Easter Hols

Carol is currently on holiday from Milton Keynes Academy. That doesn't mean she is sitting around drinking cups of coffee and doing nothing much. She has no end of marking to do. I drove over last Friday afternoon in the car to pick her up and she came out with a load of stuff on a trolley which we loaded into the car. Several large printer paper boxes with test papers to be marked. She has been doing this marking every day since and has now, on Wednesday evening, got a few sets still to mark. Those people who think a teacher's life is easy should think again. Yes, they do get quite a lot of holidays, meaning, time away from teaching, but Carol spends a lot of time planning lessons as well as marking and then there's a lot of paperwork to be done, assessments and so on. And having to go to meetings and having observations. Just don't mention the name Michael Gove as he's not the most popular man around any school at the moment (he is Secretary of State for Education.) Not a great deal of time left for other things such as going out, meaning, time away from work.

We had the car booked in for it's MoT, at a garage in Mount Farm, Milton Keynes. We were given the name by Laverne Robb, who is a friend of ours at Milton Keynes Christian Centre. It was he who came to our aid the other Saturday when the car wouldn't start in Tesco's carpark in Kingston. We were ripped off good and proper when we took the car to a rather suspect garage in Bleak Hall and so we were determined not to be treated the same this year. The car had to be at the garage at 8.30. Having dropped it off we phoned using my mobile for a taxi and waited most of the morning to hear the result of the MoT. The car failed, unfortunately. Nothing too much wrong. It needs new tyres and one or two fairly minor things to get it through it's test and they rang to tell me and that they could do the required work on it and it would be ready. So we will await the phone call tomorrow late afternoon and then get another taxi to go and collect it.