The new assistant in the Finance office grinned.  I stopped waving my arms and grinned back.  “I get over-excited so that you don’t have to,” I explained.  Yes, we may be bypassing the local authority as an academy, but we’re still at risk of being scuppered by bureaucracy, and one’s personal government financial assistant going on holiday for three weeks (out of email contact), returning to work for two days and then taking another two weeks’ leave is really not very helpful.  “Most contracts don’t allow that, my daughter’s didn’t when she worked full-time,” I pointed out.  The financial director agreed.  She’s not allowed more than two weeks of holiday at a time either.  Actually, she works so hard that it’s rare for her to take more than a few days off.  And she took a whole morning, using the Head’s office so that she wouldn’t be disturbed, to track back a year through all the information that she had already given, the acknowledgements and reassurances that she had received, just to establish something that should have been scheduled already.  When she was finally replied to, she emailed me asking for approval, which I gave at once and then drove back from Norwich to the school to sign the agreement so it could be posted as well as emailed.  The deadline is Friday.  Thanks to Lynn, we caught it.

In other news … I’ve started a new phone contract for the Sage, using my old iPhone.  He is very happy.  It kicks in tomorrow.  And while I was about it, I asked about the amount of data my phone has suddenly started using.  The other assistant agreed, a friend of his has complained about TMobile, just recently, notifying him after a week or so that he’s used 80% of his paid-for data, with no additional use.  No one knew why this has happened, but the very helpful assistant showed me how to turn off yet more background data users.

Sorry if this doesn’t apply to you, but it may be helpful to some so I’ll write about it – go to Settings – Location Services.  You may be surprised at who is tracking your location.  I turned off Audioboo, Camera, Google, Homer (yes, as in Iliad and Odyssey, it’s a book app), Photos and Waitrose, just leaving on the weather, maps and Siri.  I’d already, via Settings, turned off Notifications for various apps and turned off, under Store, the use of cellular data to download purchases made on other devices, though I don’t know if that was necessary.  I’ll keep an eye on it for the next few days and see if it helps – just checking emails, which is what I mostly do, shouldn’t use the amount of data that it has been – the thing is that it’s a sudden change, since March, when there has been no change in my usage.  I sometimes surf, sometimes use maps and weather, but I always have.

I was just starting to cook dinner when the Sage put his head round the kitchen door, a hopeful grin plastered on his face.  “Um, is it all right if I meet M in 15 minutes?”  I took the dinner off the stove and said yes, of course, no problem.  And it wasn’t.  Just as well he hadn’t said that 15 minutes later though.  I’d still have said no problem, but his chops would have been hard and dry by the time he got back.  But now it’s time to start cooking again.  

Things seem to be getting busier, oddly enough, at a time when I’d expect to be winding down towards August.  In theory, I take August off.  But that relies on me having got everything done in July.

When I was at the school a couple of days ago, the Head showed me a letter he had received from a bus driver.  About a dozen buses have come to the school every day (this has now risen to twenty-two, as I’ll explain) bringing pupils from the outlying villages – within a school’s catchment area, if a student lives more than three miles (I think it is) from the school then he/she is entitled to free transport.  In addition, we have some pupils from out of catchment and they either catch a regular bus or come in one the school has laid on.

The Local Authority put the bus contract out to tender and took the cheapest bid and that means a change of contract, which is a pity as the previous firm had done the job for years and were very good. This bus driver wrote to say how well-behaved his passengers had been, never rowdy or rude and it shows what a good school this must be and he’ll miss driving our route.  And then I was in school yesterday and a teacher, who retired last year but still does a bit of part-time work and joined a geography field trip last week as minibus driver, gave me a letter saying how well-organised and executed that was.  “It makes me wish I was just starting” – as a teacher at the school, that is.

The changeover that has been in preparation for the last four years has finally taken place and the school now takes pupils from Year 6 – that is, from age 11, although the youngest children who have now joined us are still 10 years old – it was decided that it would be less nerve-wracking for the children if they came now rather than at the start of a new school year, and it would also give the school time to iron out any little problems thrown up.  The Middle Schools have closed, apart from the few pupils who are joining the new Free Schools in September (one of them has an uptake of 37 rather than the 120 they said would flock to them – rumour has it that they’re being funded for the first year as if they were full, but I don’t know if that’s true) and we have several hundred very small but cheerful youngsters holding maps of the school and looking puzzled.  After lunch, I was on my way back to the exit when I was asked for directions and spent the next few minutes pointing out the new second Music room, formerly the Careers room. “How are you doing?” I asked a teacher friend.  “Fine,” she said, “but the voices are all so squeaky!  And they’re so small, I hope I don’t trip over them.”

For next term, we will be altering the car park at the front of the school to allow for the extra buses bringing in these younger pupils (and we do have high demand from out of catchment, whence we draw nearly a third of our students).  And yes, it does mean that we’re now a very large school, 1,350 pupils instead of just under 1,000.  But we have made preparations for that and I daresay I’ll tell you about that another day.

It’s splendid that school governors have finally been given the Gove tongue-lashing.  We were feeling so left out.  Now that it’s clear that we local worthies are in it for our own ends, to feed our egos and discuss trivia, we feel – well, we feel proud.  We’ll still carry on as normal of course, claiming no expenses even when we’re entitled to, taking time off work, unpaid in some instances, to do our duties, helping to draft innumerable policy documents as required by the government and being interviewed by Ofsted who will judge our management skills.  But we’ll do it with a new spring in our step.

Oh, I did receive a benefit in kind yesterday.  I had a school lunch (vegetable curry, salad and apple crumble) and I didn’t pay.  

The Sage called to me to come quickly.  One of the hen partridges had come to show us her babies.  I’d thrown some crushed maize for the chickens and their chicks a little while ago and this mother and babies were tucking into the remains.  I took some photos but they’re so well camouflaged that they are too hard to see.  Later however, Dilly called us out for the same reason, and this time I took more photos and – well, they’re not that easy to spot, but at least it’s possible.

The mother had gone under the car.  Can you see the babies?

This might make it easier.

“I didn’t think there could be anything cuter than a day-old chick,” I said, ‘but partridge chicks are the sweetest little things you could see.”  Dilly agreed.  The mother wasn’t a bit concerned about us being closer to her babies than she was, but a few minutes later one of them followed her and the other got lost.  It started to give piping little alarm calls and she whizzed back, calling out reassuringly, to fetch it. Reunited, the three of them went through a hole in the barn door to safety.

I have no idea how many chickens we have now, including the chicks of various ages, but it must be at least fifty, and the Sage says that there are more eggs due to hatch in a few days.  We hope for females of course, but there will be more than we can cope with – or rather, more eggs in a few months’ time than we’ll know what to do with – and we will have to find homes for some of them.  And then there are the partridges and pheasants, who cluster with the others to be fed.  And the Sage says there are kingfishers by the beck.  

As John G. points out, it’s a lizard not a newt.  He’s right that a newt’s tail is not so long, but the clincher is, as any ful kno, that a newt has only four toes on each foot and a lizard has five, and this fool didn’t count them.  I’m just as happy, mind you, as happy as when I found a slow worm – which is also a lizard, of course.

Today has been jolly good fun.  It was the village festival – that is, fête and beer festival.  Last year, for the first time ever, it was rained off and the forecast wasn’t good this time.  But we decided to plug ahead,  not believing the forecast and deciding that the worst would be a brief shower that we would cook a snook at and carry on regardless.  And, in the event, it didn’t rain at all and was a beautiful afternoon.  It rained five miles down the road, mind you, but the village micro-climate kept us dry and warm.

And there seemed to be an especially cheerful atmosphere this afternoon for some reason.  Well, this morning too, while we were setting up, come to that.  I went to the church at 10 to help get out some tables to bring, and when I arrived at the green, two men were mowing grass, several people were erecting stalls and gazebos and someone else was shinning up a tree to put up bunting.  I helped put up one of the gazebos, for the children’s crafts, and was the one crawling around putting all the bits in place while other women held it up.  Which is why my once-clean jeans now have grass stains on the knees.  I was glad I’d worn old jeans rather than anything smarter.  Not that I’m very fussy about clothes I have to admit.

We’d always booked an attraction such as a bouncy castle in previous years, but last year we were let down because the people we’d booked didn’t turn up for the rescheduled date, even though they’d confirmed only the day before.  So we decided to go without and see if it was missed.  We don’t think it was, and we hope it meant that people spent the same money but on the games and other attractions.  We’ve got a follow-up meeting on Tuesday and will see what the feedback has been.

I joined in with goodwill not to mention gusto myself, having a go on all the games, participating in the djembe drum workshop and even the calisthenics done by the village schoolchildren.  That is, they did a display first and then all-comers were invited to join in.  Remarkable, I know.  This is not the Z you know and love, being one to observe and applaud normally, not display my physical ineptitude.   But what the hell.  It was fun and after all these years I finally seem to be able to let my hair down.  Probably be a one-off, mind you.

In the course of the day, I also drank beer, had a cheeseburger, drank beer, had an ice cream, had a home-made biscuit, drank beer, munched a home-made (by me) flapjack and ate a cherry cake.  The last was a slight mistake, I’ve been too full ever since.  But the Sage has bought steaks for dinner, so I daresay I’ll manage to eat something.  Right now, I’m going to see how the men’s doubles final is doing.  

Yesterday, I spent some time scything the wild flower patch near the side door.  It looked good until a week ago, but when the poppies and saxifrage finished flowering, suddenly it was a mess.  I scythed about a third of it, which wasn’t all that much but it was hot work and the mother hen with three chicks kept wandering across, probably looking for seeds fallen from the newly-cut plants.  And then I *didn’t get around to* (otherwise known as ‘was too lazy to’) clearing away the debris.  And then it rained heavily in the night and this morning, so it wasn’t until about 5 o’clock when I finally got the barrow and tidied up.

At this point I must insert a warning for those of you who are inexplicably concerned at the sight of pictures of small creatures, because I saw a newt running out of the weeds and towards the house.  Newts, at this time of the year, do not live in water but move onto land.  Unlike frogs, they then have dry skins and they look like little lizards.  I am extremely fond of newts as we had them in the garden of the house where I grew up.  I took photos, which is what I’m warning you of.

The newt hid behind a plant pot by the house and I took its picture before clearing up the rest of the mess, but then it occurred to me that a chicken might kill it, so I went and picked it up and took it to the kitchen garden.  It was quite docile and didn’t try to get away.

Later, Hannah, whose wedding reception is being held on our front field, came with the firework chap and her inlaws-to-be and her dad, to check on the layout of the arrangements.  So all is well there.  There’s plenty of room – there may be anything up to 300 people coming, so we’re really hoping for a fine day.

The Sage took the firework guy (not in a Guy Fawkes sense) and father-in-law across the field to say where he suggested everything went and the rest of us talked about the arrangements.  They wondered what the Sage was saying.  I quoted Mig’s marvellous summing up of him “...on the ball. But only the ball he was playing” and Ian, Hannah’s father and our former neighbour, who knows him very well, thought that was very astute.  And indeed, when Tim the firework guy came back, he sketched what had been suggested and we all agreed that would work splendidly.  “How will the marquee guy know where to erect it?” wondered Hannah.  But it’s all right, that’s the bit of the field that we’ll mow.

While with Weeza the other day, we were talking about what her children like to eat.  To put it in context, I’d said that it’s a good job that Gus isn’t at all fussy and enjoys his meals, because he’s a naturally skinny little boy and has been ill a couple of times recently and if he didn’t eat properly then he could become too thin.  Weeza mentioned that they were having fish pie for supper and that was a particular favourite of Zerlina’s.

Their childminder makes it too, sometimes.  However, a week or two ago, z was disappointed when she was given her helping and found that it was missing a vital ingredient.  “There aren’t many ways in which you spoil your daughter,” Weeza was told.  “But you do put prawns in your fish pie!”

There’s a little boy whose parents take him on holiday several times a year.  He seems to have been everywhere, that four-year-old, skiing, on safari, across the Atlantic – but his mum and dad don’t put prawns in his fish pie.

I’ve been using my phone to dictate emails and texts recently and have found this useful, although of course one has to keep an eye on what is typed in because it can go a bit haywire on occasion.  Just now, I was signing off with ‘Regards’ – and it put Guards.  I deleted and said “regards” with the accent on the re.  It put Re-guards.  I pronounced it properly and clearly the third time and it was printed correctly.  I am duly chastened.  I shall work harder on the proper pronunciation of the English language.  I’m also quite impressed, to tell the truth, that it differentiates so accurately in such small ways.

Having said that, I thought that I do speak rather loud and clear.  I haven’t always, but Kenny was quite deaf and I soon learned to speak up so that he could hear me.  And my mother suffered from tinnitus – she had acute hearing in fact (and any time anything was said behind her back, quietly, she picked it up word for word) but its clarity was masked by white noise.

I find it sad that clarity of hearing diminishes as I get older.  I’m in reasonably good nick but there’s no climbing back up the slope, though it isn’t yet relentlessly slippery.  I’ve always taken care of my hearing, keeping out of too much noise and I’ve been known to take earplugs along if I expect a concert to be particularly loud.  I do listen to music with headphones but not for too long at a time and I keep the volume low.  All the same, although I don’t have tinnitus thank goodness, I don’t have the keen hearing that I used to appreciate.  I’ll never hear another bat, that’s for sure.  Though the bluebottle flying around in the room right now is quite annoying.

I almost started to write an earnest post this morning, but fortunately I came to my senses and did no such thing.  You come here for sweetness and light and ha-ha-ha-ha after all – or I do, at any rate.  Things in the news rarely insert themselves.

Having got up very early this morning, about 4.30 (and I’d been awake for ages), I was tired enough to go back to bed a couple of hours later and then slept in – it was after 9 when I got up.  As I came in here clutching my breakfast (dry toast and black tea, darlings, I’m so dull), I muttered “I’m all behind!” and found myself thinking “like a cow’s tail.”  And that reminded me of a conversation I had with Pam and Peter about expressions that used to be in common use and now are rarely if ever heard.  Old saws, clichés, common expressions – I think that many of them have been forgotten or at least not passed on to younger people, in some cases superseded by jargon that lasts a few years and vanishes again.

Advice to take your coat off indoors, or else when you leave you “won’t feel the benefit,” for example. Isn’t that a brilliant one?  It always did amuse me, but I hardly ever hear it now.  When was the last time we referred to a baker’s dozen?  I wonder if children now have any idea what that is.  We mostly use teabags, so ‘one for each person and one for the pot” has gone by the board – well, teapots have too, come to that.  Although mind you, now many of us make coffee rather than use instant, I suppose the expression could cross over to that, not that it has.  Interesting that we can be bothered to dispose of coffee grounds but that tea leaves are too much trouble….having said which, I’ve several tins with loose tea in, but that’s because I like different sorts of tea.  I’m afraid I don’t bother when it comes to straightforward builders’ tea.  And when it’s just for me, I only occasionally use a pot, even though it tastes better poured from a pot because the leaves have swirled around and released more flavour, I usually put them in a one-cup infuser.

Then there are words and phrases that come from books, have been used through several generations but probably have pretty well vanished.  Most of those from the reliable old-stagers, the Bible and Shakespeare come into that, despite Mr Gove’s efforts to rekindle reading of the Authorised Version by having one put in every school.  But there are also everyday words with a literary background, such as gamp for an umbrella, which you never hear now (well, I wouldn’t put it past the Sage.  He still calls a coach a charabanc).  Or words from history – my mother’s grandfather referred to a policeman as a peeler, she herself said bobby.  Apart from the occasional reference in a harking-back newspaper to ‘bobbies on the beat,’ that’s about gone unless you’re well over 50.

Oh darlings, help me out here.  I could think of loads of examples earlier on, but now my mind is quite empty of thought.  What do you think?

I’ve got several postsworth to write and am almost too tired to write at all – but I’ll switch my brain down to standby and let my fingers do the work.  I’ll come back to most of it and just tell you about today.  I assume you want every minute detail of my life?  Darlings, I love you and I don’t expect you to read it, I find it remarkable that anyone does.

I sent a text to Weeza asking how they all were – Phil after his bike ride and Gus with his croup.  Phil had a great time.  He cycled to St Ives (Cambridgeshire, not Cornwall!) on Friday, via Norwich to see the doctor with Weeza and Gus, and then cycled to London the next day.  Then to London, Dunwich, home.  He was tired out last night, but that seems to have been lack of sleep rather than bike-tiredness, and they went to bed at the same time as the children.  Back on his bike this morning, of course – no, I’ve no idea how he does it.  He has never had any sports injury from it, let’s hope his knees last out.

I offered to help if wanted, and Weeza suggested I come over to look after Gus (who was expected to be napping) while she fetched Zerlina from school – it’s the first of two induction half-days at the village school.  Zerlina won’t be four until mid-August, but will start full-time school in September.  So little!  Still, she’s looking forward to it.  I said I’d got shopping to do in Norwich, and would do it in the afternoon.  In the event, Weeza and the children came too, and a good thing that was.

We parked at the Chapelfield mall, which I rather like, not least because it’s where the Apple store is – though I didn’t even glance in its direction today.  I wanted a dress for the party on the 14th – I did buy a dress this year, but I wore it for my own do so it won’t cut the mustard next time because some of the guests will be the same (it’s so easy for men, innit?).  It was agreed that we’d deal with that first while the children weren’t tired.  It was Weeza who took control, noticing two possible dresses and, while I was trying them on, going to find others.  She’s a brilliant personal shopper and I’ll take her again.  I bought two dresses and a belt and was very happy.  Then we went to get something for Zerlina – I asked her if she’d like clothes, toys or books, or sweets and she chose the last option – sweets are rarely on offer in her house.  Mummy gave the nod and I took her into Boots to choose.  We bought Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles, largely because she likes fruit and they’re round – not spherical, you know what I mean although I can’t think of the word at the moment.  She opened the tube and put one in her mouth.  She loved it.  Well, hardly surprising – Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles, darlings, what’s not to like?

We went and found a jacket for Weeza and dungarees and t-shirts for Gus, and then noticed some bracelets as a surprise extra for z (65psworth didn’t seem that generous a present) and went home.  All jolly successful, the children were delightful and Gus hardly coughed.  As I strapped z into her car seat, I said “you like your sweets, don’t you?”  “They’re delicious, Granny,” she declared, and kissed me.  On the way back, she suggested that she should keep the rest for later, “for snacks,” but then decided to give Weeza and me one each, which was very generous as no one had suggested she should.  “Natural good manners,” I complimented her mother.

I was suddenly tired on the way back here and, a couple of miles from home, opened the windows wide for cold fresh air as I was quite concerned that I might nod off.  It’ll have to be an early night and I’ll tell you about other things tomorrow.  The penalty for an early night is being wakeful in the early hours, but I usually am anyway so it’s better to sleep while I can.