A smart start to the day

This morning Tommy had his binding ceremony to become an apprentice of The Skinners Company, which is one of the ancient livery companies in London. These days like most livery companies all their work is in education and charity, and nothing to do with their ancient medieval trade of being furriers. Gavin is a court member and Tommy is apprenticed to him so they went to the ceremony together. I wanted to go but my car was being collected for its service and MOT and so decided it was too complicated to change that. I took this photo at home before Tommy rushed off to the station to get the train to London, the light was poor at 8.30am on a wet day.

Unfortunately this week there are train strikes all week. Tommy nearly missed his carol service in London last night because of the cancelled trains, and he was lucky to get there today without problems. Tomorrow is the only dry day all week so I was planning to go to London to photograph the Christmas lights but most of the trains are cancelled tomorrow, so I cannot get in to London. I am fed up with these train strikes now.

When Gavin was asked to be chairman of the governors at school it was a premature appointment, as usually the chairman is retired from his full time job, but Gavin was asked to step in as the current chairman was ill and could no longer carry on. The chairman at the time had only been recently retired from a very successful legal career and was very active and fit, yet sadly he developed motor neurone disease which is such a horrible and debilitating disease. Sadly he died last night, which has been very upsetting for all who knew him. We saw him last summer when although he was wheel chair bound he was very strong in spirit. 

It has been another wet and dull day, I don't like the boring weather at this time of year!