Does it feel like ten years or does it feel like yesterday? It depends on the day - sometimes it just feels like I can't believe ten years has gone by and other times it feels so close. Being the ten year anniversary and talking about it a lot more has brought back a lot of memories. I don't think some of those feelings will ever go away, especially when I think of the children because I can still remember their faces now - especially the ones that were injured. Now you're a mum, has that changed your perspective on how big a deal it was? Oh gosh yes! I think that's the biggest thing of all really that's changed. My little boy is now two-and-a-half and he'll be going on to playschool and nursery soon. It's only when you look at them at that age and realise how innocent they are and how frightening it must have been for the parents that day to have come in and not know whether their children had survived such a horrific attack. I'm still in touch with some of the children although I don't see them so much now. They came to my wedding a couple of years ago and I sometimes speak to them on the telephone. I was speaking to one of their mums the other day who was saying - they don't even know the day, they don't know it was ten years ago - you know, they're 14 now. For some of them it was their first day at school... I look back now and think gosh - especially Ahmed - he'd come to visit that day. I think how frightened they must've been and that's their first taste of nursery school. Ten years have gone by, there's all different children at the school now. The security systems are very different now - that's all come out of what happened that day. On that day, at what point did you realise something was going dreadfully wrong? I was putting away all the toys we had out and I could see this man run along the other side of the fence which was a three-foot fence and then it joined the main school fence. He was carrying a knife and I suppose at first I didn't think the knife was real. It wasn't until he hit one of the parents across the head I realised that this was actually real and it's happening. I think your whole body just goes into sheer panic but really it was so short - what - five minutes maximum. I'd got this long skirt on and they were holding, clinging on to me. I look back now and I think how only three got injured I will never know. I was pouring with blood and there were children and parents fighting to get into the ambulance because they didn't know where this man had gone. When did the shock hit you? I think it was about December time when the court case was. I had to give evidence and they gave me the machete to hold in court and I had to talk through what happened that day. When he [Horrett Campbell] got his sentence I thought - he was trying to kill me and those children - and that was quite frightening. Life started to go back to normal the following July when I left the school. That was a very hard decision to make - I'd gone from being in this school and this job which I really loved to suddenly not knowing where I was going to go or what I was going to do. At that time I was receiving all these awards and going to London and people asking me to do different things and all of a sudden I thought - am I a celebrity? What's happened to my life? it had turned upside down. It must have been difficult to be known as "Lisa Potts, machete attack heroine"? Absolutely - you know, then I wanted to work in education, I wanted to work with children but it was difficult to move on. I'd joke sometimes when people asked me what I did five years on, I'd say "I'm a professional machete attack heroine" because I didn't really know what else I was doing - my world had been taken away. I've had to embrace it in some ways because otherwise I'd end up staying in all the time. When I was finally awarded the compensation I think it was at that point I said to myself - right, I can now move on. I think you have to do that because you could become so bitter about something and hold on to it for the rest of your life. You've got to let it go. To think that ten years has gone by... sometimes I think it's only a couple of years, surely? Now I'm 31 and not 21 that's frightening! | 
