• Today, Obama becomes the President. It seem a long time since he won the election. In Britain we do things much faster!

    However, to show thre are no hard feelings between us and our American cousins, we are having a tea party to join in the celebrations. We are getting out the best china for the first time in at least ten years, my wife is baking a cake and my mother is making Norwegian waffles – I suppose I should make some cucumber sandwiches!

    Yesterday was supposed to be Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Well, let’s hope that today marks the beginning of a new era – with Bush and everything he stood for out of the way, it can surely only get better?

  • fox
    I just managed to get this very grainy picture of a fox that appeared, nosing around my pond. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might have been a fox that had my frogspawn last year, as there was a bit of disturbance on “the beach“, which is the shallow, pebbly part that lets the frogs get in and out easily.

    I’ve decided that this year I’m going to protect my frogspawn with chicken wire, see if that helps. It may be the newts that eat the frogspawn, but I’ve seen no sign of newts nor of newt spawn.

    This old fox looked a bit mangey. His tail was a short pointy stump, most of the hair having flallen out. His fur was blotchy too. I know there are foxes around. I saw one of the run of with one of the chickens that we brought with us. We dicided that this wasn’t the best place to have chickens.. I do miss having them. Chickens are great listeners!

  • librarystcyresI spent the day talking to the year sevens at St Cyres Comprehenasive School, Penarth nr Cardiff yesterday. The school is split over two sites, being an amalgamation of two schools. Eventually a new school will be built and everyone will go to the same building.

    Both sites are certainly showing their age and, if they are going to be demolished, it’s obviously not worth investing much in the buildings. On the St Cyres site I was attracted by the old signs on some of the doors. This is a picture of the Library door – now it is known as the Learning Resources Centre and has as much space for technology as it has for books – reflecting the way we all research these days. The Polystyrene letters are very 1960s. They’ve been painted over several times and the letter A has been bashed, but the sign still works, even if the name of the room has changed.
    do-not-drop
    I was amused by the sign that greets you as you enter the school. I mentioned it as a starting point for a story – maybe richer parents have started taking their children to school in helicopters?

    I find it interesting visiting Welsh schools. They have been moving away from the pressurised English curriculum and constant testing for two or three years now. I do sense a different atmosphere in Welsh schools. Everyone seems more relaxed and happier and children are there to learn and not to meet targets. When will we go back to educating our children in England and stop this ridiculous pursuit of targets that are only there to produce statistics whose only purpose is to be massaged to make politicians look good?