When I was a child I used to love going on school outings so when I got the chance to accompany my daughter's class on a field trip a few weeks ago I jumped at it. At the beginning of the year we moved to a new city and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see how our daughter had settled in at her new school. All right, to be completely honest, I wanted to have a good nose around – meet some of her new friends and have a chance to chat with her new teacher. My daughter had begged me to come, not that she needed too, and I was really looking forward to it. After all, how bad could it be spending a few hours with a group of 30 nine year-olds?

I knew that they were going to be some problems when I arrived at the school. To begin with, there were no other parents there. My daughter's new school is like any other school and has cadre of four or five very active parents. You know the ones – they spend every evening from the middle of November on baking mince pies for the Christmas Fair. I expected at least two of them to be there. One of my hopes for the trip was to break into this clique (I'm shallow – I want to be popular). Unfortunately, this would mean that I would actually have to do something.

I still wasn't too concerned though. The purpose of the trip was to see three bridges at a nearby park that they had been studying as part of their coursework. The trip was supposed to take around two hours. My daughter's class is about average size for a popular state school, and the kids all appeared very well behaved and polite when I met them before at various school functions. How bad could they be?

Very – apparently. The moment the kids left the school grounds was like watching an abridged performance of the 'Lord of the Flies'. They went from being quiet and well behaved to loud and obnoxious. Getting louder and more obnoxious the further away they got from school.

The park was about a 20 minute walk. That was 20 minutes adult walking. It was 40 minutes in child walking. I was at the back of the group with my daughter and one of the teaching assistants. My daughter was ignoring me. She was talking to one of her new friends – I immediately didn't like him.

My daughter's new friend was the class clown – the kid with an answer for everything. The last sort of person I wanted being friends with my easily-influenced daughter. To make matters worse, he seemed to like me and kept asking me questions about The Beatles. I have no idea why he kept asking me about The Beatles - maybe he thought I was old enough to have actually been around when the Beatles were still together. This only made me feel guilty for disliking him – he was only a nine year-old boy.

We saw each of the three bridges – stopping each time for the teacher to ask questions. My daughter is deeply interested in the mystery of what I do all day when I'm at home. I am the same – what does she do when she's at school? Apparently she spends her day day-dreaming while the teacher is talking.

If the walk to the park had been long and hard – the walk back was longer and harder. The kids stretched out in a long line with groups of boys stopping every so often to argue over who was better: Arsenal or Chelsea or Man Utd or Chelsea or Arsenal or Liverpool or Man Utd or Liverpool or Chelsea. Of course I told them to stop being silly – it's obviously Chelsea.

Finally we arrived back at the school. The boys stopped their arguments, the girls quieted down, and the moment they entered the school building they went back to being polite and nice again. It had only been two hours, but it felt like it had taken twice as long. I walked home feeling exhausted. I had a few hours before I had to pick up my daughter at the end of her school day, and I was planning on spending the rest of the day in bed.

It was a terrible, horrible experience. One which taught me several things: be prepared to dislike your child's friends; bring an extra lunch (I had to give mine to a rather teary boy who had left his at school – plus it's good to have some extra food to barter with); and remember – you're the adult (probably best not get into an argument over football with a group of children – even if you are right).

I'm doing it again next week.

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