I am counting them all out...
This is it! The day before Ofsted..... I am just about to go into school to finish printing out all the myriad copies of lesson plans, notes etc that they want to have available. The books are sorted, my desk is tidied - well sort of, and we are there. After this I can start to live again. I have been told about a local gym that is good, so I may well join that, the garden will have some attention and I shall enjoy my life again. I know we shouldn't rush life, but I can't wait for Wednesday night!

Red pen??
I have just corrected last night's blog...duh. Spelling level of achievement is LOW. However, that is not really important. What I have just realised is that this time next week, it will all be over.Yeah!!! Whopppeeeeee! Ofsted people - go take a running jump!!
Meanwhile, I have to go on a tennis coaching course straight after the last lesson when ofsted are with us. Is this good timing I ask myself? Hmmm. The headteacher said it had been arranged a year ago - I wasn't even employed there then - and it took the place of a staff meeting. The fact that I have a meeting with the inspectorate on Tuesday is not considered of course. I think I shall start to go to one staff meeting a week only.
RADICAL EH?!

There's a silver lining...
If I hadn't been working late at school tonight I would have missed the wonderful double rainbow just outside my classroom window - it was beautiful! The view is out over fields with some woods on the edge of the roadside. Quite idyllic and quintessentially English countryside. I shall enjoy it soon!

Head in the sand act
Its getting in my mouth, eyes, ears.... have I lost it? Yes!! S** ofsted, I have lost all sense of reason.

Another day, another fix.
This holidays I have spent many hours preparing for the ofsted people whoare going to visit our school. It was designated a failing school about three years ago, this year an HMI said it was better so we had our reward - a promise of an ofsted. Great. Now they are going to be with us in 10 days.
So - the displays are almost all done - still don't know what to do with the maths, but inspiration has got to arrive this week. The books have been trawled and double checked. The planning is basically all sorted on the medium term, the short term is partially written. The pencils have mysteriously arrived, as have the whiteboard pens, they have to last two weeks - after that I don't care. (Isn't that awful, I hate saying that I don't care about things!)
So, I have rewarded myself with a visit to Leicester for a Scrabble fix. What a game the first one was. I selected every single letter A except for one, in one hand I held 5 Letter A's and two letter O's. Good? Huh!! If I had counted all the consonants that I picked out of the bag, they would not have been more than 8 in the whole game. Yet I won!! I caught up a deficit of 70 marks and went into the lead. That is not to decry the mastery of the second game, it took several hours, as fitting the Ktichen units needed all three of us at various times, we also had to buy some extra tools, so interrupted is a good description for this one.
However, I scored my highest single score of 57 - two words on a corner, both of which I simple finished off rather than completely laid out, then the total score for me was 294. Now that's what I call a triumph! Meanwhile, Shirley seems to be going off the game! Spoilsport....

I needed that therapy!
I spent Monday night with my daughter at her home. She is living on a farm, where she is welcome to use the garden and indeed t o work in it - a garden with a lake, large lawns, shrubberies etc. What a lucky person! She has taken over the greenhouse with her seedlings, the name green house is not quite correct - it is a grape house! I think I shall go and visit in September too!
On Tuesday we went shopping in Birmingham. The outside of the new Selfrdges is rather fun, as a pedestrian you have to hunt it out, but it is worth doing. I wanted to look in Muji, I don't know why because everytime I try some clothes on in there I have an attack of bad temper, why don't the clothes fit the size they claim to be? I forget the cultural differences are not just those of appearance, the Japanese are much smaller than me. Drat!!
This term's work is based upon Buddha and Northern India so I cam home with two books on religion - a first for me, one about Buddhism and a copy of the Koran. I think that if people are going to quote it at us, then I ought to be able to check these things. I sometimes do this with the bible, so I feel a little more enlightened now I have the Koran too. In three weeks time I will open the book! (Now back to my lesson planning...)

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
I was invited out for a stroll in the country today with Shirley and Lee her partner. We were to meet at Church Stretton for this stroll - at 9 in the morning. So, on Easter Sunday I was up at 7 and leaving home at ten past eight to arrive on time. We were joined by a seriously fit 'other' walker. Well, we went up the Carding Mill Valley where I took my class a fortnight ago, over the top of the Mynd, down the other side and along for about 5 miles, then back up to the Mynd, over it and down the steepest hill to the car.
Now I don't do fit, I belong to no gym, no activity class, nothing! So now I hurt. I hurt in my knees and my feet. Tomorrow I know my quads will kick in with an enormous moan. Ooooh, why do I do it?
Oh yes, and I cheated on the detox: we stopped at a pub at lunch time and they were selling real beer, so I had a pint of Spitfire Ale and it was delicious, then I also had a cup of tea to help revive me when we arrived back at the car. Breaking power of Kit Kat - there I said before anyone else could!
It was a fabulous walk, glorious weather and good company, so apart from my impersonation of Puffing Billy, it was a top notch day!

Detox anyone?
Have you done this - stopped drinking alcohol , tea and coffee? Blimey - it hurts!
Let explain the background, I am facing an inspection at school and decided I could either swim around at the bottom of the gin bottle by way of preparation, or I could get my act together and allow the little grey cells to do their bit. So I stopped drinking all those supports - easy you might think?
Well! I had a two day headache. TWO DAYS!!! I don't do headaches - one a year at the maximum and that's it. I buy the pills and am always the one who hands them out to others. So, I was not a happy chappess on the head front.
Then my legs.... they ached for England. Especially when I lay down to go to sleep. Hah! So, I found the pills I give to others and took them myself, this has lasted for five days. More pills have been consumed in five days than in five years. I wouldn't mind if I had done some exercise, but all I have done is climb some stairs.... Ooooh, there must have been a tremendous amount of nasties inside me. And what's more (there has to one of those!) my urine is now far darker than when I was drinking tea and coffee, so how strong is the water around here?
My last question is, is it doing me any good?

To cheese - or not ?
My son has brought his new girl friend over to see his family. Gosh, that makes me realise what having babies is all about!! She is lovely and she likes cheese! You won't realise what that means to me - when I was pregnant - both times, I went off cheese and coffee, neither of my children eats cheese and they came late to coffee. Weird eh? Anyway, whenever we have family gatherings, it is just Livvy's boyfriend and I who eat the cheese, well now we have another cheese muncher, so welcome Lindsey and I shall go out and buy some more cheese first thing tomorrow so we can end our lunch properly!

Turn out
In my present sort out mode I am getting rid of some furniture - correction, I am trying to. Beds are extremely difficult to deal with. If they are older than the latest safety mark, then no-one can take them for charity reasons and I have no way of transporting them to the dump. Besides which I cannot face throwing away good items. So, I am going to advertise them in the local paper. That's Ok but it means that I shall have to tidy the house in case someone wants to buy them. One day I shall start to put things away as a matter of course......?

To blog...
Several bloggers are wondering whether or not to continue doing the daily bolg - or even blog! I hope you all do, it gives us an idea of what friends do when living at other sides of the world. We can comment in that flippant way which is so important - it keeps us in contact. And for all those bloggers I have never met - it certainly opens up my eyes to different lives and people. That's what is so much fun!

And another thing...
If you find yourself driving behind a teacher at the end of term, at an approximate snail's pace, just bear in mind that she might have an open container with tadpoles in her car and does not wish to have them overturned and flapping in the car well.... !
The other thing was an amusing update to the snakes. Do you remember they came to visit my classroom and we warmed up the mouse in the milk jug? Hmmm well, a supply teacher made tea for us the other day - we were in one of our innumerable staff meetings with advisers, and there it was - the milk - in the milk jug...
Did I say anything? Nahhh - well at least not until after the meeting!!!

Whoooppeeeeeeeeeeee
It's the holidays!!!!! No more having to go to work for a fortnight!! Happy days! And the pheasant still lives - he glared at me on Friday as if to say I was late!
Last night I spent partying in Birmingham - it was great fun, I met lots of new people (not new as in just made...!) astounded one poor man who had never met a woman who likes cricket! We both turned on ceefax to find out the test match score - to the horror of the only other woman in the room! What's more, England had won!
So it is time to take stock -sort out the piles yet again, do some ironing, perhaps a little shop or two and get myself ready for these ofsted people. YUK!!