I’ve now lost interest in the strictly final.

Antiques Roadshow Creepy Dolls Special is a bigger nope than usual.

The time a treecreeper flew into our window & got knocked out and I looked after it until it flew away. Here it’s doing its tree creeper thing on the basket I gave it. #sundaypixwings

Menopausal sweats are unpleasantly like the heat intolerance you get with thyroid toxicity. Not happy memories.

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

A few days ago a local charity delivered a pile of presents to school for families finding Christmas tricky. Without fanfare. Quietly. Since then my TAs have been working late wrapping them. No one has asked for overtime. Everyone will get what they need. This is gentle, behind the scenes goodness.

I have been very stressed this week. Running a primary school as Christmas approaches requires the hypervigilance of a spy, the steadfast calm of an astronaut, the management skills of a hostage negotiator and at least 5 Christmas jumpers. #transferableskills

The Christmas safeguarding escalation seems to start earlier every year.

Now eating cheese snacks, drinking sherry and watching Hogfather. Like it’s Christmas and I don’t have 2 weeks of mayhem to get through at school

In the last 24hours the @CalaisAppeal fundraiser total has increased THREE TIMES OVER. Like the Grinch, my heart is growing 3 sizes today ❤️❤️🥹🥹 Thank you so much to the good people sharing & donating - please keep passing it on! Love wins!!

I went to the supermarket. I didn’t like it. Wouldn’t recommend.

Including selection of books that terrified Teenage Bird

Magi is such a lovely word. Goes well with “lo”.

There has been a really excessive amount of Friday in this Friday and quite honestly it’s time it piped down.

I have done 3 training webinars back to back today. 2 were safeguarding. Now my brain is itchy.

It’s maths assessment week in school. Delighted therefore to discover this in the main entrance, written on a tissue: #strongstandard

I am feeling very sorry for myself today. Is it too soon to start ticking off events on the way to the end of term?

I may, against the advice of everyone, have “overdone it” today. But how do you know until you’re overdone? Yes.

Christmas films lead me to believe that if I do a good enough job someone will say, “Great job! Because of that, I’m sending you to New York/Paris/The Serengeti/Lapland” Yet to happen. Disappointing.

My blood pressure is too low for the hospital to let me home. Could someone please just mention: Ofsted School budgets Safeguarding? That should sort me out nicely.

I’m reading this post surgery and on some drugs and if reality could just stabilize itself and everyone act normally and stop saying oddly hallucinogenic things, that would help enormously

I bought these little jam pastry twists in the Eurosupermarket. They taste so much like Sister Monica’s damson jam tart from primary school that I’ve gone all proustian. I’ve also eaten too many.

Last night, the Cat raised the compost bin. A salmon skin was left on the kitchen floor. Judging by the smell in the kitchen this morning, this adventure involved the toaster 🤢

This week’s #onlyconnect triumph: shouting the lyrics at the tv, in stereo with 21yo. As were you, probably

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty is on BBC4. My most favourite ballet of all, all time. So beautiful.

@99thredballoon.bsky.social new best friend

This sounds *amazing*. If teenage me had known about this…

Lobster Mac and cheese is a weird thing to be a thing. Lobster is expensive, delicate flavour, delicate taste. Macaroni cheese is gunk you shovel in your face.

It’s ok. Motivation found me. Oh, wait. That was stress. Either way, stuff got done. ☑️

Lost: 1 motivation. Medium sized, resembles righteous anger, answers to “Right. Let’s get this done”. If seen, please send back to me. I’ll be on the sofa.

@madeleinerich.bsky.social They’re back, Madders. I thought we’d stopped all this 🐝

A thing of rare and true beauty at the end of the day! #iykyk

I mean, clearly not the rain that was forecast. On the “Will the children learn anything today?” Scale, rain is -5. This is -257

What???? This is unexpected

Went out in the dark to wrap up the tree fern in its winter blanket. Fell in a hole. Caught my first winter glimpse of the Pleiades sparkling through bare trees. 7/10. A mixed bag.

Tonight’s #onlyconnect triumphs: none. Nothing. Not a sausage.

We seem to have jumped straight from Autumn Leaves to ‘Oh my god there’s not enough time to get the Nativity sorted’ without any intervening weeks in which we can get actual work done.

Is there anything bleaker and more soulless than grey Christmas decorations? Grey.

Poor Balvinder. She’s dancing sad. It’s made me sad. #strictly

Drinking pisco sours tonight, Bluesky. Bloody lovely.

Indoor play today. Twice. On a Friday. *very tired face*

Supervision today. It’s amazing and valuable but bloody hell does it leave me tired and jangly. I know I have to work through but blimey. Too many hoo boy moments this time. I’ll be better in about 48 hours.

Absolutely gone at this story from Harris on FB, the last sentence is pure Atlantic coast magic.

My school made it to the finals of the Early Help awards. We were up against some amazing charities so I’m ok with not winning outright. It meant a lot. Sometimes recognition is really nice.

I can also tell you that the more you write the word mumps the more ridiculous and incongruent it sounds. Mumps.

Not on my school bingo card for today: mumps. And yet here we are.

Tonight’s #onlyconnect triumphs: Kent and yelling ‘hello! My name is…’ at the telly

We keep getting tiny slugs in the bathroom. The bathroom is 2 floors up. This can only mean one thing: ROOF SLUGS. We must have a colony of highly intelligent and invasive roof slugs bent on world domination and slime distribution.

The traditional pre-parade last-minute sewing on of the Scout badges has commenced.