WE sat in the school hall, lines of parents shifting in moulded plastic seats, fumbling with A4 consent forms and check lists.

Yes, our children were preparing to go on their first high school residential.

Overhearing other parents chatting before the head of year gave his information presentation, I concluded we fell into two distinct camps.

In one was the overprotective type who worries his offspring won’t survive the two nights away from the safety of home. In the other, the one rubbing her hands at the prospect of 48 hours of freedom from being a butler, taxi driver and drill sergeant.

I admire teachers taking more than 100 year seven kids to Conway. It’s my idea of hell.

Visions of Willy Russell’s Our Day Out and animals kidnapped from the Mountain Zoo at Colwyn Bay popped into my mind.

When the head of year gave his presentation, however, I realised there was nothing to worry about.

The only way to run a trip of this scale was to have everything, and I mean everything, worked out in advance.

And that meant having the parents licked into shape too.

Our sons and daughters needed the right apparel, most importantly a waterproof, as there’s a chance of rain in North Wales. Hard to believe, I know.

They must have a packed lunch to eat on the way, though my money’s on it being consumed five minutes after leaving school.

Mobile phones were banned. Hear hear! Can you imagine trying to get the attention of 100 12-year-olds with Samsung Galaxies glued to their hands? Good luck with that.

Any homesick child would be allowed a call home. The overprotective parents nodded, reassured.

From my own experience of school trips, once the coach disappears over the horizon, parents are a long, distant and embarrassing memory to the children.

Those anxious mums and dads, trying to pass off a tear as a bit of grit in the eye and a tissue to the nose as a cold, won’t be given a second thought until the coach pulls up outside school 48 hours later and rumbling tummies raise the question of who is providing tea.

The children were not to bring oversized suitcases.

It will be a miracle if the coach gets away from the school at all with all that luggage to be packed in the hold.

Having said that, temptation to take a large case was soon dealt with by the head of year who pointed out it would be the children hulking them up the long drive to the residential centre.

Well, without butler-parent on hand, reality bites, doesn’t it?