"Red Nose Day"

Today has been 'Red Nose Day' (otherwise known as 'Comic Relief Day') The children had to go to school wearing red clothes, in return for a 50p donation.The school playground looked completely wonderful this morning - a sea of red (I love red!) The general brightness was helped by the fact that the sun was shining properly for the first time since October or so. It was great to see everybody had made an effort - there were even a few red Afro wigs dotted around. Hopefully the school also managed to raise plenty of money to go into the 'Comic Relief' pot.

When we got to Eliza's classroom we found out that she was one of six little girls wearing a red 'High School Musical' cheerleader's outfit. They were like a miniature cheerleading troupe! And the whole class were completely over-excited. Imagine it, 30 over-excited 4 and 5 year-olds - oh the joy!!

After my nice walk home in the sun I decided to clean out the fish tank because, although we've had the fish less than 2 full days, Eliza has developed a full-blown "feed-the-fish" obsession. The fish were barely visible and, whilst I'm pretty sure they were happier that way because it made it easier for them to hide from the big, scary humans, it also kind of defeats the object of having pet fish! Anyway, I had to lift the fish out of the tank by hand as the net seems to have disappeared into the twilight zone (I'm not sure who's responsible for that but I AM sure that the culprit isn't a fully grown person!) Whilst George's "Flipper" and Eliza's "Mary" didn't prove to be a problem, Harry's "Sapphire" swam around the tank at full-speed about 20 times and then proceeded to jump out of my hand. He compounded the problem by then flapping around so much that I had serious problems picking him up. Aaaarrrggghhh!

When I eventually got them back into their nice clean tank Flipper and Mary were just about clicking their heels but poor Sapphire was floating stock-still in the middle of the tank. A traumatised goldfish - conclusive proof that their memories have a longer span than the 3 seconds we've previously been told! Luckily he seemed to have recovered by the time his doting 'Daddy' arrived home from school.

Now we get to the end of school. I collected Eliza with no hassles, Harry came bursting out with his ususal big grin and then George came plodding over. "Miss Taylor's coming." Oh-oh! The teachers at my kids' school are quite elusive - only seen on parents' evenings and special occassions - we usually deal with teaching assistants on a day-to-day basis so it was a bit of a worrying statement! Luckily I'm not the kind of parent who automatically assumes my children have done something wrong (to be fair, they've never given me any reason to assume wrongdoing) so my question was "What's wrong?" George lifted his hair and showed me the HUGE lump on his forehead - it's a beauty; just above his eyebrows and perfectly central. He's calling it his "third eye". His poor teacher was very worried and really apologetic - apparently he'd been practising his dance moves for the 'Comic Relief Talent Contest' they were having in class and had managed to bang his head on the leg of a heavy chair whilst moving at some speed! He was most put out at not being able to join in the festivities for the remainder of the afternoon but I tried to explain to him that school's have to be careful and that it did look quite nasty. To be fair, I trust Miss Taylor's judgement as she's a really lovely woman who seems to genuinely care about the children she teaches. Poor George though - he missed the disco and talent contest which were the two events he was most looking forward to.

David's taken the 3 younger kids to swimming club but George isn't swimming tonight. I have a suspicion that his head may be an excuse as his enthusiasm has waned a bit lately but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt!

I just hope nothing else happens whilst they're there...