Wet, Windy and Warm.

It rained heavily all through the night and by the morning the stream was running quite high. It was very windy in the morning but the rain had eased off so I was back working on the wall. I used up the last of the sand to make a bucket of cement and got more stones put in place on the wall. By then the level of the stream had gone down and for the rest of the time I dug up gravel from the stream and used it to fill the wall. It has been a generally wet and windy day and surprisingly warm.

Today was my last afternoon at school for this term. I enjoy the build up to Christmas, cinema on Saturday, Nativity yesterday and today the children's Christmas dinner. This used to be a manic affair with all 180 excited children crammed into the hall but things were changed around this year and it all went smoothly. Since the beginning of term all of our children have been getting a free school dinner so they are used to eating in 2 sittings. They did the same today but instead of lining up at the serving hatch they sat at the tables (red tablecloths and crackers,) and we served them and cleared away. I don't know what made my back ache more, carrying buckets of gravel or bending over the low tables to cut up the children's roast potatoes. It was a proper Christmas dinner; turkey, gravy, sausage, roast potatoes, stuffing, Brussel sprouts, carrots and peas. Some ate it all up but there was an awful lot of food wasted. Once the children had finished the adults sat down for their dinners. I usually only eat a piece of fruit or some ryvita for lunch so I felt rather full after eating some roast potatoes, gravy, carrots and a little turkey (I'm not that keen on a traditional Christmas dinner). I found it easy to ignore the mince pie or dry cake as they are not my favourites either. After the children had gone home for the day we had our Secret Santa gathering in the staff room. There was wine and cheese but I was still full from lunch. One of our teachers is leaving and she had brought in a magnificent home-made sponge cake with raspberries and cream and I felt it would be rude not to eat a slice. Very nice it was too. This evening I'm sticking to some refreshing peppermint tea. Instead of each person opening their present watched by everybody else, which can be a little daunting and with nearly 30 of us would have taken ages, we opened all our presents at the same time. Mine was this lovely table centre piece. Just right for my farmhouse kitchen. (The orange streak is one of several dried orange slices.)