The barely green of my bluebell pictures of early Spring has given way to the overblown lushness of high Spring, with everything burgeoning apace. We went for a walk round Tetney blow wells last weekend. Here is the church, glimpsed through the wild flowers.

Mum and Dad surrounded by greenery and blossom.

We attended the funeral of Alice Barnes, our brother-in-law Tom's mother. It was a lovely funeral, for a lady who made no impression on the world in general and achieved little in the way of career, material or financial reward, not even a successful marriage, but who was greatly loved and sadly missed by the children and grandchildren to whom she had lovingly devoted her whole life.

Stacey bravely read a poem praising her qualities as a Nan and everyone recalled her sense of fun and love of a "nice family day out."

It gave us the opportunity to meet our first gt niece, young Alexa, now four months old and due to be christened in June, when the photos will be more cheerful, I hope. She's a little sweetie - the image of all three of her brothers and going to be another redhead.

I've come to the conclusion that I prefer my Shakespeare small and intimate; we went to see "Hamlet" at The Warehouse in Croydon last night - a cast of about a dozen crammed into a very small space indeed - and it was excellent.

The company was "The Factory" and the gimmick is that they perform Hamlet at least weekly, in different "secret" locations, using whatever space and scenery might be available, and with a castlist that changes, with performers learning multiple parts and finding out by lots just before Act 1 who they must play that performance.

Props are provided by the audience, moreover, and the MC throws in a "limiter" at the beginning of Act 2 and subsequent acts.

So last night they performed on the set of "Clocked" (see picture above) with one of that cast, Jonathan Oliver also playing, as Polonius!
In Act 2 the cast swapped seats with a dozen people from the audience and performed the whole act from amongst us; in Act 3 they had to conform to the rule that one cast member must be seated at all times, but there must never be an even number of seated people; in Act 3 there always had to be an unscripted cast member on stage, silently but appropriately supporting the action; in Act 4 the audience had to all change seats and in Act 5 no actor could sit down!

It sounds rather silly, and in some ways it was - especially when they used the daft props regular audience members had turned up with - but in fact the focus was faithfully kept on the words and emotions - there was no messing about with tricksy characterisations - and it gelled beautifully. Even when Hamlet and Laertes had it out at the end with make up wands, "wounding" each other with eyeliner to the face, it was so believable!

A most entertaining evening - I've become their Facebook groupie, and look forward to seeing them again elsewhere.

- but here I am back and taking a break from writing end of term reports on the Nursery children. You may feel that writing an end of term report before half term is rather premature, but they have to be in just after the holiday for the head to review them all, get them printed and signed ready for distribution and I don't want to spend my valuable week off doing them...
Each one doesn't take that long to write, as I have all the assessment data at my fingertips, and I know all the children very well, but I have to have a brief break between them, or my brain starts to curdle! I'm approaching half way, having reached the little boy who prefers to be known as "Ben 10" and designs terrific role play props to help him maintain his character!

A large contingent from school took part in the Race For Life in Croydon last Sunday, in the baking heat. Irene and I were the only joggers from our group, and were pleased to finish in 35 minutes. Not great speed, agreed, but we kept going without stopping to walk, and it WAS very hot. We did it in memory of Arlene Brown, our colleague who died of cancer this year, and my run was also particularly dedicated to the continuing memory of Edna Davies, Mary Turner and Iris Bessant. Many thanks to all who helped me raise £100 towards Cancer research. Unfortunately, we also heard this week of the death of Alice Barnes, our brother-in-law Tom's mother, from lung cancer.