Never Let It Be said that there is no variety in my life. I went along to the coffee morning at All Saints, Paulton which is every Tuesday morning between 10 and and 11.30.  Some very nice ladies provide cake, and serve tea and coffee. We can get up to 20 people on a good day. All are welcome.

  There were two dogs who spent some time barking at each other and then we were joined by a third dog. I am not a dog person so I basically sat there waiting for the barking to die down and the dogs did eventually settle. I accepted a coffee but did not have the cakes that had been made for the occasion because I don’t do sugar bombs at any time particularly in the morning. My body instantly reacts by rejecting the food.

During the coffee morning someone bought in a half dozen pepper plants. I took one (donation). They grow to about 2′ high and the same in width

One of the ladies who was serving the coffee has a son. He is a teacher in a secondary school in Frome run by a headmaster who has certain very unfortunate characteristics. He does very little himself and delegates all the work to the serfs (teachers).  Chris is a very willing person and as a result he’s been given the equivalent of three jobs. Apart from teaching, he is in charge of computer studies as well as being head or various departments. He was asked to take over the computer side and discovered that far from sticking to the curriculum, the pupils had spent all their time playing computer games.

He had to spend three weeks of his holiday reintroducing a proper curriculum and only yesterday he had an individual Ofsted inspection from 8:45 in the morning until about 2 p.m. How a meeting can go on for that long I have no idea.

Sounds like the whole thing was analyzed to death, no credit was given to him from having taken over a virtually moribund department, the fact that he has to spend evenings doing marking. I would not have put up with that for a single second. He is a nice bloke and keen to help so I guess this was seen as a weakness. It reminded me of the exploitation of a donkey that is given such a heavy load that it eventually it breaks it’s back under the strain.

I hope that he will eventually see what is happening to him. Teachers are going to be leaving in July at the end of this term because they’ve had enough and don’t see the situation as sustainable.

We also discussed holidays. Three of us had let our membership of the National Trust lapse because we were not using it enough. With entry prices coming on for 20 pounds you might as well by an annual membership but then you have to use the facilities quite a few times before you paid the same as the annual fee for two people. We thought that day breaks exploring the local country side was less stressful than flying anywhere. Short cruises were touted as an alternative.

I talked to George the church warden whose job is to clean the churchyard. We discussed strimming and strimmers. I wondered why the cords on my own strimmer were breaking at such a rate. George said that you should never use a diameter of less than 2.4mm. He also recommended a fuel called aspen2 which evidently prolongs the life of the strimmer and is better than just mixing ordinary petrol with oil. We discussed the state of the trees and how some were growing so much that they were causing neighboring stone walls to crack.

I put £23 worth of petrol in my car and the needle barely went above the quarter mark. I dread to think how much commercial travelers put in their car each week. If you do decent mileage in a large territory it can’t be less than £200

Francoise is making progress in our garden. There needs to be an emphasis on home grown chemical free produce and we are playing our part. She is washing the pots that were used to nurture young seeds. You will see a Buddha in the background. It is spotlit at night and gives me a feeling of security for some unknown reason.

A strange feeling of calm. Save Thursday evening I have a blank diary. I can do what I want when I want to do it. I shall do some reading. I wonder if my covid ‘duties’ are drawing to a conclusion. Most that can be said has been said.

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