Lunch takes flight

Ok, not really lunch. I think the days of me joining the shooting fraternity down here are far far away (and would probably require a sex change too). My mam has a lot of trouble with pheasants in her garden - I think they eat the buds off the pinks, or something like that. So anyway, to me they are rather more like vermin than like lunch or like rather beautiful if daft birds. Though the pheasants here seem less daft than the ones bred for shooting in Northumberland - this one spotted me coming a mile off (hence the slightly blurry shot).

So today, after a rather disturbed night, saw a slightly rushed and no-breakfast-inside-me start to my teaching career (can you call it that when you're not trained and don't get paid?) First the six year olds, then the eight year olds, then the seven year olds (minus Conor and his English-speaking pal) for half an hour each. Today was mainly about getting to know their names, explaining that I'm not really a teacher so we will mostly be playing, and finding out what they want to learn in English. Numbers and colours, it seems, despite my trying to interest them in learning about sport, animals, or movies they might have seen. Except for the Simpsons - that seems extremely popular (especially the rude bits) and, for some reason I haven't quite got to the bottom of, country dancing (ie Country and Western, not strip-the-willow).

But no-one was particularly naughty, everyone can say hello and what their name is and then say goodbye and see you next week. So that's ok. And I have a neighbour in each class, who I can torment.

Meanwhile, Conor seems to have learned his poem for tomorrow - and voluntarily did loads of homework tonight (which was a bit annoying actually as I quite wanted to listen to the radio...) and I have purchased the necessary for the launch this weekend of Project Windmill, the new provisional name for the project previously known as rodent-rid.

All that, and a very long phone call with my mam, has left me rather exhausted and much in need of a good book and a duvet.