The fog clears and here we are.

Asda on a busy Thursday afternoon and my car has its hazards on in the taxi rank just outside the superstore’s entrance. We are unloading the setting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest into the no man’s land between the ladies’ fashion sale rail, the toilets and on-the-go meal-deal sandwiches and snacks. The band of four children who have joined me have learned their lines, practised their deliberate moves and stuck on their costumes. We have a replacement Miranda because Kirsty forgot she was going to Malaga, a very different island to the one we are depicting today. In Asda. Rachel, however, has taken her place and is doing really well.

Sam is Caliban and lugs in a couple of crates on which Dan, playing Prospero, will stand. We will be like a bunch of manic Shakespeare-spouting street preachers, and at this early point in the proceedings we are certainly turning heads.

I have some dramatic Ennio Morricone music to set the tone for Dan to do his speech. I’ve been told I can have it as loud as I want so I hope the shoppers enjoy the main title theme to The Untouchables. Dan’s rousing Prospero performance is a beauty and he’s ready to shake it up as Caliban, Miranda and Ariel look on in tableau. The long tubular grey boombox is the complete business and we are set. Shakespeare has come to the masses.

I look round, satisfied the soundtrack is sorted.

Dan’s missing.

I assume he’s gone to the gents, and I do that patient teacher-waiting thing.

“What’s going on here, kidder?” asks an old boy in a flat cap, tab end in the corner of his mouth, dangling expertly.

“Bit of Shakespeare, sir.” I reply.

“Forsooth verily!” he proclaims, out of the blue, and chuckles wildly as he wanders along.

There’s a bit of a furore at the revolving entrance to the store and I turn. I’ll try and sum up what I’m seeing here:

Dan, dressed as Prospero, is talking to a seemingly exasperated gentleman, whilst gesticulating with his staff, which Les, the caretaker back at school, had only just put the finishing touches to that morning.

(Morricone blares out his staccato riff and Kevin Costner, wearing a long coat, shadowed by Sean Connery, drifts through my mind)

I walk towards Dan and the man, and, as my ears tune in, I realise that Dan is actually talking to the man in character as Prospero. His voice is pure Eccleston (not Bernie), with a dash of Burton - clipped and British with a genuine Northern warmth. Perfect. My proud reverie is curtailed, however, as I click on immediately to what is going on. Sensing my approach, the man turns to me, car keys in hand, and I am reminded of my error.

Much ado about nothing?

“Is this muppet with you?” the man demands.

I pull my car keys out.

“Who are you anyway?” the taxi driver asks, genuinely, glancing at Dan who is going full Prospero. I go to answer but Dan and his staff intervene:

“We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

This little Shakespeare extract that spills from Dan’s mouth is punctuated by the pointing of his staff at the driver’s head. For a moment, we are frozen in time - Dan, the man and me.

Dan is frozen, eyebrows arched, staff aloft.

The taxi driver eventually turns to me, almost pleadingly, and says:

“Move yer car mate. I haven’t got time for this”.

“Will do.”

When I return, the cast are in full flow. Some of the public watch a while. Others pass by in that head-down rush we all know and recognise.

As Ariel cracks on, Dan leans to me smiling and whispers, “Hey Mister Roberts, he wasn’t happy, was he?”

I shrug and smile.

“Fictional wizards, eh? Nightmare.” Dan concludes.

I crack up.

And the fog descends.

I’m in the car and Chris Evans is on the radio doing his breakfast show. Ginger-mopped high energy gives way to the news bulletin and newsreader Moira Stuart shares the news of the day. She passes on to a correspondent and he begins his report. His tones I recognise. It’s Dan. Somewhere in the world. And I wonder if he remembers the little storm his Prospero whipped up in Barnsley Asda back in 1999? I do.

Hywel Roberts is a travelling teacher and curriculum imaginer. He tweets as @hywel_roberts. Read his back catalogue

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook