Warmer.

No sun today so it was much warmer. For the last few days the water tap in the kitchen is not running as well as usual. Yesterday I was instructed to reduce water usage to a minimum so I collected buckets of water from the stream to fill up the toilet cisterns and brought home tap water from school for drinking water. Today I had to crawl to the end of the loft to check the water level in the tank up there. That was fine and the water was flowing in normally. That at least ruled out the expensive possibility of having to replace the pump that brings water out of our bore hole and up to the pressure tank in one of the outbuildings. So that leaves a problem with the direct cold water feed into the kitchen. It''s still the same today so it can't have been an ice blockage but apparently there is a filter somewhere in the system that may need changing. 

Peter has been at home today because tomorrow he is having a routine follow-up colonoscopy. In the UK when you reach 60 you are offered non-invasive screening for bowel cancer. Then if anything shows up you are called in for a colonoscopy. This happened to Peter and they found a pre-cancerous growth which was removed right then. This is just the 18 month follow-up. Shockingly a significant proportion of people who are contacted after the initial screening do not show up for a colonoscopy. The early easily treatable stage of bowel cancer has NO SYMPTOMS. By the time symptoms do occur you are looking at serious surgery or worse. Today Peter has to drink copious amounts of medication to clear the system (say no more). 

I went to work in the afternoon.I have to say that the 10 min afternoon playtime is very stressful. We have to take the children up to a small area by the other classrooms. Not only do you have to watch out for certain children wandering right away but there are various railings and steps the children are not allowed on which draw some children like magnets. Then there are the children who cling to my legs or side like magnets, mainly because they are so determined to be first in the line when we clap for the end of playtime. I'm worn to a frazzle by the time we get back in class for a nice relaxing story. We didn't have a staff meeting after school today but we all worked to put up displays on the boards in the main corridor.