no change there then!

Just to let you know, I am going away for a short break.
The family is going camping in Northumberland which should be lovely.

You will probably not notice because i am here so rarely these days but I just felt compelled to tell you because making announcements makes me feel all important.

I assure you of this, although i may be seldom in your blogs those of you whom i hold in affection are constantly in my heart and those that i hold in disdain can have a welcome break from my seething hate hehe

Scary thought

As we reach that point that every parent loves (the beginning of the long summer break) I can't help but be grateful that my children receive a good education and that they have all achieved so much over the last, difficult, year. Sometimes schools don't notice and report on the really important stuff so I have sent the reports back with a comment that i am proud that my children have retained their sense of humour and humanity throughout another long year.

Tom deserves special praise because at the leavers assembly prior to his leaving primary school he saw another boy crying and was the only one in the school to get up, go over and give the boy a hug.

Oh yeah, the scary bits

On a global level, how few children get the chance of education
On a personal level, September brings the prospect of 5 children and five different schools. So lots of parent evenings, meetings, letters, trips, uniforms etc lol

shamelessly cut and pasted from KB, read? me?

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own journal/blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
4 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

so I make that 44 read

oh no!

I came into work early ON A SATURDAY! to use the computer to catch up.

it's iffy about posting on blogger, won't let me open google chat and is being jolly slow.

I'm am thrice cursed

they seek him here they seek him there

of late I have been a bit of a blogging pimpernel, a literary zorro. zipping in when not expected, laving in flash (although not with a flash which would be bit naughty).

I would love to Say that my erratic behaviour is due to deeds of daring do or matters of mystery and import, perhaps saving maidens or righting great wrongs.

Alas I have been here little because the mundanities of life have bested me.

I have, however, missed my blogging brethren greatly and I do feel in need of the love and the hugs I always find here.

I intend to resume my late night coffee drinking in order to be around in tune with the other side of the world.

love you peeps

xxx

someone's hero

Was busy on Monday helping my brother move house, being an experienced driver of large vehicles has it's (dis)advantages.

As fate would have it Jack, youngest son, was unwell so he came with me. Jack is something of a philosopher (for a seven year old) and as we came over a hill revealing a view of our home city he said 'I wish we could stay in this second forever because everything looks so good'

Later as we picked up the van he commented to the man at the hire company ' my dad knows everything about vans'

sigh :)