I Only Went To Do Some Laminating!

I'm writing this on Monday afternoon, which is unusally late as I had a very hectic weekend.

I've had a bit of an upset this morning.

Monday is the day for getting the resources required for the week photocopied and if necessary, laminated. The laminater is up on a mezzanine floor above the library and food technology area where there is a huge two storey expanse of window. I'd just gone upstairs when I heard this terrific bang. Knowing we sometimes have birds crash into the window, I thought I'd better go and have a look outside. I can't bear anything to be hurt or sufffering, so I had to go and look.

As soon as I stepped outside I could see it. There in the flower bed was a female sparrowhawk, she was moving a little but I didn't think it likely she was going to survive the encounter. The ground was frozen and we have a number of cats that come around the school grounds. I felt if she was to stand a chance she needed to be placed in a box, where nature could take its course. 

I called  through the office window to the school secretary who fetched me a box, while muggins picked up the bird. Big mistake! Before I knew what was happening, its talons of one foot had fixed through the palm of my left hand. It was a very scary moment. Had she been up to full strength she could then have ripped them straight out, tearing my hand apart. Thankfully I was able to free them one by one and place her gently in the box but her neck was very floppy and I didn't hold out much hope.

Sadly a few seconds later she died.

I know she lived by killing and eating the other lovely little birds we have living in the grounds but it made me very sad that such a beautiful creature had met an untimely death like that.

I felt it best to explain when I went back to class why it had taken forty minutes to do a few copies and some laminating andIhad come back looking like I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and with a bleeding hand. Why do these things only seem to happen to me?

Whilst sitting here, on my own, in a quiet house I just heard something being put through the letterbox. I went to investigate. It was a note saying the Betterware representative had called to collect the catalogue he'd put through the door a couple of days previously.

Why didn't he knock? We don't have a bell, so no excuse of it not working. I hate these things. I have enough junk come through in the post as it is but at least I can put those straight in the recycling bag but these! You know some poor soul has had to pay for them, trying to earn a few extra pennies from any possible commisssion on sales. So I feel really bad if they don't get them back because I can't find where I put it, I feel bad that I don't buy any of the rubbish in them but honestly, that is not helping  if they just pretend to try and collect them and push a note through saying they will call again tomorrow, what's that about?

Like the rest of Britain it's been very cold here for days now and I worry about Abigail and Emily Chickens,.... my girls.

Idon't like my girls being out in this cold but although I am near to insane when it comes to spoiling my animals I do draw the line at having them in the house........ at the moment. Although I have considered putting heating in their house.

What I have been doing is making them a nice bowl of hot (and then suitably cooled to the right eating temperature) porridge, every morning. Oats raise the body temperature in chickens, so I suppose it does in humans. Hence the advertising slogan of Ready Brek, 'Central Heating for Kids'. You mustn't give chickens oats in the summer.

I've worked out a plan for them if we start getting any further into the minuses. They don't move when they roost, so I could set up a couple of bricks on the dining room floor, which is tiled, put a wooden bar across them and then putnewspaper underneath to catch anything that pops out in the night. Then as long as we don't go in the kitchen and put the light on to disturb them they can be cosy and warm.

I've not told Mike of this idea yet as he may not be too happy with it and I don't think the girls are helping their case as they've stopped laying now.

Due to my worrying about the birds in this cold snap I had to go and spend a fiver on food for my garden inhabitants, so now my trees are festooned with fat balls for my tits, if you'll pardon the expression.

Last week was just busy all the time. Practising for the Christingle Service, getting ready for the Christmas Fayre and taking photos for the school calendar. Then at home preparing for a visit from my daughter who lives in Germany.

There is a big problem at school with one boy, his behaviour is terrible and if anyone thinks that a child with serious problems is identified and automatically given the help they need, dream on.

In our Literacy group of  8 SEN children, not one has a statement, that means they have no hours of extra paid assistance. I looked round at them this morning, every single one was unable to sit properly in their seat, they were rocking backwards and forwards, side to side, swivelling their heads and rolling their eyes, tapping things, jumping up and down and two of the boys were humming, whistling, rapping and shrieking. It looked like a ward in a mental asylum.

I was trying to get together a dislpay for one of the boards but the only way the lesson was going to continue was if I went and sat by 'Major Problem Child' and helped him. As soon as I sat by him he calmed down and started working but there just isn't the budget for me to be his constant mentor, I have lots of other work I have to do in supporting the teachers.

Last Monday I had had to do the same, we were writing EA words and to get him started on the sentence about lionseating meat, I told him I'd held a lion cub last year. He was very impressed and was happy to sit back down and work if I would tell him more about it and promise to bring in a photo of me holding the cub.

What you have to remember is this is a child who knows little love at home, is left wandering the streets and has very little of anything.He was thrilled when I said the next day I'd brought the photo in. I don't think many promises are kept in his life. He said he would keep it forever and put it up on his wall. I found that very touching and said perhaps he should cut me off the picture in case I scared the rest of his family.

It really made me think about the rows I've had with my daughter in the past, which have made me feel I must be a bad mother, although the rows were usually because she wouldn't listen to sound advice that would keep her safe and happy. At least I cared and did the best for my children, even if I didn't always get it right.

I had a lovely time with her when she stayed on Friday night and during the day Saturday when we went shopping. I wish she didn't live so far away but she is with someone she loves and as long as she is happy then that's ok. She hopes to be back here for Christmas, so fingers crossed.

Having to cope with the children we  have at school is similar to being an undertaker, it's a really bad job but it's necessary and someone has to do it. We just wouldn't do it if we didn't feel some empathy with the poor mites . In private you use what is sometimes know as gallows humour, making jokes about things that aren't really funny but it's just a way of dealing with the pressure and not going under. After the lion cub photo, all the staff in our year group confessed to having the same mental picture, of years later 'MPC' being arrested for some crime and the police going into his bedroom and finding the walls covered in pictures of me!!! What a thought.