More Eye Surgery.

Back home now after 2 days of driving. The trees lining the roads are looking very autumnal glowing gold and bronze especially when they were lit up by the sun. With the slight spectrum shift and polarization caused by my beloved wraparound sunglasses the trees and the clouds looked spectacular. Even so I'm rather tired as I'm not used to driving such long distances especially when I couldn't take my little micra over 70mph (the official speed limit) without some suspicious vibrating. I had the tracking done recently but I'll book it in for a check as soon as I get the chance. Driving into the heart of a city reminded me just how lucky we are to live out in the countryside. It wasn't the traffic, after all I learnt to drive in central London, but the sheer tedium of those city streets and the lack of space. I didn't mind the busy city roads and I'm quite happy to pull across several lanes of traffic so long as I've indicated and had a quick look. One taxi driver stopped to let me out of a side street and I promptly cut up a white van to get into the next lane. I then probably really annoyed the driver by being unsure which lane to be in next, first signalling one way and then the other before making up my mind. That just makes me laugh. We arrived in Bristol with plenty of time to spare so we went to the Bristol Museum which is only 5 mins walk away from Ultralase. I don't know if it is the many afternoons spent as a small child in the big London museums (the V&A, Natural History, Science and Geology museums) but I find myself so at home in these grand Victorian marble palaces.

The Bristol museum has a little bit of everything and is currently holding an exhibition on Flight based on the Bristol Aircraft Company. There were a lot of interactive exhibits for the many younger visitors. One that really made me laugh was a simulation of a luggage conveyor belt with x-ray machine. A dad was pushing the suitcases on the belt so his child could look at the screen to see their contents but the toddler was far more interested in climbing on the rollers and following the suitcase through the machine. I don't suppose it was a real x-ray machine.

The museum is built in the grand style with marble staircases everywhere branching off to mezzanine levels housing things of interest both old and new.

We had a look around the Egyptian exhibition, amazing to think that some of the objects were thousands of years old as were these Assyrian stone wall panels , about 6ft square. We admire their classical beauty and purity of line and it takes a conscious effort to visualise them as they would have been, gaudily painted in bright colours (as were all those white marble statues we find in Grecian temples.)

I loved the Blue Bristol glass though these modern examples in the museum shop were rather expensive.

Unlike our initial eye surgery which took about 5mins per eye and half an hour from start to finish, Peter's re-do took much longer. Well over an hour as they did various tests before completing the surgery. If I'd have known how long it was going to be I would have spent the time happily browsing in Habitat which is on the next corner. We did pop in for a quick look at beds but it wouldn't have been fair to drag Peter round while I looked at all the beautifully designed but expensive furniture and household items. Peter's eyes are more sore this time but today he was able to read 4 lines better than the 20/20 vision line. We spent the night up in Tewkesbury with our friends for a lovely supper and pleasant evening. We returned to Bristol for a check up today (managed to fit in a browse around Paperchase which again is expensive but so stylish), before driving the 200 miles back to Devon.

Now I've done my school work, checked my emails and am ready to crash out before starting yet another week at school.

Off To Bristol.

The sun is here today. Hooray! This morning the sunlight is lighting up the topmost corner of the garden. Sadly we won't get much else but it is good to look out of the window and see blue skies. It is also streaming in through the kitchen window, yay, and highlighting the greasy mess by the hotplate where certain person (not the one who has been on a diet), has been doing lots of frying. Counter, tiles and saucepans have all been scrubbed clean now.
In the wet sunshine I spotted some new flowers. These pink lilies are in the grass bed that I renovated last spring.

Everything there had to be dug up and I have a feeling that these lilies lived in some buckets for a while before being replanted, hence the late flowering.

Just getting the place tidy before we're off on the long drive to Bristol where Peter will be having his eyes re-lasered. He has rather dry eyes which might have given inaccurate readings on the initial scans so he's decided to go for more surgery to make them extra sharp. With the company we've used for our eye surgery (we would recommend Ultralase to anyone in the UK who is thinking of laser eye surgery), you get free life time care so there is no worry about extra expense.

Jai Ho.

It was a good day today. We satred with nearly an hour of Indian based dancing which the children loved. The visiting teacher was impressed with their enthusiasm and grasp of dance techniques. She worked with the children to create their own dances and when I told her we had been trying some Bollywood steps she taught us Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire. That was fun. Later in the afternoon all the classes performed their dances to each other and we had a whole school performance of Jai Ho. Our headteacher was videoing it and I noticed the camera swinging around to us teachers quite a lot. She could probably put that on YouTube to show just how unco-ordinated we all are. It has been raining all day so the children didn't get any time outside but as well as the dancing we had a lot of things to finish off. No chance to take photos today so here's few more from yesterday's trip to the swimming pool. Firstly here's an enormous Tesco's superstore being built on the site of my favourite independent store - Brain Ford's.

Then as we approach the New Bridge a view of our infamous rock art roundabout. Our local council paid over £200,000 for this collection of stones in their ugly metal cradles. The best stone was the one on the far left which was rather phallic and had various ribald local names until the council doctored it to a less obvious shape, spoil sports. Not only was this a massive expenditure at a time when the recession was beginning to hit but the placement of the stones on their sides has left them open to rapid erosion as the stone is a relatively soft slate that forms loose layers which can split off quite easily.

Sad News.

I am feeling quite flat this evening having come home to find an email from my cousin telling me that her dad had passed away. Even though this is something that will happen to us all it is always sad to loose a member of your family. I have no family members at all in this country (apart from Peter & the boys) but I have always kept in touch with my Canadian cousins and we still have fond memories of our visit to Canada nearly 30 years ago when we met most of my family members for the first time. Indeed one of the reasons for this blog is to keep far flung members of our family informed about the lives of the British branch.

It seems almost trite to rattle on about my day at work so here is only a brief post.

We went swimming and for once I remembered to take my camera so I can show what a (typically) grey day it has been. This was looking west from the New Bridge towards the sea.
In the other direction can be seen the River Taw and the incredibly ugly council offices building.

Further up the river is the Old Bridge and town behind.

It was an extra late evening at school as we had a meeting for parents to explain/ discuss the way we teach reading. For 120 children (4 classes), 18 parents turned up. There were 4 of us class teachers there as well as the Headteacher and I got home from work at 8.45.

Another Day Done.

This is all I get to see on my journey home, hedges lit up by the car lights. It was quite a misty journey home or was it very low clouds? I just feel so tired after another 10 hours at school. Every lesson requires so much preparation with several levels of task to plan for and resources to be found and made each day. Thank goodness for the internet. When I first started teaching the only technology was the banda machine in the office which was used for letters home and left purple stains. Everything else was done by hand, I got to be a dab hand at quickly drawing sets of trees, flowers etc for my children to colour and count. We didn't even have bluetac, pictures were put up on the walls with rolled over masking tape. Now we can produce beautiful worksheets (sorry, not allowed to call them that, ) I mean writing frames or individual recording sheets, with pretty photos, coloured fonts or anything else you want. Our school laminator gets constant use but I draw the line at laminating pictures or labels that are only going to be up for a couple of weeks and then disposed of. Yes they do look better but it seems so wasteful. I sometimes feel that I'm decimating the rain forest single-handedly with the amount of paper I get through. Oh well, must get on with producing my daily plans for tomorrow.

Finally!

Finally I've reached my goal weight. At 10 1/2 stone (154lbs) I'm a few lbs lighter than I was when I was 16. That was my secret goal and now I do not feel like a fat person any more. I do have a photo inside one of my kitchen cupboard doors, where I have a collage of cards and photos, of me at just over 10 stone but that was about 15 years ago and I'm not aiming so low. Apart from the real kick I get out of wearing smaller clothes I have been thinking of all the health disadvantages of being overweight, from diabetes and cancer to the more immediate effects on the joints. Now when I present yet another health problem to my doctor she can't intimate that my weight is a factor. Actually she doesn't, apart from the time when they insisted they weighed you whatever your problem was. I think that was a government campaign which probably backfired as I'm sure I'm not the only one who put off seeing the doctor for that very reason, but you still think that's what they're thinking. Now my big challenge is to maintain a healthy weight so the daily weighing will continue just so I can keep a check on myself.
Nice as it is to go to school once the sun has risen it does mean that the journey home is always in the dark ie no sunset photos. All I had on my camera today was this picture of my Literacy Working Wall. We all have to have one and it shows the stages the children are working through to produce a final piece of written work. It is supposed to help the children but really I think it is just a way to show any visitors (OFSTED ?) what we are doing. I took a picture for my records as I've replaced it with the work for our next piece of writing, instructions on how to make chapatis. I still feel like the day is one mad rush but I have some extra help in the class from a 3rd year teaching student who does some teaching as well. Today I persuaded her to take a dance lesson on Bollywood dancing. She was a bit apprehensive though I kept reassuring that if a clodhopper like me could have a good dance session with the class she would be fine, and she was. It was a good job she was there as one boy had a nose bleed and under normal circumstances the lesson would have had to stop while I looked after him.

Woosh.

I know I'm not running at 100% efficiency because of my cold but today has seemed particularly frantic. I had everything planned but there is just so much to do that I feel as if I've spent the day rushing to catch my tail. At least it was starting to get light as I drove into school. My clock radio didn't go off at the right time (probably those lightning strikes) but my body clock woke me up 5 minutes before my back-up battery alarm clock started to ring.

It was quite warm this morning and there was a fair amount of mist in all the valleys. (Zoom in for a glimpse of more valleys in the mist.) The day has also been warm and the children didn't need their jumpers at playtimes. We had a staff meeting after school so here I am at 7.00 with another hour of paperwork to keep me occupied before I empty my mind of all coherent thought and watch ANTM. (If you don't know it really isn't worth asking.)