Strange Health Centre.

The sun was shining this morning and it felt pleasant due to the continuing warm winds blowing from the south. By the time I drove to town at lunchtime I could see dark clouds beginning to gather and I drove home through heavy rain.

My first stop in town was the Health Centre for an appointment with the chiropodist. The Health Centre is a weird place. When you go inside it feels like a high security institution. Inside all the doors are solid with small windows high up. Having passed through several of these doors I found myself in a tiny, silent waiting room. I had to hold my appointment letter up against the glass of the closed window into the room where the receptionists? were. Even when the window was opened the lady there spoke almost in a whisper. I know that many of the people who might go to the Health Centre may be the poorest or most troubled residents of Barnstaple but this was very odd. However I did have a useful appointment. As well as showing my twisting toe to the chiropodist I got some advice for Peter regarding his toenails (his compromised immune system affects his nails). The chiropodist made a soft wedge with some putty like material to help straighten my toe. I also showed her the shoes I had bought from the catalogue I had been given in the hospital. As they were very expensive, nearly £80, I wanted to check that they fitted me properly including with the insoles and the new wedge which she said they did. I had been excited when I first looked through the catalogue which seems to have as much choice as a shoe shop as up till now my extra wide feet had made finding correctly fitting shoes a nightmare. For example there are 14 different styles of ankle/low boots and 4 styles of long boots. I shall have to chose carefully as they are very expensive but it beats buying shoes 2 sizes too big.

As the Health Centre is in town you have to pay for 2 hours parking so after my appointment I walked to the High Street. There I bought a couple of Christmas presents and went to the library. Then I drove over the bridge, did some shopping in Lidl's and BJ's and called in to Tesco's. They were giving away tasters from their 'Finest' range and I had 2 blinis with smoked salmon and caviar! One lot of salmon had been flavoured with beetroot which made it a rich red colour and the other was flavoured with chestnut but I can't say I could taste either. It just tasted like very nice smoked salmon to me. There were lots of foods on offer, different cheeses, crisps and a chocolate log cake but I was restrained and only ate some very nice chocolates washed down with a tot of Amaretto. Then when I walked round to the chocolate aisle to buy some gold wrapped coins another member of staff was offering Lindt D'Or. How could I refuse one of my favourite chocolates?

Up in the clothing section I checked out the Sale rails and found this fluffy (inside as well) lounging/pyjama top reduced from £14 to £4.50. They had quite a few of them but I picked out the biggest one, several sizes too big, as I like lounging around in loose clothing.

The rain started as I was packing my shopping into the car but had almost stopped by the time I was nearly home.

My Holiday Starts.

There was a lot more blue in the sky today. When the sun finally made it over the hill we had a few spot lit  corners in the garden.

Today was my last day of school before the Christmas holidays. School doesn't finish until Friday but I'm starting my holiday now. At lunchtime we exchanged our Secret Santa gifts and said goodbye to one of the teaching assistants who is retiring. As we've already had 4 special birthdays and a baby shower this term we didn't bring food for a buffet lunch. We had fun opening our presents, some were a bit saucy which gave us a good laugh and on the whole everyone looked happy. I got some incense sticks and a Christmas themed ceramic salt and pepper set.

Back in class with the Reception children we skipped phonics and instead had a long PE lesson in the hall. After that we went straight out into the playground where I gave the children white chalk (left over in my bag from something I did with the Year 2 children) and let them draw or write on the playground. My only instruction was that they could only draw on the ground. They had such a lot of fun. Some wrote their names or numbers but most of them just had fun drawing. We stayed outside until the other children came out for playtime and I shared out the remaining chalk to any that wanted. I had children coming up to me sadly with a stub of chalk saying their chalk had 'run out'.

Yesterday I read a story to the children about 'When I grow up.' and I told the children that when I was their age I wanted to be a carpenter. When I asked the children if they knew what a carpenter was before the girl whose Dad is a carpenter had the correct answer I was told that a carpenter was .... a man who fixes cars or .... a man who puts carpets in your house. Not bad guesses I suppose.

After school I went over to Asda. Not much in the way of bargains but I did get a jar of plain minced garlic. Tesco's used to sell it but for the last few months they've only had the garlic with ginger which isn't always the right thing.

Grey.

We've had a big cloudbank sitting over the hills all day giving us light rain interspersed with heavier rain. Driving to work (above) I could see the edge of the cloudbank and sure enough it was much drier and sunnier in town. On the way home (below) it was much the same.

At school the children and staff had their Christmas lunch. I'd opted out as I feel I've done enough years of serving excited children their Christmas lunch and clearing up the mess before sitting down to eat the adult's version of the same dinner. While I don't enjoy turkey or Brussels sprouts they do serve excellent roast potatoes but I rarely eat lunch and prefer not to teach after a cooked meal. The children were all very excited though there were a few tears in the playground as their paper hats tore or they lost the plastic toy from the crackers. All I had to do with the children this afternoon was to help them write on the envelopes of the Christmas cards they had made for their parents. Everyone was collected on time and I was driving away at 3.40.

Foggy.

It was raining again this morning and I wasn't tempted out into the garden. When I left home for work the clouds were once again sitting on the top of the hill. (I'm never too sure about the differences between mist, fog and low cloud so I've looked it up. Mist is thin but fog is basically low clouds.) I didn't drop out of the clouds until I had nearly reached town. Luckily it stopped raining in the afternoon and the children were able to go out for their playtime.

I had to get to school for 12.00 as we had somebody, a sales person, coming in to show us a maths scheme based on Singapore maths. It didn't quite link up with the national curriculum and the children's work books looked very much like schemes from years ago. So far we don't use printed workbooks for the children, instead the teachers create their own sheets for each lesson or the children write in squared books.

In the afternoon half of each of the Year 2 classes were going off to another old peoples' home to sing Christmas carols so I had the remaining children. I took in plenty of coloured paper and taught the children how to make simple 3-d decorations from 4 or more symmetrical shapes folded and stuck together. I also gave them the option to create their own symmetrical shapes. Some of the children needed several tries to draw and cut out a symmetrical shape but they got there in the end.

Foggy.

The skies were clear before dawn this morning so I had a rare view of the stars. Once the sun came up there was some fog/low cloud lingering over the trees but instead of burning off the fog increased until it filled our valley. I took these photos at 3.30 when I could see some blue if I walked up the hill a bit but in the garden it was grey and damp. Peter went rowing in the afternoon and out on the river it was bright and sunny if a bit cold.

At least it wasn't raining so I was able to get out and pull up more of the grass growing over the bank. The ground is nice and soft so with a bit of care I could pull out the grass roots too.  No doubt more will still grow in the spring but I had the satisfaction of getting rid of plenty of grass today.

One thing about gardening is that so often I find myself being diverted from the task in hand. Walking up the stones steps from the house I just had to stop and pull up all the grass seedlings growing between the stones. Then as I admired the winter flowering heathers full of buds ready to flower the long grass growing up through the bushes had to be removed. That done I did clear most of the grass from the bank which was my original goal.

Squeaky, very wisely decided that sleeping was the best option.

Wet.

It has been raining steadily all day and remains warm. I went out in the afternoon just to check the dam after the postman had driven down. He's a very helpful postman (only parcels for Peter today) but he does tend to race up the drive and sometimes knocks the wood out of the way.

I've spent the day indoors mainly pottering around. I find it frustrating when I feel I haven't achieved anything during the day but I have repaired my poor old slippers (still looking for a replacement pair) and wrapped up some Christmas presents. And I've nearly completed my on line shopping for Christmas. So that's a few things done. I've also done a bit of piano and guitar practice and relaxed doing an on line jigsaw.

A Touch of Blue.

There was a bit more blue in the sky today though we have been promised rain for the weekend.  

I suppose it should come as no surprise considering all the warm weather we've had but honestly! I turn my back for one minute and the weeds have gone wild again. When I looked at the big bank I could hardly see the garden plants for the grasses growing there. There were big clumps that pulled out easily, long strands of couch grass which once I found the root end unravelled like wool, a nasty wide bladed grass that needed careful pulling to get the long tap root out and worst of all a thin grass with matted roots firmly embedded in the soil. 2 (laundry) basketsful removed and the bank looks a bit better. There's always more to do but I have to pace myself.

I also did a bit of work on the drive. When I filled in the deep ruts after the storm I did my best to put the larger stones at the bottom and the smaller gravel on top but it's all quite loose and sometimes gets disturbed when driven over. I had noticed the ruts I filled in with gravel from the stream which also contained finer silt like particles were in much better shape. So I devised a plan; first I dug out a section of repaired rut, then put back all the bigger stones at the bottom, added a good amount of stream gravel and finally pushed the finer gravel back over the top. Hopefully it will all meld together and create a more stable road surface.

We had the man come to sort out the boiler in the afternoon. There was much conversation between him and Peter about plumbing, central heating and rowing so I left them to it. As well as stopping the boiler from cutting out he and Peter adjusted all the radiators as a couple of them weren't heating up. So now we're all set for when the cold weather returns.