You make me want to SCREAM!

Purple and Brown - Irish Jig - whoever managed to animate a piece of green plasticine who doesn't speak but clearly is Irish is a genius.
Purple and Brown - Stones

I've linked to these because I resorted to them to make me giggle and take away the angry feeling.

I went to James' parents evening tonight. He is doing very well and I am very proud of him. HIs reading age is off the scale that they use in the diagnostic tests (so it is well over his chronological age) and his spelling age is 11yrs 6 months. His maths and Science are both at Level 4. He has a little way to go in his writing, but this is due to him having to re-learn how to write, as the school that he went to for twelve months (when he was Year 4) undid all he had learned in terms of handwriting by insisting that he learn a completely different style, which involved joining EVERY letter. He is in a handwriting group now and his teacher assures me that he is confident that James will progress well in the next few months.

His teacher is great too.

A conversation with another parent left me a little bewildered though. For a start off, they clearly assumed that if there was a parents' evening at this school, then there must be one at every school on the same night.
"So do Deputy Heads not do Parents' evening then?" - said with accusatory tone.
Bit my tongue. Resisted the urge to say "You've known me for ten years, I'm not a Deputy, I'm just a lowly Assistant Head". Instead, I made the fatal error of saying that we didn't have a parents' evening because our school finished for half term yesterday. Comments about easy life were forthcoming. Then he asked why we'd finished early and I explained we had a couple of floating days that were allocated. The next bit of the conversation was just unreal...
"Right, so INSET days are just days in lieu then so that teachers can have an extra few days off a year?" (said with mild aggression).
"No" says I "Students have to do 190 days a year, staff have to do 195. Schools can allocate their INSET days where they see fit, as long as the students complete 190 days. We do our INSET in evening twilight sessions, and therefore work late on a number of days over the year - therefore, our days can be allocated as holiday"
"Right, so they ARE days off in lieu so that you can have some extra time off then"
"Nooooooooooo (biting tongue hard), it's not EXTRA time off, it's the time that we are entitled too"
"Well it's bloody inconvenient if you ask me. I have to look after the kids when you lot have holidays like that".
I rolled my eyes, sighed and got on with reading James books. Not even going to attempt to explain to that person how much work teachers do that is above and beyond, out of hours etc. Why would they get it? This is the same mentality that allows people to justify taking children out of school during term-time for 2 weeks holiday, twice a year, but would be up in arms if teachers did the same thing so as to get cheaper deals. (For the families that HAVE to do this, because of restrictions placed on their holidays from their employers, fair enough. I have no problem with that!)

I didn't think it would have been appropriate to plant him in the chops. Might have given me some satisfaction though.

Then to IKEA. More drawers and shelves. I was allowed to put them up myself too!

Doctors this afternoon for me. 4th time on the table for undignified testing in 12 months. Getting tedious now. If this one comes back clear, then at least it's down to one every 12 months instead. Fingers crossed.

Jimbo turned a corner this evening, after relapsing last night and being really not very well today. Fingers crossed. He's eaten tonight, and his temperature is normal, so maybe 48 hours was the turning point after all.

Night night.