Road Block.

Today at school the children celebrated the Queen's 90th birthday by coming to school dressed in red, white and blue instead of their uniforms and having a party in the afternoon. They also celebrated Paddington Bear who turns 90 today as well. In the staffroom we were on tenterhooks over the weather forecast which was for rain, possibly extremely heavy rain which was due at any time. I-phones were out and there was constant checking of the different weather forecasts. In the end the rain held off and the children were able to stage a performance of songs to the parents. Because of the numbers we can only have these performances out in the playground. The children sang God Save the Queen, Happy Birthday and a couple of other songs including the meatball song. Earlier in the afternoon I had taken my class out on the field to have a fun PE session while the teaching assistant took a couple of tables out into the playground and laid out some (of the vast amount) of party food they had brought in. The children helped themselves and sat with their friends in the playground. That way there was no food mess in the classroom which was appreciated by the lady who comes in to clean.

On my way in to school this morning I was held up by about 20 ewes and lambs in the road. They were from the same field the lambs had escaped from the other day. Not surprising since the gate was half falling down. Then from around the corner came another 30 sheep in front of a slow moving van. I had already driven past the gate so I pulled over as far as I could to let the whole group go past me. One pair wouldn't go past until I had turned off the car engine. On my way home I saw that the gate had been tied back up to the fence post.

At home Peter had spent the afternoon adjusting the rayburn. It finally seems to be burning properly and the kitchen no longer smells of kerosene oil. Better than that he was able to get in touch with an engineer who is experienced with this model. He is going to put in a different valve to bypass the redundant central heating boiler (Peter had previously confirmed this with the Rayburn company) which is causing all the problems. This is happening next week which is a relief.

When I got home the grass was still growing and still needing cutting so a-mowing I did go. I got everything except the small lawn by the stream mown before heavy rain began to fall. Tiring but at least it's done.