SHE taught Joe Calzaghe and the Manic Street Preachers and was always the last one to leave at the end of the day.

But after 34 years, chemistry teacher Angela Puddifer will hang up her lab coat at Oakdale Comprehensive for the last time this term.

Mrs Puddifer, who joined the 650-pupil school in 1979 under the headship of renowned head teacher Clarrie Lapham, said some of the elements on the periodic table hadn't been discovered when she started teaching.

"At that time the school was built on 33 different levels and at my interview they said the job would go to the last one standing," said Mrs Puddifer, 59, who lives in Nelson with her husband Andrew.

Briefly a photography teacher at the start of her career, Mrs Puddifer has taken thousands of photographs in school over the years and often points out to pupils their parents - or even grandparents.

"That was when I knew it was time to go," she laughed, adding that she hopes to create a huge collage of photographs for pupils and former pupils to see when the proposed new Oakdale secondary school is built.

"When I came here it was a mining area and some of our boys used to go down the mine after school. Parents were desperate for their boys not to go and in the 1980s it became a very poor area but the community stuck together and it has come out the other side.

"Now I get letters from pupils who have gone to York, Cambridge, Cardiff or Swansea university and it's lovely to hear from former pupils."

Mrs Puddifer progressed from chemistry teacher to head of her subject, head of year and careers coordinator.

"I remember when we got our first computer in school, we thought we were so good," she said. "I taught Joe Calzaghe and the Manic Street Preachers, and the opera singer Jill Padfield, who were nice children."

Although Mrs Puddifer says she does not know what she will do, now she no longer has to come to the school every day, her colleagues have organised a special leaving gift.

"They have bought me my first flying lesson," she said. "It was always an ambition of mine to be an astronaut, it was the thing when I was a child.

"Pupils have been bringing in little gifts and cards, and we are planning on inviting all former colleagues to a celebration in October for my birthday."