Z applies for a new job and is accepted!!(!)

Indeed, I have a job. 50 minutes per week and, of course, unpaid, but I am to be a teaching assistant in the music department.

Today, I had a meeting with the head of music and we talked about the department and the work she does, based on her self-evaluation form (SEFs are all the rage at present), my observations and what she wanted to tell me. At the end, having noted various things, I asked if there was anything else practical I could do...she said, humorously, that if I could provide a general assistant...so I offered. It is something that has been discussed with the Head and will happen, when someone is available with some time to be allocated, but the teaching assistants are in the Special Needs department and so those children come first of course.

We decided that I should go in and help with one Year 9 class, for the one lesson a week that she has them. After a while, we'll evaluate it to see if she feels it's made a difference, and if it helps then that would strengthen her point, that she needs a paid assistant regularly. I am looking forward to it - I used to help at the village school for years and only stopped when I became chairman of governors and needed to step back and take a more management-based and less personal role. I also helped as a parent when Ro was at the Middle school.

I thought I'd better run it past the Head, to make sure he approved, so I told and asked him - and also pointed out that I would be likely to come back to him next term requesting an assistant for all the year 9 classes, for if I have a devious plan, I make sure the victim knows about it. He is quite happy with it all - and I am confident I'll get my way here, because I'm not easy to say no to, for I look so disappointed or else so happy that people love to please me. I asked if he wants me to update my Criminal Record Bureau check (yes, we all have to be CRB-checked if we want to talk to a child) but he says he is satisfied with my credentials. Ooer, cheeky lad.

In other news, the church boiler is all right but the radiators needed to be bled, and we are not flooded, but it was a damn'd close-run thing on the coast and some people have been flooded out. A few more inches and it would have caused real problems - the Environment Agency were right to give the warnings and take action. It's been a bitterly cold day for all the people directing traffic, helping with the sandbags and the evacuations etc.

I rode my bike all of a quarter of a mile. It was windy. And cold. I should like some credit, if you please, for riding to the church and back.

And I have booked my train ticket for London on the 23rd. I shall stay with El and Phil on Friday night and spend Saturday with them, but am footloose on Friday.