Term finished last night with the Christmas House Supper: an evening of food, booze and schmoozing. Rob got to sit with me and my tutor group, who didn't succeed in embarassing him, and only managed to drop me in it once - it was a good evening, I think, and Rob's still talking to me now, so hopefully that augurs well.

Much of this morning was spent sleeping, in typical "first day of the holidays" style, and since falling out of bed around midday I've cleaned the bathroom and mooched around tidying the flat - I'm just soooo rock and roll! Tomorrow I'm off for a haircut and some shopping. I hope that the holiday gets more exciting as it goes on, or it's going to be a boring few weeks. Harrumph.

Now off to lurk through the Confetti message boards laughing at the bridezillas whinging about their weddings. It keeps me amused, anyway!

Picture the scene: Rob and I sitting on the sofa, Your Cat sitting on Rob's lap.

Me: Ooh, My Cat licked Your Cat's bottom today!
Rob: Well, that's what you get... [pause to stroke Your Cat affectionately] ...when your bottom tastes of STRAWBERRIES.
Me: [gobsmacked] Strawberries?!
Rob: Oh yes, I lick it all the time.
Me: I can't believe that you've just said. I am SOOO going to blog it.

It's been a stupidly busy week at work, what with end-of-term report deadlines springing up every day. School have, this term, converted to an electronic reporting system, which is causing no end of teething problems, not least because there are only 8 general-use computers in school that have the software, and the system crashes the moment anyone tries to do something complicated. Still, new technology is by definition new and therefore better, or so they say...

Thursday saw Julia and I heading off to the local riding school to claim some horse muck, and digging is progressing at a good rate. Photos via the dirty hoes and on flickr. Needless to say, I feel a little achey from the digging but happy from being out-of-doors and not writing reports.

Friday was my birthday, so to celebrate we took the Guides to Birmingham to visit the Christmas market. We travelled by train, which is always amusing, and took so many parents with us that the ratio of adults:children was 1:1 - the girls headed off with their families and us leaders got to wander around with no responsibilities... that's the sort of Guide trip I like! We then headed to the pub (hurrah for its late licence) and ended up looking like this:



Now, though, there are just three days of term left, all as busy as the week just gone: I'm just looking forward to sleeping on Thursday!

I went to string orchestra this evening, for the first time since February. In fact, it's the first time I've played my viola at all since February. And we were playing Bartok, which had lots of notes, and now my fingers ache.

In other news, I have new wellies for digging, although it was too wet for digging today.

'Tis the season - one of my favourite things about Christmas. Read and enjoy. Just don't have a mouth full of drink.

Gardening needs appropriate footwear, and ebay's come up trumps. I don't think they'll arrive in time to do exciting digging this weekend, but soon I'll be happily wallowing in mud in new blue wellies. Whoooo!!