Great news!

well, if you loved the book anyway. Kenneth Branagh is planning to make a film (starring Kate Winslet) of one of my most favourite books "The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society". I am so looking forward to it!!  Its one of those books that I've given to other friends as a present because it is just such a good read. Amazon sells it!!!

I've spent the morning precariously perched at the top of the stairs on a wobbly stepladder painting the stairwell. It did get my heart racing on a few occasions as I did the splits across the top of the stairs trying to balance one foot on the hand rail so I could reach the top far corner. And at my age too!!! It used to be so much easier!! I have done one coat on all but the long wall, but I felt it was silly to risk it any longer today as I was getting stiffer and stiffer - I'm never going to reach the actual glosswork on the stairway up to the attic; that has to be done by someone else I imagine. Tomorrows another day.

There is a very heated debate at the moment on Jeremy Vine about allowing parents into the classroom to assess and observe teachers performances. Whoa, it is very heated! Whereas I agree that children need good teachers, and there needs to be more supervision available for especially newly qualified teachers, I'm not sure that the children would feel happy at the prospect of mum and dad being at school!  And is this really the best way to improve teacher performance??
When I was in sixth form we had a teacher who was not performing at all. My feeling now is that she was probably suffering a breakdown at the time, and required professional support and treatment. I was in a situation where the class needed to pass with great grades in some cases, in order to get into universities etc. We were not getting the lesson time we needed so the solution was for us to stay behind after school and our retired deputy head teacher came back in and gave us the necessary lessons.  This was only actioned due to parent and pupil pressure, and I suppose no-one wanted to hurt our teachers feelings as she was someone who normally did the job well. Perhaps I would have got a higher grade if we had had more tuition but in the end we all did well enough. In this instance it was us, the pupils who decided it was time to make the situation known and get something done about it. Perhaps that is also an option?..............
Sue xx