Week Four in the bag with some lovely warm weather! How long can we cling to summer? I had to go to Leeds on Thursday night to the hospital. I always feel very important catching the train at commuter time. Everyone has somewhere to be, dressed up! Some folk have made the move to thick winter coats and dark-coloured suits, whilst others like me are dragging it out still in summer wear. I do think this week may see a change though, looking at the forecast!

I got a new music speaker this week. We already have many gigs lined up for the choir this term, out and about and our large amp was broken at the end of the year. I am quite proud of the new speaker and made a point of modelling how it works for the children in assembly on Friday. Technology is an amazing thing! The Megaboom is nice and compact and will fit in my rucksack when we go on tour.  Mr Popple was a bit mean to me before the assembly as I was faffing about and stressing about how to make the volume louder.  He could not resist a sarcastic comment about the visibly large volume buttons on the front that I had not noticed! I told the children, Bluetooth still blows me away. How does it work? Isn't it great!  Every day, I still feel amazed by the fact that I can send something to print to the photocopier, and it is just there for me!  Just like that! In the pool, I now have waterproof bone-anchored headphones. So I can stop the boredom of lane swimming with tunes.  It is amazing what we have these days. If you are as old as I am, the remote control on our TV used to be connected by a wire and that was revolutionary at the time! 

I did have another giggle the other morning, another example of how times have changed. Mr P and I were doing some monitoring in classes the other morning. We were looking to make sure the children were writing with accuracy – foundational skills and if the staff were picking up on it, if they were not. In one class, the children were writing the start to a story. The teacher had given two-story starters and the children had to pick one to write.  The classic story starters were there – “One day” and “Once upon a time." This little person was having neither. This was because, to them, every story starts with season one. So, this child wanted to start the story with Season One! Makes sense – does it not?

Friday was a fun day, with us all in our non-uniforms to raise money for Grumpies community project to make the Christmas Lanterns. Danny, the artist from Grumpies, is coming in to do some workshops with us in November. The day got even better after school. Miss Connell and I went to the family community harvest festival in church straight after school and met up with some of our children. Then we met up with an old family who recently left our school for high school. Later that night, we went to a very, very entertaining evening at the church along with Mrs Pinder and Mrs Hart, our SBM. It was an old school assembly with a very fun sing-along bingo in between. Again raising money for the lantern festival. Proper community event. I dragged my son along, who loves to perform, and we all had the best time! We ended up sitting with a world-famous sax player, who performed in the interval, and it was very fitting that the last song was Madonna’s “Like a Prayer!” I think the vicar enjoyed that one!

Now it is time to focus on our own Harvest Festival on the 6^th October. More Cauliflowers fluffy than Like a Prayer!