Chairs and lights!

Well, had a quite a relaxing weekend all in all, except for the usual chores. Did a bit more Christmas shopping, wrote most of my Christmas cards, bought a very cheap set of LED Christmas lights from Focus to go round the outside front of the boat although I'll never compete with some of the boats seen in A and B pontoons. The marina have organised a 'decorate your boat' Christmas competition and certainly some boats are desperate to win the family meal proze at 'The Marina' restaurant or even the 2nd prize bottle of Champagne! We have inflatable snowmen families, flashing lights all over the place being blown around in the increasing wind this evening.

This morning the temperature was a normal winter 2 degrees and struggled to get above 4 degrees but this evening the wind and rain has come in which has had the added effect of raising the temperatures to about 8 or 9 degrees.

Recently I have had my attention drawn to the world of newsfeeds! It has been brought to my attention via a couple of readers that they have newsfeeders that alert them to my latest musings, well, as the saying goes, if you can't beat them - join them! I have now set up feedreader and several new canal feeds have been added which bleep at me whenever new items are posted, (thanks to my neighbour Andy for his help with this!) It does mean that I have to be careful as obviously people actually read this dribble I post! This has also become apparent from some communication I received from Granny Buttons, who has posted a few items and links from my blog with personal repsonses.

The lastest dveelopment is that I have at last finished a slight re-arrange in my saloon on board Khayamanzi! Every so often, I feel like a change around and have now cleared the saloon a little more by moving the pot plant, (I know that sounds silly, but on a narrowboat even a pot plant takes up considerable space!) and purchasing a leather vibrating massage chair similar to the one seen above. This has had the advantage of being able to loose the footstall as this chair has one built in which can be activated by pulling a little lever on the side. An excellent offer on at the moment in Focus DIY stores for these and I can now confirm that they fit easily within the 2 foot width of most narrowboat doors! (although minimal and easy assembly is required.)

Please take note: if you are ever passing my boat and the whole boat is rumbling with a low vibrating sound - do not disturb, (unless re-filling my wine cabinet,) as I'll be in the midst of a massage sitting on my massage chair!

Just had an email from a teacher friend in London saying they hope I have a good last week at school. Well it might be her last week, but for me, I have another 2 weeks to go without even the luxury of an inset day on the last day of term. 2 weeks trying to keep 36 over excited 10 and 11 year olds ON the floor and OFF the ceiling; now take fun of me when I have a long summer holiday, even with the hgolidays it's amazing how many people don't want to be a teacher - it can't be that easy then!

Next Sunday, I'm hosting the Save Our Waterways de-brief meeting at my school. Teaching in Rugby, (which is central in the country,) means that I volunteered to host a meeting next Sunday whereby all the local organisers of the various SOW protests across the country are going to meet to 'de-brief' from the phase one protests and then discuss and plan the next stages of the protest for February.

Anyway, this week my Head at school is away for family reasons for much of the week so I will have to juggle the full time class responsibility with pacifying upset parents - no mean feat as my senior teaching colleagues and friends who read this will understand and sympathise. One wise teacher at my current school once said that if we were able to teacher the children for 4 days a week and the parents for the 5th then we would make some progress - very true when half the problems with the children are as a direct result of the children seeing and hearing parents who blantantly don't support the school so don't see any reason why they should either!! I could retire tomorrow if I got a pound for every time a parent phoned to complain about their darling getting told off and started the phone converstaion with th ewords, " I know they're no saint but......." there then follows a tyrade of anger relating to the fact that their darling was ever dared to be told off, still, I guess fashion accessories can do no wrong whereas children can and do!