I cried listening to Wogan yesterday morning. I only started listening in September, on the one day a week I drive to work, with a journey time under 15 minutes, and if I was crying in the car, what of the people who have listened for 27 years? I do like having the car on Thursdays so I can also listen to Chris Evans on the way home, which tends to be a longer journey. It's uphill.

In a Christmas card this year, Tash ( a mention! - that'll be fifty quid please) said she was a newcomer to my blog and found it 'tremendous value'. I should think so, seeing as, like the NHS, it remains free at the point of use. Maybe Matthew could work out some system that is means tested and takes out a certain amount of cash from someon'e account when they read. Or, even better, when they don't, to encourage them to do so! Aha!

Its the day after the last day of term, and predictably in a household of two teachers and two school children, we are all ill/exhausted. Amy has vomiting last night, diarrhoea this morning, so she has eaten nothing and lounged around doing mindless tasks - blowing up balloons, making a pass the parcel, getting me to sew patches on to a piece of fabric to be a Cinderella skirt. I have a sore throat - unsuprisingly at the end of a term of 6-7 year olds and have found Immodium to be a great invention. H and R have just come home from tennis, swimming and cutting holly and ivy down from in the woods for a craft activity at church tomorrow. R was going to BUY holly from the farm shop! Such a city boy, he thought it was immoral and or illegal to cut holly down from trees in the public domain. The ethnically Romany people who run the farm shop would only have cut it down themselves and charged a fiver for the service. Packed him off with a pair of secateurs and a carrier bag. H is now putting her clarinet together to practise Silent Night which she is playing tomorrow with R accompanying on guitar as part of our Messy Nativity. We are having a roast dinner, and seeing as some members of our housegroup struggle to manage french bread or cheese when we have a ploughmans, I dread to think of the logistics of serving a Roast to upwards of 25 people in a youth centre with one domestic oven. I will get some mulled wine in a flask and lie down under the pool table until someone says dinner is ready. I have a tennis date at 2pm, so lets hope we're not waiting for the turkey to defrost all afternoon.

I drove home through horizontal snow on Thursday night from the works do, which was held in a De Vere hotel in the middle of the countryside not far from Curbridge, home of the murder mystery production of a few weeks back. The hotel was lovely, we were in the old manor house bit, and the service was excellent, food fine but the portion control was so tight they counted out the peas. You know how it is, the more you pay for food, the less you get on a plate. I left at 11pm and heard the next day that some of our party remained til 1am - no wonder they looked a bit worse for wear on Friday.

Friday was a nice half day at work - nice to get lots of chocolates and a couple of bottles of wine and let the children go home at 12.30. We did fraction baubles and they really liked it, and it gave them a chance to show off the skills they have learned in 'Clever Hands' sessions we have had for the last month - cutting, colouring, using a hole punch, still need to work on tying knots. We finished our third of the Allan Ahlberg Gaskett family books, they are great fun books for around 7 year olds, still nothing as good as Billy bonkers by Giles Andreae or Mr Gum by Andy Stanton - if you not yet bought my Christmas present, Amazon vouchers will be great thanks.

Nick Sharratt is our new author focus for next term, the display is up, along with clean backed boards ready for next term, a new Maths display area and a French board in the pipeline. Being in H's classroom for a few minutes yesterday inspired me, along with the extra money we have been allocated to spend on stationery, my lovely LSA went and ordered £50 worth of laminating pouches, so finally I will be able to create some more learning displays to make the classroom a better learning environment. I was so inspired that I went on to Sparklebox and cut out little hands to help with handwriting while watching Jonathan Ross getting nowhere fast with Hugh Grant who came across as being very dull and having no life.

I got a great Secret Santa present, I got the comedy present from the resident joker, I will try to work the scanner and scan it in for you to peruse at your leisure. May be some time, as involves leaving the warm fire in the lounge with the Christmas tree and laptop. I intend staying put for next 14 days and nights. Have done the online shop for food so should technically not need to go to the Co-op even. Amanda has gone out sledging with Ang. She was excited and then told me she did not know what sledging meant. Surely no one is that deprived and uneducated? She must be extracting the michael, right? Everyone has heard of a sledge! Well, clearly not. Despite my motherly advice to wear a coat ( it being 0 degrees) she just in a tracksuit. Ah well. Rome not built in a day.

Got a new phone, finally parting with my beloved Nokia for another Nokia which is shinier and more complex. R has set ' We built this city' as the ring tone. Good eh?