This morning, I went to a special Year 10 assembly at the High School, where certificates were being handed out to those pupils who had received particularly good reports from their work experience placings. Two representatives from one firm that had taken several students were there to hand out some certificates and the rest, fifty or so, were read out and were to be given out at afternoon registration, as well as chocolates to each class. Each child had written a work experience diary and the best of these were given £15 gift vouchers. There were also chocolates and cards for the form tutors and extra presents for staff who had helped the Work Experience co-ordinator. Overall, it was a very jolly occasion with a good atmosphere.

The Deputy Head remarked that not everyone had enjoyed their placement, but that most of them had made the best of it and that some of the award-winners were people who had not found it the most interesting but had worked cheerfully and capably anyway.

You know, Year 10 is the only year in the High School where there are no public exams (unless anyone is taking a couple of GCSEs early). Maybe that was the reason the kids all looked so cheerful? I also couldn’t help noticing that no one was either too fat or too thin – that is, there was a wide variety of sizes and a couple of them were slightly on the chunky side, and lots were very slender as young teenagers often are, but they were all well within a healthy range.

Could it be that something is going rather right here?

The Sage turned off the light and stood, hesitatingly, by the window. “It’s hot” he said, “but I don’t want to let in the mosquitoes”. “At least they won’t be drawn by the light” I answered. “Just by the scent of our warmly trembling bodies.”

“I’ll just open it a couple of inches,” he decided. “Good call,” I said approvingly. “That’ll keep out all those three-inch mosquitoes.”

He moved into my waiting arms. Later, I woke and looked at the clock. It was 20 minutes after I last looked. I had been woken by a whining drone. Not a bee, nor Bertie Wooster, but a marauding mozzie. Too tired to get up and look for it, I huddled the duvet round me, only letting my face take its chances.

Within minutes, I had to throw it off entirely before I slid wetly out of bed in a pool of my own moisture.

The mozzie fed well last night.

I was exchanging emails with a friend last night – she commented on my quick reply and I said I’d been at the computer already, reading blogs, so had answered straight away. I got this back (the subject was a question of law).

Did you never think of using your quick wit in the court room for………..money?
Its razor sharp! do you have your own blog then? Can’t keep up!!

I’ve been wondering ever since if there was a part-hidden meaning. Indeed, I wrote back er, is there a hint there? Has someone outed me?
Not that it’s a secret.

But I got a delivery failure notification, which was just as well, because if she hadn’t read the blog already she would be by now, because she’d have asked what on earth I meant and, of course, Z doesn’t lie.

I don’t (although this has taken a certain effort of will) mind who knows about this blog, or whether they read it. My family all know about it, and I’ve told two friends its name, and a few others that it exists (only two actually asked where to find it). I feel just a little twitchy at the thought of people who know me reading it and not mentioning it though. It would, absolutely, be delicacy and not secrecy on their part – but I’d just like to mention that it’s all right to tell me you read it, if you know me. You can laugh at me, or say I’m dull or that I completely misrepresent myself and everyone around me, or (slightly less likely), say it is the most wonderful prose since Diary of a N0b0dy.

‘Course, you don’t have to say anything at all.

*wanders off to get some breakfast*

my body, Sir Liam Donaldson.

The Chief Medical Officer wants everyone to be treated as organ donors after their death, unless they explicitly opt out of the scheme.

Sorry, Sir Liam. If I die, those who need it are welcome to any part of my body which might be useful. But it is my body to give (by permission of my family), not yours to take. If this proposal is adopted, I will opt out.

I am a gentle and mild-mannered person. However, I do not think I would be the only one. I do not accept that the state owns my body.

It would be better for me to just stop for a while, but no, once an idea comes one just blunders on enthusiastically.

Yesterday, someone from a neighbouring parish rang to ask if I’d play a few Harvest hymns before their Harvest Festival supper in September. I said I’d be happy to, as long as we aren’t having anything on the same night. So I emailed around, suggesting a Harvest lunch on the Sunday instead.

Usually, we either do a cold meal or casseroles, baked potatoes etc. But it seems a bit hackneyed as we’ve done the same sort of thing several times. So I started to think about it, and I decided that, for a lot of people, Sunday lunch is the only time everyone in a family sits down at a table and eats a ‘proper’ home-cooked meal. Home-made vegetable soup perhaps, followed by roast chicken and then old-fashioned English puddings.

A couple of difficulties, of course. There will be a church service from 11 o’clock to 12. And there’s one standard oven – fine for 12 guests, but we might have 40.

This sort of problem is not at all insurmountable, however. I am, as ever, completely overconfident. I’ll have to see what the PCC think. They might decide I’m an idiot. Some people think so, you know.

And what delicious traditionally English vegetarian dish shall I serve? Stitchwort, Blue Witch, any ideas please?

I’ve just had the oddest telephone conversation. The Rural Dean phoned. I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting him; the last RD was a woman, so I’m sure of it.

You may know I’m churchwarden at the village church. One is sworn in every year at a quite solemn service, where lots of clergy and potential churchwardens stand up, in their benefice groups, and plight their troth. This year, I couldn’t make the service, nor any of the alternate ones. They were all evenings when I was busy or on holiday.

He explained that this should be done at a service, but in the circumstances it would be permissible to do it on the telephone. So he read out a long sentence asking me if I would carry out the duties and do them properly and in a reverential fashion and all this, and then, as instructed, I solemnly said “I do so declare”. So now I’m legal, if not quite decent, honest and truthful.

A morning spent mostly on the phone, or waiting for return calls. I don’t like the telephone much, so I feel a little edgy now, but I will trot off to the supermarket soon and carefully spend £40 so that I get a reduced petrol price for Ro and, no doubt, that will soothe me.

I do bless the internet phone. I make calls on that, so ensuring that the landline is free for the incoming call I expect. Juggling two conversations is far less annoying than finding you’ve missed a call, ringing back, getting the answerphone …

I hate our cordless phone. It was expensive, but it cannot cope with the thick walls of our house, and does not have a decent reception in most rooms. I soon got tired of resetting the time whenever we had a powercut, so now when people leave a message I have no idea what time they did so. It doesn’t work out of doors – the old analogue cordless phone wasn’t at all bad, but the digital one is useless. Worst of all, it warbles. The handset in the office beeps faux-melodiously at intervals, presumably to keep contact with the one plugged into the phone line. It makes me swear. And shout.

Did I tell you, a few weeks ago, how I shocked Al and Sarah? I was helping in the shop one Saturday, and in came the Sage. I can’t remember what we talked about, but he offered to do something helpful, so I thanked him prettily and said nice things and he left the shop.

At that moment, Travis came on the radio (Al has dreadful taste in radio stations and I hate the wallpaper music it has on) whinging, as for years, “Why does it always rain on meeee?” “Oh shut up and go away, you dreadful boring whining man” I snapped. Sarah’s head whipped round and she stared in dismay. “Well, it’s so annoying!” I said, slightly abashed, and then noticed Al looking startled too. “I hate that song” I explained. “We thought”, said Al gently, “that you were talking about Dad.”

“Oh no, how could you, nooo, I’ve never spoken about him like that, surely you wouldn’t? Oh dear. Anyway, he isn’t” I spluttered incoherently. Or words to that effect.

Oh indeed, I don’t know anyone with more moles than I have, with the possible exception of my sister. Oddly, neither of our parents had any to speak of. I’ve never liked them, but I don’t think anything of them (although it took me ages to recover from the trauma of my sister singing “I am a mole and I live in a hole” to the one in my armpit, when we were children. I mean, by ages, several decades) and whoever would think of researching their health benefits?

Someone did – it’s the penultimate item, if you scroll down. It’s not often that a random health ‘discovery’ (for I don’t know how in-depth the study was) confers a health benefit on me. The other side of the coin, that I’m more likely to develop a malignant melanoma, is no surprise, of course and I do peer at bits of me, wondering which bits I recognise, which are likely to be spatters of mud and which, although new, are probably fine – for if I toddled off to the doctor for every new mole, he would soon become tired of the sight of me – but I’m more resigned than anxious.

I don’t exaggerate their number, by the way. I’ve just counted 22 on my left forearm and 11 on the right one. But an inbuilt protection against heart disease and osteoporosis, that’s given me a new respect for the blobs.

I’ve been to the shop and laid in supplies of fruit. I’ve been to Thr3shers and bought some chilled wine. I’ve visited the bakery and bought some particularly nice bread, which I’ve eaten with cheese and home-grown tomatoes and cucumber. I’ve drunk a glass of said chilled wine.

These are my preparations for doing the ironing.

Does it occur to any of you that I’ve spent the last half-century in working out ways of making the best of things? Darling, you’d be right. I don’t like ironing at all, but I don’t much like wearing creased clothes either. I will sit in the drawing room, fruit dish to the side and board in front, television on (it’ll be a miracle if there’s anything watchable on, but hey, I’m easily amused) and I will feel, at the end, that the aftenoon has not been badly spent.

Tonight, babysitting. It’s bee night again.