Being Brave.

Today I was determined to have another try at fixing the lights. Before I even had my breakfast I gathered together the tools I needed and the instructions. Then it was time time to be brave. I left all the lights on as I turned off the various electrical fuse boxes. You would have thought that the biggest one which appears to feed straight from the cable that comes into the back of the house would be the main switch but no, when I turned it off nothing happened. I then turned off every switch in the cupboard and yes all went dark. I still wasn't 100% convinced as I went up the ladder clutching a pair of secateurs to cut the cable leading to the old light as its screws had rusted solid. A big sigh of relief as I survived unscathed. Then came the next problem, the cable had different coloured wires to the diagram on the instructions for the new light. I was pretty sure that the red wire was the live one (now brown) and the black was the neutral (blue) with the bare wire being the earth but pretty sure isn't good enough. So I taped over the bare wires and abandoned that job for the day. It turns out that once I had the electricity back on and could check on the web that I was right. I had to stop at that point anyway because I needed to re-do the assessments I did the other morning as they couldn't be read when I sent them to the class teachers. I had started them in school using Word 2008, ran out of time so emailed them to myself. At home I downloaded them and then completed them using Word 2003. They looked fine when I did them but emailing them onwards corrupted them. By the time I got those done it was time to leave for school.

It was a grey damp morning and when I left I drove up into hill fog. It then rained lightly for the rest of the day but is still quite warm.

In the afternoon I did my first RE lessons with the Reception children. I had planned to read some Hindu stories but the ones in the book I had were too bloodthirsty for 4/5 year olds so I opted to read some stories about Buddha. In order to set the scene I started by playing some gentle Buddhist meditation music and talked the children through some simple relaxation techniques. Only my cobbled together ideas. I felt sorry for the TA who had been assigned to stay with me, there wasn't much for her to do and she had to listen to everything twice including my modified stories.

After school we had a staff meeting on assessment as things are forever changing and no 2 experts seem to be coming up with the same way. I sat where I could see the evening sky and a rather pretty sunset but by the time we had finished night had almost fallen and I drove home through the dark.