Beautiful minds

This week’s Haiku Horizons prompt is mind.

 

Hyper sensitive,

alternatively wired minds

life is confusing.

 

74/366

World Autistic Awareness Week 2-8 April 2016

Chasing Rainbows

Journey to Harrogate.

Journey home.

These two pictures sum up my day.  It started with chasing rainbows for three hours on the journey to see my elderly father.  He lives alone, is getting very frail but his mind is still agile and he refuses to move closer to me.  So every couple of weeks we spend Sundays making the 6 hour (when the roads are clear) round trip to see him.  He doesn’t really like his routine being disturbed and after about an hour he has had enough and so we say goodbye.  By the time we left today the predicted stormy weather had arrived so the journey home was long, wet and windy.

I’m very thankful to be safely home again.

First day of Christmas!

Well it’s the official –  Christmas began at school today. Christmas displays are going up, we lit the first Advent candle and sang the first carol of the season!

Thought for the day!

Busy weekend ahead?

Hope you have a fun weekend ahead of you.  I took this picture as I was packing my bag  to leave work this evening.  They are all now neatly stacked up on my dining room table waiting to be marked.  That’s my weekend taken care of then.  What ever happened to work life balance?

Je suis paris

 

Children in need

Children in Need is upon us once again.  I’ve had a tricky day trying to convince  31 little Super Heroes to write stories. It would appear that Super Heroes are so busy they do not need to use capital letters and full stops!

On a more serious note this is event is very close to my heart.  I always end up in tears as I watch the remarkable young people who take up the One Show’s Rickshaw Challenge.  Their reserves of courage, humour and strength of character, against all the odds, is humbling.   Congratulations to all involved.

 

Bonfire Night

Although Bonfire Night was officially on Wednesday night, we went to our local Bonfire last night and enjoyed a beautiful display. My pictures don’t do it justice.

One of the original conspirators, Francis Tresham, was a local man. He is believed to have written the warning letter to Lord Monteagle which led to the discovery of the plot.

Why NaBloPoMo?

Professor Sir Carry Cooper, of Manchester University, one of the world’s leading authorities on health and well-being in the workplace, recently told the TES that teaching is constantly in the top three most stressful professions. “The hours are long and antisocial, the workload is heavy and there is change for change’s sake from various governments”.

So I shouldn’t really be surprised that I’ve spent the last 6 months losing the battle of work/life balance or that it took its toll on my health.  I’m glad to say that I’m back on the right track health wise and my blood pressure is going  down now (not racing up).  In an attempt to restore some normality to my work/life balance I’ve decided to join BlogHer’s November NaBloPoMo.

 

Fingers crossed!

Breakfast – the most important meal of the day

As a teacher and a foodie the one thing guaranteed to bring a tear to my eye is realising that a child in my class has come to school without having breakfast. We all know how feeling hungry can distract us and research shows that it also makes us irritable and moody. Lack of breakfast seriously undermines that child’s ability to concentrate and learn new things.

It’s a shameful indictment of our society that families in crises have to send their children to school without breakfast. More and more families now rely on food banks – more than you might think. Contributing some tins or packets to your local food bank is a practical way of offering help.