Snow Day
21 January

The snow started to come down on Friday and so school closed early.

On the Friday evening, Colin and I gathered at Roland's to watch La Traviata in a relay from La Monnaie in Brussels. I don't think that any of us would have travelled to see this but, given that it was freely available over the Internet, it provided a reason for us all to get together and have a natter over some nibbles and wine.

The presentation was not up to much. For a conductor of his distinction, I did not like Ádám Fischer's stop-go conducting. Andrea Breth's production had an idea about setting the whole story against a backdrop of contemporary Eastern European prostitution which pointed up one small aspect of the opera whilst losing all of the social and religious commentary that Verdi was making.

None of the singers was really fab. Simona Saturová made a reasonable Violetta; Scott Hendricks was a poorly sung and heavily over-parted Giorgio Germont. Our Alfredo was Sébastien Guèze, who I later discovered had been the Duke in the live telecast Rigoletto with Domingo, sounded sometimes stentorian, sometimes unfocussed but looked like a million dollars. I should like to see if not necessarily hear more of him. It was reasonably worth a trudge through the snow even if only to spend time with two long-standing friends.

I spent the weekend at home. Spent time with Ross. Enjoyed the down time. I got my maths planning, my intervention planning and my guided read planning for this week all done and dusted. I got the resources for the first two days sorted. My marking was more or less up-to-date. At half past nine in the evening, the question was - Do I want to begin looking at Year Four's snow interrupted work from last Friday morning because I just knew that it was going to be a disaster zone? I had a cup of Red Bush tea and actually it turned out not to be as bad as all that.

Come Monday morning I was up and about and washed, dressed and in my suit, bags packed and just ready to get into the car when my mobile phone went and it was school saying that the site would be shut for the day.

Huzzah! It was an unexpected bonus in terms of some time to get my ducks in a row viz a viz my NQT file. However, the first priority was to grab a cup of tea and go back to bed for a snuggle. My second thoughts were to strip the bed, get the bedding into the washing machine and then get all the ironing done. How sad is that!!!!

By the end of the day, I was pleased that I'd made good use of the unexpected bonus of time to organise. Fly in the ointment? Because I'm employed at the school through an agency, since I'm not in work, I don't get paid. It doesn't pay to dwell for too long on stuff like that as it can make you bitter and twisted.