Africa!

An exciting thing happened yesterday. Overnight, the swallows returned from their winter in Africa. It happened literally just like that! One day - none and yesterday, they all appeared; swooping and diving over the water and the fields and dive bombing over my head. It's a lovely sight as they are such beautiful birds and not least because they herald the start of the summer and, (supposed,) warmer weather. Right now, I expect they are wishing they were still back in Africa flying over the local traffic:

or the locals...

This gent, with his Walkman!

Whilst on the subject, take a look at Africa's hot water system:

....or the road markings....

Well, English is their additional language!

Making progress with the price for the new car. Apparently it's going in to have a valet and safety inspection middle of next week. Silly as it sounds, I just want to part of a cheque so I can feel it's mine, arrange collection and then get on with selling the Rover - I'm scared stiff of getting a scratch or anything on the Rover now which might pull the value down, I'm also extremely worried about being hit VERY heavily if I can't coordinate the purchase and sale before my 'bridging' overdraft expires that I managed to organise!

**STOP PRESS!**

Just nicked a picture of the Shogun I'm trying to buy from my bro's blog. Cheers Steve!

I'm in the middle of Mock Sats week at school - manic to say the least! Got into work at 7.45 to hear all the alarms going off and the caretaker waiting for me. Apparently he was called in several times during the night by the monitoring station as the alarm was faulty and by the time I arrived, the panel had gone blank and it refused to even re-set. A faulty panel was diagnosed and replaced but not before 9.30 - half an hour after year 6 were due to start their tests and all of us with ringing in our ears. By the time the alarm had been silenced, I'd had one parent screaming at me down the phone over an issue involving her precious daughter and a glue stick, (!?) and another boy on an 'in-school exclusion' for throwing stones at car windows on his way in, not to mention the examining body hassling me to register the 3 new children who had just arrived at our school, for the exams in May. I finally managed to say good morning to my class at around 11.00!