Up to Bank Holiday Two
28 May

The second Bank Holiday of May took us to half term.

School is currently agog. We've just been through the business of SATs and optional SATs - my results don't really look so good for Year 5, a couple of the girls have gone right off the boil. We're also on high alert for an Ofsted inspection. There's been some sort of safeguarding issue and, apparently, a parent has made unsubstantiated, untrue and libelous statements about a member of staff which could trigger a mandatory inspection.

So, we're all on notice to have all marking up to date. Books are being inspected. Classrooms are being toured by members of the Board and Senior Leadership Team. It's all a bit fraught.

The latest challenge on my horizons will be writing school reports. Everyone tells me that this is an awful task first time around but gets better once you've done it once or twice. In fact this seems to be the pattern of things. Everyone tells me that it takes two to three years to get to grips with how the job is done. That's all very well but I want to do it well now. LOL

Linda came up to visit for my and dad's birthdays. The three of us had a meal together but I didn't go and visit him. I sent a card but even that felt wrong somehow. He's got no idea which day of the week it is let alone what significance any single day might have. It just feels like keeping up appearances and not accepting dad for what he now is.

I've been able to take in a couple of performances as well.

Saturday night was music night. I heard Arnaldo Cohen play Schumann's Piano Concerto (which is a work I would have avoided having heard Angela Hewitt give an excellent performance a while back) but for the fact that, after the interval, Thomas Dausgaard (who I heard conduct Nielsen a couple of years back) took the orchestra through a magnificent performance of Bruckner's Symphony No6. Fabulous music making by one and all.

I was also able to take in a performance from Covent Garden courtesy of the live relay at FACT. I'd seen Rossini's La donna del lago performed by the Royal Opera once before back in 1985 when Marilyn Horne was the main attraction. The previous night I had heard Jessye Norman singing in Ariadne auf Naxos so that was a belting two days.

The main attractions this time were Joyce DiDonato as Elena and Juan Diego Flórez as Uberto, King of Scotland. Neither disappointed. I also enjoyed Daniela Barcellona as Malcolm and Colin Lee's solid Rodrigo. The whole was conducted in sprightly fashion by Michele Mariotti and John Fulljames was mostly taken out the picture by maintaining a tight camera frame around the singers. It was a good a performance of a Rossini opera as you'd get anywhere.

And here is an important piece of science. It may look like a piece of embroidery but it is in fact a computer model of the HIV capsid structure. Knowledge of the structure of the inner protein shell of the virus should allow for a progression towards new treatments.

It's good to know that the struggle to obtain knowledge and to apply it continues unabated in the background to all of our lives.