just another morning here

Wondering about joining a union. I simply hadn’t got round to thinking about it until now, but everyone’s been talking about it today, mainly because Unison, which a lot of our staff belong to, is striking next month. The strike seriously affects our school, which is due to close for a couple of days, as it can’t operate without the TAs. I think that being a member of a union is a good idea, simply because if anything happened you would have the union’s backing in terms of insurance/legal help etc. More important than ever when working in a special school like ours where you are more involved with personal care of children and you are regularly working with children on your own, one-to-one - you are potentially in a fairly vulnerable position should anything happen to a child in your care.

I’m not sure, however, that I particularly agree with striking. Especially when it affects the children. Even if I agree with the issue at stake (pay, in this case). Then again, is there anything else one can do that has an effect? Does striking itself have the intended effect? So - even if I did join the union should I/would I strike?

Anyone got any comments?

One of the posh private schools in town is having its 350th anniversary celebrations this year, and as part of that, through her cello teacher, Anna had the opportunity to go for a masterclass today, with Morwenna Del Mar, an ex-pupil of the school. There were about 12 students, apparently, and for a couple of hours they played and heard constructive criticisms of one another’s performances. Then they sat and listened to her play a recital as well. Anna came home absolutely exhausted but definitely enjoyed it.

After a fairly manic morning, I had a nice afternoon too; spent most of it in our light room at school, learning how to do specific activities for the VI (visual impairment) programme with one of the children in our class, which was very interesting. Still really enjoying work generally, even though it doesn’t make it onto the blog very often.

Steve’s afternoon could have been interesting, but for the fact that he never listens to a word I say, so was sat outside a private school waiting for the afternoon to finish at 3.30pm. Quite unbelievable, given that he’d only taken her there an hour beforehand. The recital itself was only due to start at 4.30pm, which I had told him - and Anna had her phone so was just going to ring him when it finished in any case. Not to mention the fact that the info letter was hanging around in the kitchen for weeks beforehand, never mind while he ate lunch today - so he could have looked at it! So huge for that one!

The other two didn’t have anything remarkable today, will have to wait until another day to write about them

In more ways than one, it’s felt a very long week. I’ve done a number of training courses at work, one ‘Twilight Session’ around Person Centred Reviews that went on until 8pm, an emergency First Aid session, and then another that was two days of Team Teach - all good and necessary but pretty tiring.

The rest of the time it’s been work and family life as happily but manically as usual, or perhaps even more than usual due to various things - but anyway, I feel extremely glad to have made it to the weekend. We’re all fairly tired here, so very much looking forward to a break over half term.

The blog itself was down for a few days; I lost a post over the weekend but it wasn’t very interesting anyway; mainly about Saturday’s musical activities. In far fewer words: Orchestra in the morning, which Josiah had second thoughts about … then a Suzuki group lesson in the afternoon which I dreaded but actually turned out really well, when we couldn’t go into the building so had the al fresco version.

Then if I’d had a blog I would have written about Sunday’s hillclimb; Steve came 2nd in his class again

So due to the blog issues, I’ve ended up with a Wordpress upgrade, I have to say that so far I quite like the new version. Does seem very different but I think it’s ok. Everything seems to be working now, at least, which is nice

Despite being up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night with a sick son (actually I must confess that Steve did all the dirty work with that) my first day at work was good, again, thanks for all the well-wishes Today I was working with a group of 5 - 7 yr olds with varying needs/abilities - only a couple of them with any verbal language so very interesting. Lots to learn but generally I think I’m going to enjoy it. Steve stayed home with Josiah, who seems fine now, thankfully.

After school Abbie went to a friend’s house for tea, while the rest of us did a mad dash on a couple of missions. Steve went off to do some work-related errands, while we went to pick up a bassoon form the county’s musical instrument hire service. A while back Anna decided that she wanted to learn yet another instrument. Steve and I tried to stall her for a while but then we discovered that you could hire a bassoon (her chosen instrument - because it is wind and therefore very different to her cello, but still in the bass clef) for £20 for the year. Bargain! The lady at the music hire service place spent twenty minutes or so showing us how to put it together and take care of it. Anna also found a friend at church who plays bassoon enough to help her out with the first few notes this evening (handily just round the corner from our second mission), and has lent her a book to start off with. We have also potentially found a proper teacher but we’re trying to encourage Anna to work at it herself for a while first - I might be earning now but still, the more she can do herself, the better.

We met up again for the second mission, which was to go and install broadband at my parents’ student house. Thankfully it was relatively simple, so didn’t take too long. It was late enough by the time we’d finished, though, for us to get fish & chips for tea! I’m roasting the chicken tonight anyway, otherwise the rest of the week’s menu will be out of synch. Chicken sandwiches are nice in any case

Abbie came home; Joe had a bath, Anna played the bassoon, the phone rang a few times, I played cards with the girls, we all chatted, and now we’ve slumped in front of the telly for the evening (watching 24 Series 3, only a few years behind the rest of the world). I think I am quite tired …

Started very early this morning dashing down to the workshop to pick up a car, since mine had ended up there on Saturday in the course of a rescue mission for my parents, who broke down on their way here, dropping my sister at University. Not the start to her year that she had imagined but luckily they were coming here rather than anywhere else in the country, as it was relatively easy to sort them out (in the first instance anyway, Terry hasn’t looked at their car yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!).

Steve’s dad is on holiday for a couple of weeks, and Terry our mechanic is ill with a horrible inner ear thing that means he can’t stand up, so we were awfully short staffed today. Meant that we had to give up on the home ed group trip we were meant to be going on but hey ho, that’s life.

Once the girls had gone to school, Josiah and I ended up at the office for the day, which was fine - we chucked a load of stuff in a box and de-camped there quite instead (as long as I have internet I’m happy!), the phone didn’t even ring until 11am so not too strenuous.

Joe did violin practice and then some of his Roman lapbook project; today he wrote out a few vocab words for a flappy thing in the lapbook, and we learnt about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius too - looked at lots of pictures online. The whole Roman thing is making Joe want to go to Italy, he keeps saying that would be a good Home Ed trip to go on (the Roman Baths not good enough!). Went home for about an hour to scoop Abbie up then back to the office for the end of the day.

Oooh look, we’re even named on the Motor Show website! Not that the Guildhall shopping centre website generates that much traffic, I shouldn’t imagine, but nice to get a mention anyway. If anyone local is in town on Saturday or Sunday please come and say hello to me/us, we’ll be behind the little church in the middle somewhere.

Today Steve and I went to Thruxton on a ‘work plus hangers on’ trip. Steve, Russ and Terry all drove a Porsche, a Ferrari, and then a single seater racing car, while the rest of us watched. Terry’s sons and I all had a fast lap as passengers in an RX-8 because it was an opportunity we couldn’t miss! It was a great experience, Steve loved it, as did the others too I think! They were scored on their drives, and I won’t go so far as to mention numbers, but suffice to say Terry did the best, and we will be making sure his certificate ends up on the workshop wall somewhere! We had dinner on the way home, too, making it a really nice day out. Many thanks to my sister Esther who looked after most of the children at home (one of them is at a sleepover with a friend), making it possible for me to go and take photos.

The full set of photos is here