Nathaniel in Matilda

I can’t believe the kind response to my 9 years of blipping. Thank you so much for the kind comments, stars and hearts. Please be reassured that the bottles labelled gin were actually 2 centimetre tall chocolates.

What a dreich day. Luckily we had Nathaniel’s school show, Matilda, to attend. There hadn’t been as much time as usual to rehearse so some prompting was required. He didn’t have a big part this time so he seemed to have learned everyone else’s lines as well, plus reminding some of the others when to go on stage. He’s not bossy about it so nobody minds.

I got the metro into town for a quick trawl round looking for trainers. Of course I didn’t get any. Instead I got a pair of pretty summer sandals to take the place of the ones which broke on holiday.

#3 daughter cooked tea. Ella arrived late as it had been ukulele practice. Nathaniel was at a friend’s. Daughter showed me the figures re teaching pay scales. The comparison betweenEngland and Scotland is shocking. She’d earn £10,000 a year more in Scotland. They have less disparity between long serving classroom teachers and management. The government has made an offer here but it has to be funded by the schools from their existing budgets. A ruse to get more schools under the academy groups - one of the criteria for forcing schools into that is it it can’t stay in budget. What an unprincipled bunch this government is.