Happy Birthday Linas.

It's Linas' birthday today. I haven't actually seen him since this morning when he came into our room for a ceremonial opening of his presents. These days he lives most of his life through the web , talking to friends all around the world during the night and sleeping in the day. Perhaps my sweet little lad is transforming into a creature of the night. He has become much more settled these days.I only think it is such a shame that despite having a degree in IT (web design & stuff) he, like thousands of others, is unable to find any sort of job.



( He won't thank me for this picture but I loved his long hair, now reduced to shoulder length.)

And these are some of the reasons I'm writing my blog late at night when I should be tucked up in bed. Tonight's staff meeting was to acquaint us with a 20 page Raise-on-line document and more graphs and charts from Smiley ?! These show how our school is doing versus national data in lots of areas. We are supposed to be familiar with the contents of these documents so that if OFSTED should make a sudden descent we can demonstrate that we are familiar with how our school is doing nationally, where we differ from the national data, what are the reasons for the differences and how we are addressing any issues arising. This is additional to the APP /tracking data which we have to update twice a term for reading, phonics, literacy and maths - all entries on these documents have to be colour coded for gender & further high lighted for 3 more categories. All very good for data analysis but cuts heavily into teaching and planning time but the government must have its data. Oh, and new systems seem to come on line with monotonous regularity. Oh woe is me!

Sun And Waves.

Peter's knee has been playing him up so I went down to Woolacombe on my own today. The road was still flooded just past Mullacot but I drove through slowly. Some drivers still rushed through making great waves and spraying the windows of other cars! It rained heavily as I drove down into the combe but I wasn't able to park quickly enough to get a photo of the rainbow which dipped down into the sea. I was almost hoping for another rain shower so that I'd get another chance at a rainbow but instead the sun came out.

It was quite sheltered when I went down onto Barricane Beach. The tide was further out than last week but all the shells had been washed back out to sea. Also missing were the snakes locks sea anemones, I checked all around the pool they had been in but not a sign. Had they crawled away or been washed away?

As it remained dry I had a walk along the cliffs to Barricane Beach and then back towards Woolacombe.

The waves always fascinate me and I took lots of pictures most of which were in focus.

Back home I got to grips with starting on Romas' room as he'll be back from uni in a couple of weeks. I chucked out as much as possible and then put everything else in boxes and will give him a deadline to retrieve anything he wants before they go to the charity shop or the dump. I did this once before and it worked really well as he let most of the junk go. Redecorating his room will have to wait until he goes back to uni as I haven't had a moment to spare this term. We finished off the day with a kebab feast in honour of Linas' birthday tomorrow. Very unhealthy but it was his choice.

Coming up soon- the recipe for cabbage, cheese and potato casserole.

Chocolate With Chilli ?

The few flowers that are left in the garden are looking wet and bedraggled. We're back to the wet and not so cold weather once more. I have finally taken down most of the hanging baskets round the front door as although they haven't been affected by the couple of frosts we've had, there are only a few flowers left on each. Instead I've hung up some windchimes, (bl...y Shagri La mutters Peter when the wind sets them gently chiming).

I got up early, for a Saturday, and Linas and I went into town for a bit of shopping. Instead of heading for the main post office I decided to drive right across town to one of the few sub-post offices left. This was a wise choice as I only had 1 person in front of me in the queue and I know at this time of year the queue in the main post office winds back and forth and is often right out of the door. Despite having made a trip to BF's yesterday Linas persuaded me to drop in again so that he could stock up on his diet lemonade. It is very cheap but I hate buying it because the plastic bottles are heavy and cumbersome.

I did take a few photos inside the store to show the warehouse feel. Nothing like the white gleaming palaces of the big national chains , Tesco's, Sainsburies or even the slightly more downmarket Aldi or Morrison's. I do get a bit nervous taking pictures inside shops because I think that I'll be accused of industrial espionage. If it's a small shop I ask first and only take a few pictures.

These very expensive bars of chocolate have been on display for some time. The exotic flavours, including caramel & sea salt and further along the shelf one with chilli, can't really appeal to the usual BF shopper and the prices at 4 or 5 times even the fanciest chocolate bars would certainly be off putting. If the prices suddenly get slashed I might try some but maybe not the sea salt or the chilli ones.

Shopping.

( Barnstaple bridge taken in Dec last year.)

A complete dearth of photos today as I have been rushed right off my feet and even though I left school early to go to Brian Ford's to do some shopping it was already dark by the time I had driven across the river. This morning was pretty stressful as my TA for the morning was ill so I was going to have to get 30 children dressed, face painted and photographed on my own. Luckily another teacher came in to help me and I decided to leave the photographs until Monday. The overall performance and my class' dances went well but there was an awful lot of fussing and chatting from some of my children while the narrators and actors were trying to speak. After praising them for their dancing I did have to give some of them a real telling off because otherwise they will spoil the older children's performances. The shimmering bracelets look very effective but we are leaving a trail of silver strands wherever we sit, little fingers will pick! The 'stars' from the other class had some very glittery silver facepaint, I'll see if I can find some in town tomorrow as the person who brought it in had borrowed it from her daughter. I decided to go and do the household shopping at BF's tonight even though I'll be in town tomorrow. I find it some much more relaxing if I only have to make one stop to wander round town and walk to the post office and the library rather than have to finish off with a food shop run as well. I quite like going to BF's which although it has the slightly run down warehouse feel of a budget store it has a surprisingly good range of fresh fruit and veg . I don't feel guilty if I treat myself to some exotic fruit (chocolate and cakes are a terrible temptation), and tonight I bought a fresh fig (and some persimmons from Lydll's) . BF's is always a bit of an adventure as you can find cheap short coded items and they have interesting frozen items from a catering company that supplies restaurants and pubs. They even have some quite exotic items such as ostrich steaks (yes - from farmed ostriches), and tinned chestnuts but no canned pumpkin (in joke here). They have a good selection of Christmas puddings but as only Romas and I will be eating it I bought a cheap one but then splurged out and bought a panettone which we usually have on Boxing day.

Practice Makes Perfect.

It was not quite so dark on my homeward journey tonight as I had left school early to go to the hospital for another physiotherapy session, (some lovely deep massages on my spine have really loosened up my neck and shoulder). I stopped up past the Lewis' farm to take some pictures of the evening clouds and the sheets of rain over the bay. These dark clouds have been releasing nasty hailstorms and I'm so glad the central heating is keeping most of the house warm. I have had to resort to my cosy dressing gown and fingerless gloves to keep the chill at bay in the cold sitting room but now I'm as warm as toast.

Back at school the day has been mostly about the play, another rehearsal - this time on the stage blocks and my class sitting on chairs by the side. I had hoped to have my children sitting more comfortably on pe mats but the feeling was that change wasn't necessary. Then another run through of the dances in the classroom to check if the rats' ears would stay on through the dance and to see if the stars' shimmering wrist bands were not too tight or too fragile. Actually they looked very effective. Tomorrow will be the first dress rehearsal and as we'll be taking photographs they'll need their face paints on as well. It's nothing too dramatic, just nose & whiskers for the rats and possibly teeth if I have the time. The afternoon was more relaxed as the children started painting some clay coil pots that they are making into tea-light holders as Christmas presents for their mums. We don't have a kiln so we use air drying clay for such projects. As I didn't have the chance to set up my classroom for tomorrow I'll be heading in extra early tomorrow so that I can get organised, get costumes set out etc. Maybe I'll even beat Chris who is always the first one in at around 7.30, I'm usually the next - about 10 mins later though I tend to stay longer in the evenings. I won't know what to do with myself in January, only joking!

Dark Evenings.

Welcome to all of you visiting this blog. The map on my site manager is showing visitors from all over the globe which I find fascinating.

It gets dark so early these days, no wonder ancient people celebrated the turning of the year. As I drove home along the dark lanes this evening the headlights of my car picked out a large barn owl sitting ontop of a hedge. The owl turned its large dish-like face to me before gliding away majestically.Today was the Christmas Fayre at school. Many of the parents came and took their children around the fayre but I still had 9 children to supervise. Father Christmas has lost a lot of weight since last year but it is so sweet to see how thrilled the children are to talk to him. In the last week of term we will also get a helicopter fly past with Father Christmas waving from the doorway.

We had PPA again this afternoon, I'm finding it strange not to be having to think ahead for next term. There is still plenty to complete for this term and at the same time my fingers are itching to make preparations for next term's topics but it won't be my responsibility anymore. That's good in terms of stress but sad in terms of buzz and adding my input. Oh well, something always turns up.

Close Encounter With A Buzzard.

It was very cold this morning, so cold that I had to de-ice the car before going off to work.

Even so I couldn't resist stopping up at Ashelford Corner to capture the colours of the sunrise, my poor little fingers were frozen by the time I had taken a few pictures.
A little way down the road I was just thinking that now I have a better zoom on my camera I should be able to get a decent shot of a buzzard when suddenly there was a buzzard, standing on the road ahead. I braked hard, the buzzard did his best to do a vertical take off , slid past the windscreen and missed the roof of the car by a few inches with a most indignant squawk. Further down the road there were 2 more buzzards who were sitting sensibly on top of the telegraph poles waiting for the sun to rise and the air to warm. It became a bit warmer during the day as the rain, (not so heavy today) returned. In the afternoon we had playtime outside even though it was raining because the children had spent over an hour in the hall at another rehearsal. The performance gets better each time , let's hope we don't peak too early. My kitchen table is currently covered with strands of silver lammetta being turned into shimmering wrist bands for my 15 stars. Off I go now to carry on making those 30 bracelets.