• I’m having a wonderful day at Longlevens Infant School today. The children are completely hyper and they have been doing masses of work on my books. I was met in the hall by giant book covers and a wonderful paper mâché model of Viking Vik! These have been made by an artist who visited last week, whose name I didn’t get, But I will when I go back for more fun tomorrow.

    Everyone did fabulous drawings and many had done drawings and paintings for a competition. The four winners had their pictures turned into framed posters, which they were very pleased to receive.

    It’s so wonderful to have a school so prepared and ready for a visit. I was once begged to visit a school on a certain day for their bookweek. When I got there they said they hadn’t told the children I was coming to keep it a surprise! When you see the fantastic reaction today, it’s so obvious that preparing for anyone’s visit pays vast dividends.

    Longlevens is a big, 4 class entry infant’s school, so I only saw half the school today. Really looking forward to seeing everyone else tomorrow!

  • I’m home from Milan – very tired. I met my wife in Nottingham as she was going there to a funeral, so I’ve had a day out in Nottingham on the way home.

    I’m now getting ready to go to Longlevens Infants in Gloucester tomorrow and Friday. See you there! I’ll catch up on Milan later. Now I need to go to bed.

  • I ave to admire Ryanair. They have paired down the flying experience to the absolutei minimum, shaving ever cost and making every penny profit possible.

    They know that planes are now just flying buses. That is the lesson BA are learning and paying for with the strikes that are on at the moment. The glory days of glamourous flight are long over and they have to accomodate the new reality or fail.

    The seats are minimal, no mechanism for leaning back. No pockets for your things. That would be extra weight. They also seem to practice a bump-landing style that I can only imagine saves a few liters of fuel and hang the customer experience. Anyway, they feeing their flights so they always appear to land ahead of shedule so the crw
    Owing cockerel soon makes you forget the landing.

    Nowadays, you just want to get on a plane and arrive ass soon as possible with as little fuss and hassle as possible.

    Nice view of the Alps, though.