It was May Day, the traditional day for collecting for charity and student pranks.

Louise Rhodes, sitting in a punt, was dressed in a sari and a white shawl to protect herself from the early morning cold.

But she also had to protect herself from mud-throwing yobs.

Ken rescued Louise from the punt and offered to take the sari to be dry-cleaned.

When he returned the clothes, he invited the young literature student out to dinner.

Louise is now well-known for her May Day appearances here in Knutsford with her N ewfoundland dog, Britt.

The dogs are rooted in mythology, appearing in paintings with the Elizabethan poet, courtier and soldier Philip Sidney.

But the earliest stories are of the Viking explorer Lief Erikkson, bringing them back from his legendary discovery of America.

"He reported seeing big, black bear dogs which sounds like a Newfoundland," she said. "It's a bit tentative but rather nice."

Louise was once chairman of the Northern Newfoundland Club, but is now just a member.

"I will walk in May Day for as long as they want me to," she said. "And the dogs enjoy it."

The love of big dogs goes way back in her family's history.

Her great uncle showed St Bernards in 1860 - at one of the first dog shows in Birmingham.

"We have a tradition of liking big dogs," she said. "But I chose Newfoundlands particularly because they had a reputation for gentleness."

The dogs often use their strength and intelligence to save lives at sea.

But Louise used their size as a deterrent when she moved to a tough part of Manchester after she left Oxford.

"People were not going to stop to ask if it bites or not," she said.

"So I got our first Newfoundland and I was completely hooked."

When her Oxford years ended in 1969, Louise moved to Manchester to study an MA in medieval literature.

"I had grown up in the country," she said. "And I didn't want to live in Manchester."

But the trip north proved worthwhile.

A chance vacancy led Louise to a post at a primary school in Harpurhey, North Manchester.

The district was going through the trauma of slum clearance and Louise, from a privileged upbringing in the South East, wasn't sure what she was letting herself into.

"I went and stood in for a deputy head and I was quaking in my boots," she said.

"I thought they would make fun of me because of my accent, but they were wonderful. I'm still in touch with some of them now."

Louise took the children on canal boats, to museums, to London and to the seaside - which some had never seen.

"We took them to the Tower Of London where there was a suit of armour for an elephant," said Louise.

"One girl couldn't understand why it was so big, because she had only seen elephants in pictures."

So the next school trip was to Belle Vue Zoo.

When the school merged with a more modern and larger one, Louise took the opportunity to move on.

From teaching young children, she began teaching adults.

While a lecturer in English at St John's College in Manchester, she set up one of the country's first A-level English language courses.

"I found the mature students particularly rewarding to teach," she said.

"But you also got people who were thrown out of public school for smoking pot and people whose bosses thought it would be a good idea."

Louise was brought up in the Berkshire village of Cookham - the village made famous by artist Stanley Spencer.

"My parents knew him well and I remember him," she said.

The artist used the village as the backdrop for many of his pictures of Christ.

"A lot of people we knew had Stanley Spencer sketches," she said.

"When he couldn't pay a bill he would sign a cap. He was a character and he loved Cookham."

Spencer, often seen in the village with his painting materials in an old pram, enjoyed a good argument with her father - as did her dad.

"He was always very accessible," she said. "But he didn't like people interrupting him while he was painting."

Eight years ago Louise retired from teaching to look after her mother.

But she's retained her love of the medieval literature she studied at Oxford.

"I like medieval romances and lyrics," she said. "I researched them because in those days they were so undervalued.

"But they were there and I wanted to tell people they were there."

In the Bodelian library while at Oxford she discovered a poem on fly leaf paper.

"No-one had ever troubled to look at it in ultra-violet light," she said.

Her work freed from the page, words which had been unread for centuries.

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