First week back...

Gidday,

Well, I've managed to survive my first week back at school. It's always bit of a shock to the system after a nice holiday! It was fairly painless, a teacher only day Monday afternoon to ease back into things, then lessons as usual from Tuesday. This is my favourite term by far (& not only because it's the shortest!). The sun is shining & it just lifts everyones spirits. After 2 terms of coaching rugby, my games & activities are also a bit more relaxed this term. I'm taking 2 sessions of softball a week, & have tennis on a Saturday morning. My GCSE class (year 11) have finished the syllabus & are just doing lots of revision & past papers. I lose them at half-term which is now only 5 weeks away. After my 1 week half-term holiday I've only got 3 & a half weeks until the end of term! We really do finish stupidly early this year, 28th June which is a clear 3 or so weeks earlier than state schools. Apologies to my brother, & anyone else reading this from the State sector, I'm really not trying to rub it in! Honest!!!

I had my last regular rugby game of the season last Sunday, & we lost 15-0 against Wimbledon which was bit of a bugger. We were missing a lot of regular team players though, so it was kind of expected... I got a beauty of a black eye, I'm wishing I had taken a photo of it to share with you all! I basically caught a boot in the face whilst I was on the ground. It swelled up with a decent sized egg straight away, but I iced it & was just left with what looked like spectacular crimson eye-shadow on 1 eye! It was really hot weather, about 25 degrees, & the ground was rock hard, so the match was pretty hard work. I'm a bit over rugby at the moment, the season seems to have gone on forever. We've just got a 10's tournament left next Sunday. I get a few months off, then pre-season training is scheduled to start on 4th July, which is the day I fly to South America for 5 weeks! Oh well, trekking the Inca trail at 4000m above sea-level has got to be quite hard work, so I'll hopefully return in pretty good shape! The touch rugby league starts in a couple of weeks so I'm really looking forward to that, although it won't be the same without you Rich!

Today was a really nice start to the weekend. The weather has been amazing (especially for this time of year) all week, & today was no exception. Nicola drove over in the early afternoon & we went to visit our friend Claire, who has just bought her first house in Reading. It's a lovely place, she has done well for herself. I've got a bit of marking to do tomorrow, but hopefully the weather will hold & I'll be able to do it sitting out in the garden. Speaking of the garden, it's going mad! Spring in the UK is fantastic, things start sprouting up all over the place. I've got a hop vine & I swear it's growing a couple of cm a day! I planted some giant sunflower seeds & they germinated after only 3 days. I had some spectacular ones last year, & this year promises to be even better.

Right, had better call it quits here. Sorry for the lack of pictures, my blog entries are never as interesting once I'm back at work... If you're really lucky I might start giving you some visual updates of my sunflower seedling progress!!! Keep in touch, it's always lovely to hear from you, even if it's just to say hi.