ordered online instead.

You can also order online from HMV but I have noticed prices are often higher than Amazon. HMV also faces supermarket competition, but Tesco and their offer a pathetic range, and then only the latest best-sellers. There is nothing like the fantastic range and back catalogue in most HMV and Waterstone’s stores.

Sixty branches are to close across the country, and that probably dooms one of the two branches of Waterstone’s in Maidstone and Canterbury. It makes commercial sense but is not good news for many of the staff. Richard Curr, head of dealing at Prime Markets, has urged shareholders to sell, saying the Christmas statement shows the group is “well and truly on the rack, engaged in a desperate scramble to cut costs and close stores to avoid breaching banking covenants.”

That gloomy statement casts a dark shadow over the long-term future of HMV – but I am hoping for the best. Where would those happy browsing hours of serendipity be spent instead? The closures ought to be good news for local music retailers, but sadly there aren’t many left.

Almost all classical outlets have gone. The few surviving independents are mainly in small towns without an HMV or Waterstone’s. I hope HMV’s troubles will do them some good, but I fear that changing trends could spell the slow lingering death of my favourite type of shop.