Tying up loose ends

Well, the cat has mended and is back to his old tricks of shedding everywhere (doesn't he know it is winter?) School finishes this Friday and we are off to South Africa to visit DH's family. My PGCE student is leaving and I am getting a new one at the end of January. I will miss this one. She's gone from zero to sixty in a very short time and I am really proud of her. I would like to take just a little itty bit of credit for her progress, but I wouldn't want to take anything away from her accomplishment. School is good. I recruited another pupil so now our year 9 and 10 classes are full. This is great for a school like ours during a recession. I am getting at least two new pupils in my form in January, so this a bonus too. Glad to see the school healthier than ever.

My Christmas choir concert on Saturday was fab-really an all around Christmas experience as our audience reported by email and in the newspaper review. It was such a joy to sing Britten's A Ceremony of Carols again. It brought back such fond memories of singing it with Bruce Pullen, a former King's Singer from Cambridge, who was our conductor in the Vancouver Bach Children's Choir. I am so grateful that he came to Vancouver all those years ago. My life would have been so different if he had not. I think I underrate the influence singing in a choir has had on my life and how much it has contributed to my happiness. And this is totally self-indulgent. I hate listening to other people sing. I want to be the one singing! I love the camaraderie and intimacy singing in harmony induces.

It is time for bed and my arms are going numb from typing this on my iPad. Good night!

The Herminator

I haven't written for a long time because I have been rather emotional about the apparent demise of our lovely fluffball of a cat called Hermes.  He was last seen by us Tuesday a week ago.  I had lost hope come Monday because I thought that if he got caught in someone's house and s/he went away for the weekend, s/he'd be back and Hermes would be freed.  Alas, no.  It has been freezing cold, the ground is covered with snow and ice, and my imagination started to go wild.  Was it a fox? A badger?  Not the friendly, ironic kind from the Wind in the Willows or Fantastic Mr Fox, but a ferocious, jagged toothed rabid monster.  And our boy Hermes has no claws! He was once an apartment cat and everyone in the USA declaws indoor cats.

And then today was declared a Snow Day at school, but not until after we got dressed and braved the icy roads to get to school.  The whole website announcement by 7am routine fell flat on its face.  Anyway, this meant that we were at home all day, and at 11:30, we all went out to Beeston to run some errands and get lunch.  Lo and behold we opened our door and there in the next door flat's bay window was our rather skinnier fluffball, Hermes.  He was meowing and clawing at the window.  We tried to get into the building, but no one was home at all.  When I got home, I called the vet for advice.  She said to call the council.  The council tried to contact the landlord and the tenant, but had no luck, so I called the RSPCA.  I was on hold for almost an hour, but the lady was really nice and empathised with my rising panic.  The action man was called, but he pooh poohed the urgency of the situation because the cat didn't actually look deadish, and so in this cold snap, did not constitute an emergency.  Other tenants started coming home late in the evening and I managed to shove a tray of water under the door and some dry pellets to keep him going overnight until the property management company comes around in the morning.

Anyway, I got a ton done today during the snow day.  Moved some furniture around, put tons of piles of CRAP away, set up the Christmas tree, played with my kids. All in all, a good day.

Sianora...