Beige and black

One of my earlier, but favourite, paintings.

Am very tired. Hence resorting to blipping one of my canvases - bit of a cop out, nothing to do with ego, just couldn't be arsed thinking!

Ministerial visit went well yesterday - Beverley Hughes, the Minister, was fabulous - very down to earth, engaged with the kids really well. Very positive experience for all of us, especially the group of children who got to speak to her for half an hour, and perhaps more-so, the parents who were invited in to talk with her - who were 'grateful' for the experience of talking to a Minister of State (their words). I guess its easy to take for granted that we speak to these people, in fact we often seem to have politicians crawling all over us (and my previous experiences have not been positive) - but for our kids and our parents, it really was an experience that they possibly will never get again.

(Politicians in my opinion, and my experience, are gracious when they want something, and jolly unpleasant when they don't give a toss about you. When we were facing closure 3 years ago, 2 MP's visited us in the space of 6 months - one was local and made a comment about ghetto areas and ghetto schools - yes, his constituency was really the 'posh' end of town! The other walked into the school 40 minutes late and the kids and the staff had stayed beyond the end of the school day to welcome him and be around whilst he toured the school - but he dismissed our invitation to tour the school with the comment "Once you've seen one school, you've seen them all". I excused myself from the meeting at that point, because I could not stomach being pleasant to the man when he had dismissed the possibility of our school having something special to show him. Rude, just bloody rude)

Today has been a mixed day - prodded and poked at the doctors AGAIN this morning which was unpleasant. BUt I had a lovely day in school and the kids have been great - a good day for me is when I feel like I have got through to at least one kid about something important - aside from teaching them I mean. I had a chat with a Year 11 girl who is fundamentally a good kid - I had caught her smoking just outside the school gate in full uniform last half term - she came for detention tonight, in good humour and contrite. We talked about the situation - she acknowledged why I was upset with her and I had a little 'breakthrough' with her in that I think she finally realised that I want the best for her - she even smiled - which is sometimes a rare thing with teenagers! That made me feel good.

Comedy moment of the day was watching one of my colleagues who was just about to jack his car up when it was parked on an incline - he was going to jack the front end, when the back end was down the hill (I suggested he move it back a few feet onto the flat - I think he thought I was winding him up originally)....and then he couldn't figure out his locking wheel nuts, or how to put the jack under the car (again, I think he thought I was taking the mick when I said there was a specific jack point under the body for the jack to slot into)- me and my friend Lisa were stood in a supervisory role (p***ing ourselves laughing but not prepared to get our hands dirty!) and eventually we enlisted the help of the caretaker to help out! (it was dark so Lisa pulled her car round to act as mobile spotlights!)

Most entertaining :-)

Off to sleep now.

Nighty night