Rowley

Time is a commodity I’m very short of lately.

Friday, we were called into an unexpected staff meeting. We’d had the call. OFSTED are coming to inspect us again on Wednesday & Thursday of this week. We only had the LEA in doing the same about two months ago! Could we please be allowed to get on with our job? Rather than keep preparing for these blessed inspections. We now only get three working days notice of an OFSTED inspection. The teacher I work with was supposed to be going to Devon for the weekend but had to cancel that and come into school to make sure everything was tidy and up to date. Bloody ridiculous if you ask me.

So I am making sure we are unrealistically tidy and organised, so the inspectors can see us as they would like to see us rather than how we really are. Don’t they realise we are working with real children? Real children don’t conform to tidy!!!!

My daughter, as previously mentioned lost one of her cats on Christmas Eve.

A week ago Saturday they were coming home from town and saw, in the headlights a cat scavenging from a bag of rubbish that had blown into the road. Catherine was sure it was Milly and jumped out to see. But the cat ran away. It then started to pour with rain. Later, when it had stopped raining, she went out with a bowl of food.

At first one of the local cats came to see the food, then , a small, black cat came nervously towards her. Catherine could see the collar with the gold bell and knew it was Milly. Gradually , Milly edged towards her, until Catherine was able to grab her.

Milly is now under house arrest. She had been missing for almost four weeks, had a head full of ticks and is as thin as a rake. But she is happy to be home and doesn’t seem too interested in going outside.

Our darling Harper died just over a year ago and as I said, last entry, we have been thinking of getting a new dog.

I became very aware that I needed to re-home a dog, rather than go out and buy a puppy bred just to make some breeder a lot of money. I’d thought through all the possibilities and decided an older dog, that no one else wanted was what I wanted.

I’ve been trawling the Re-Homing websites for weeks now. I was starting to feel like some sort of voyeuristic perv, looking at all the dogs that were available. Suddenly, there was THE ONE. Had had the worst name ever for a dog his height and shape, CHUNKY.

But we could get him to change that.

 

We went to see him on Friday. He was the only quiet dog amongst all the others he was with. He’s been in a kennel since October.

The price of moving in with us was having his Family Jewels removed, which happened today. They also took all his tangles off, which means he looks bloody awful at present. And he stinks. So as soon as he’s healed up, he’s off for a beauty treatment at the local Dog Salon.

I love him, so I really hope things work out.

Must go now and see how he’s getting on with his new bed and the cats.