Allsorts.

Today has been the quiet between the storms. We haven't been affected but last night's winds, up to 106 mph, resulted in 100,000 homes without power this morning and on the news tonight I hear that half of them are still without power this evening. 

I woke this morning to a heavy sprinkling of white over the garden. On closer inspection it turned out to be be hail not snow. Some rain and the later sunshine cleared the road quickly so I had no problem in driving to school. (The local news is on showing snow up on the moors and there are severe warnings for both wind and floods for tomorrow.)

The afternoon started with bright sun. It was so warm that not only had I stripped down to my vest but we kept the classroom door open. That was also due to the children being extra whiffy this afternoon. (There was some sort of poo incident in the boys' toilets but we couldn't track down the culprit.) As usual the afternoon started with a phonics session. We were playing a game called 'Silly Silent Sentences' where I write a simple but silly sentence for the children to read silently and then they put their thumbs up or down for a silent yes or no. The trouble was, that as I was quietening the children down a bird sat on the tree by the classroom door and proceeded to sing at the top of its voice. He must have been celebrating the warm sun. The children all had a good laugh when I told it to be quiet too. In less than half an hour the temperature dropped, the sky went dark and we had a heavy hail shower. Luckily it dried up by playtime. Out at play the children were busy scrabbling up handfuls of hailstones ('We've got snowballs.') to throw at each other. The other teachers were OK with them doing this though personally I would have said no. We couldn't help laughing when one boy came up to us having had a 'snowball' thrown in his face. From the state of his face we could see it was no snowball but just a handful of mud that had been scooped up from the ground.

I stayed on at school to mark and stick work in books and now that's it until after the half-term holiday next week. I went into town before coming home to visit the bank, library, health food shop and then join the last minute throng to choose a Valentine's Day card.