We went up to Cleethorpes for the weekend and had some lovely seaside walks. This is from Saturday, when we went to Donna Nook and walked the 2 miles out from the "shore" to the actual sea edge, to see the seals. The photo is taken from Ed's phone, as I forgot my camera, so sorry you can't really see them. When we go up for Christmas, we expect to see thousands, rather than hundreds, and actually on the sand dunes rather than in the water. So watch this space.

From Donna Nook we went on to Mablethorpe, where Ed snapped this lovely little Donkey called Snoopy. We had lunch and then went to the seal sanctuary, where a 3 day old baby grey seal had just been brought in, having been abandoned by its mother. So cute!

Our garden is tiny, which is just as well since neither of us cares much for gardening. But it's enough to provide refreshment to the eye when looked at from the kitchen door!

This is the garden proper, looking down into it from the heights of the deck. Note the borrowed view into the garden behind.

This is looking higher and to the left, to show next door's tree in autumnal colour!

We went to Winkworth Arboretum, near Godalming today, to see if the trees were showing their Autumnal colours. They were!

International Food Week, or Let's Make a Mess with Breads, went very well in Nursery. Here is the flat bread being cut and spread.

Cutting ciabatta into a million pieces!

Polishing off the brioche. Today the grand finale was pumpernickel.

I hope you can't recognise any of the children, but you will notice that we are quite multi-cultural. I had to do a language count for some staff on a course for helping children with English as an additional language this week and discovered that our approx 450 children in the school as a whole speak 33 languages between them.

The most popular by far is English (luckily!) then in descending order: Tamil; Urdu; Bengali; French; Turkish; Gujerati; Panjabi; Arabic; Luganda; Portuguese; Albanian; Cantonese; Fante; Hakka; Igbo; Malayalam; Polish; Somali; Aklanon; Bulgarian; Chichewa; Czech; Hindi; Japanese; Kiswahili; Kurdish; Marathi; Norwegian; Russian; Sinhala; Spanish, and Wolof.

Talking of multiculture - Eid Mubarak for tomorrow!

Courtesy of Marion, who learned her lesson as baby sister well!

The Rooster

A farmer had been out one day to buy a brand new stud rooster for his
chicken coop.

Back at the farm the new rooster struts over to the old rooster and
says: "OK old fart, time for you to retire".

The old rooster replies, "Come on, surely you can't handle ALL of these
chickens. Look what it's done to me. Can't you just let me have the two
old hens over in the corner?

The young rooster says, "Beat it, you're washed up and I'm taking
over".

The old rooster says, "I tell you what, young stud, I'll race you
around the farmhouse and whoever wins will get exclusive domain over
the entire chicken coop".

The young rooster laughs. "You know you don't stand a chance old man.
So, just to be fair, I'll give you a head start", The old rooster takes
off running and about 15 seconds later the young rooster chases off
after him. As they round the front porch of the farmhouse, the young
rooster has closed the gap between them, being only about a couple of
metres behind the old rooster and gaining fast.

The farmer, meanwhile, sitting in his usual spot on the front porch,
sees the roosters running by. grabs his shotgun and, BOOM! - blows the
young rooster to bits, sadly shakes his head and says: "Darnn,that's
the third gay rooster I've bought this month".

Moral of this story?... Don't mess with the OLD FARTS - age, skill, and
treachery will always overcome youth and arrogance.

Asked if we wanted to participate in a 25 mile walk for charity, we said "Yes please - we'll marshall!"

The intrepid walkers set out from Shalford, heading along the Pilgims' Way until it joined the North Downs Way. Meanwhile we hopped in the car after seeing them off and went to the next stop at Newlands Corner, on the A25, where the footpath crosses the road.

They had already split up into groups. Mark was out in front, attempting to run at least part of the distance; this was the second group going on. Des was already lagging and Nancy had fallen off the back of the pack, but was only going to the halfway point anyway.

We saw them all through and headed on to Ranmore Common, the halfway point - longer than halfway in distance, but with the steeply undulating section ahead. Mark was the first to arrive again, and partook of some fruit gunk with grimaces of distaste, but he averred it was good for stamina...

Most of the pack stopped to eat a more conventional picnic, and the group was augmented by more walkers intending to complete just the back half of the trail.

Nancy and Hugh dropped out at this point, and Hugh went on by car to marshall the pack through Box Hill, whilst Ed and I went on to Coombe, to provide the final checkpoint/refreshment stop there.

There was a short pause during which I attempted the photograph the view, but it didn't really come off - not enough light by then.

Then the pack started coming through again in parties. All were very cheerful, especially as they'd just heard England beat Australia 12-10 in the Rugby World Cup!

We then did what no marshall should ever do - we thought we'd got everyone crossed off the list and packed up and went back to Kingswood to meet the walkers coming home, completely forgetting that Des, added at the bottom of my list and lagging ever further behind the rest of the walkers, was still en route! Mea culpa! We offered to go back for him - it wasn't far by car - but luckily Hugh was more reliable than we were and had gone to Coombe to see him through. He offered him a lift home, but Des was determined to complete the whole walk.

Here he is seconds after arriving back, with our cheers still ringing in his ears and a welcome pint in hand.

The day was completed with a fish and chip supper, watching France beat New Zealand on TV and the brilliant music of the Rupert Bear Cats Jazz Band, with Sarah on vocals. And I believe tidy sums were raised for a number of pet charities, including Multiple Sclerosis and MacMillan Nurses.

Next week we are having an International Food Week at school, to tie in with this week's Harvest Festival and to encourage parental participation.(Not that they can actually come in and participate, if they haven't got a full Police Check certificate, but that's by the by. We hope they may send in a national dish.)
Now we haven't actually got all our children admitted to nursery yet, but next week is the lull before we get the "Summer Birthdays" - the week when we start to pride ourselves on having got them all used to the routines and boundaries, before the youngest ones arrive and throw the spanner in the works, wetting themselves and crying for mummy and not knowing how to share, etc!!!
But we didn't want to risk full on "cooking" just yet. What to do? We have always had lots of fun making sandwiches in the past, so we've hit on the idea of "Bread from around the world" and will be making sandwiches from all kinds of European bread, and dipping Eastern-style flatbreads into "exotic" spreads.
I'll let you know how we get on!

October, you may or may not know, is Black History Month. As I am both EMA and History co-ordinator, our new headteacher asked me to come up with some themed assemblies to celebrate.
Now if one googles for Black History, as was naturally my first resort, most of what comes up is American and biased towards human rights activists. Which is all very well, but we are English, and a foundation/KS1 school and I feel to introduce some issues to 4-7 year olds would open a whole can of worms they aren't old enough to handle yet. Further more, a great many of our Caribbean origin children are actually mixed race and our African families are keen to emphasise that they live here now, not in Africa.
Whilst mulling the whole thing over, I went to Croydon Library, and saw they had put up a series of posters produced by Nubian Jak which I could easily use, as they included portraits of black achievers of English as well as international fame.
I sent for some posters, and came up with four assemblies, about:

Olaudah Equiano 1745-1797, who wrote a book about his life as a slave and worked with William Wilberforce to get slavery abolished in Britain.

Samuel Coleridge Taylor 1875-1912, a famous composer, born in Croydon, whose music achieved international acclaim.

Claudia Jones 1915-1964 who spent her life on civil rights issues, but also founded what became the Notting Hill Carnival in London, which is still celebrated annually.

Kelly Holmes b 1970, who won two Gold Medals in the Athens Olympics and now works with Sport for Schools and Active Girls to encourage youngsters into sports activities.

I feel quite pleased with my selection, covering the centuries and different areas of excellence.

Well, my celebrity moment aired yesterday, and can be seen online at BBC Inside Out by clicking "Watch latest Edition in Full" in the North East region, until next Wednesday.
It's a 30 minute programme, split into three items, and mine is the last, so you will watch 10 minutes about the driver of the derailed Virgin train, and 10 minutes about women in the police force, before you reach the 10 minutes in which I appear and talk about wedding dresses.
I was quite pleased with the way I looked - I sounded as if I knew what I was talking about...
Ed said he was surprised at how deep my voice sounded, and what a Northern accent I have. Well, why would he have noticed those things after only 33 years together?