Hello everyone. I hope you are well. Thank you so much for all your responses to last week's tale of mayhem and disaster. I am so sorry that I didn't get back to anyone. It just never occurred to me to open my laptop last week. I was coming home, watching football and falling asleep, then, the next morning, doing the same thing all over again. So, I wanted to briefly touch base and let you know that we are ok.
It has been such a joy to read all your comments and I can't thank you enough. No word on any kind of Crowdfunder action yet - we have to wait for the police but our hours will return to normal next week so people can get out and about for the whole day if they want to. At least no one is coughing now - well not as much anyway. It's also a blessing to turn the big fans off - they were beginning to push me to a small but significant nervous breakdown.
All continued prayers are appreciated. There are a couple of big meetings next week to decide the way forward. I wouldn't mind a bit of wisdom and winsomeness - neither of which I usually carry around in spades so a touch of the miraculous would not go amiss.
We took the ferry to Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall this morning - having been promised some sort of heat bomb (it rained) but we had a walk in the forest which was peaceful and restorative. It was disturbed a few times by a class of 35 children on what looked like an end of term nature walk. Actually, although there were only a classroom's worth of children on the rampage, there seemed more because of the support teams they have now - First Aiders, parents, classroom assistants, people at the front with clipboards, people at the back with clipboards and a lady with a blanket in case it got too much for anyone. When I went on school trips, I seem to remember that we would all come tumbling off the bus, to watch the teaching staff waving cheerily on their way to the pub. "You know where we are if you need us." Actually, I remember teachers smuggling drink under our coach seats on the way back from the French Exchange hissing at us - "If they ask if you have any knives - say no really loadly but don't volunteer any other information" On balance, I think the set up is better now.
Anyway, hoping normal service will be resumed soonish - sorry you don't get off that easy - I will be back to share the usual drivel before you know it.
And thanks again chums.
I hope things go smoothly over the next few weeks. It's a huge thing for anyone to take on board ~ literally losing all your work overnight unexpectedly is akin to a bereavement.
ReplyDeleteI never went on any foreign school trips. But in my first teaching post, one teacher organised day trips to Calais for parents to buy wine. Pupils aged 14 plus were allowed to go, unaccompanied, for "the educational experience" but not allowed to bring back any bottles. However one boy spent his afternoon filling his pockets with products bought from the Calais sex shop. Unfortunately he showed his mates as they were on the coach waiting to go through customs. The coach was delayed for 3 hours. No mobile phones back then, so nobody in the uk knew what was happening, and assumed the worst. The headmaster was summoned from his bed at midnight to find anxious parents waiting in the school carpark with a police officer.. The booze trips were banned forevermore...
I wonder what that lad is doing now (company director, Tory MP, time in Belmarsh...)
When I was on the French Exchange in the second year, I stayed with a demure daughter of a farming family in France. When she came to England, it seems she had been let off the leash. I had lads in my class begging me to call her off. We never knew where she was. And she didn'tever want a bath so Aged Parent actually went so stairs and ran one for her then hid her clothes until she got in! Happy days
Delete