Mrs Bagnall Explains Magnesium   In fourth year Chemistry, I had eyes only for Mandy. I admitted not impediments like Bunsen Burners, the Periodic Table, our teacher with her pink nylon house-coat and unfamiliar Northern accent. When Mrs Bagnall said, “soft metal”, I felt myself fall into Mandy’s burnished copper curls, my fat fourteen year old heart beating like a dead-blow hammer under an unfamiliar bra.  When she made us write “alkali” in our exercise books, my hand shook at the lingual looseness of the ls, the implied kiss of the k. When Mrs Bagnall called for silence, put on…