I've met up with one old friend on that site (which I heard about here), but all the rest seem to be lying low - and as these were all girl places, there's no other way of finding them.

But, on the negative side, after sticking up for the site when the head teachers started on about it in a ridiculously teacherish way, I found a rather nasty description of myself on our school part of it. Oddly, it was placed by someone who, from her own records on the site, arrived during my first year there, was in a different building, never taught by me before she left at the end of that year. She gave me a nickname, which no ex-pupil I know knows of, and which I had to have removed because it could be interpreted as racist. She hasn't been back, but it really hurt, the moment I saw it. It was rather sad trolling, of course, but harmless compared with the false accusations of abuse which some teachers have suffered.

To do the site justice, it has checked all the entries from ex-pupils, and returned many, including some references to dubious practices from one school I attended as a pupil which I know to be true. So it isn't entirely knuckling under to the "What are you doing boy? Well, stop it at once" brigade, while observing proprieties.

Its message board is dire, though- groups of people who know each other talking about nothing much.

Penny