The Week That Was

One of the hardest things about blogging is trying to find something exciting to write about in a rather dull week. It’s the art of making the ordinary seem extra-ordinary.

A relatively quiet uneventful week really, the highlight of which was teenager’s first UK school report in three years.  When we left the UK back in 2009 we were warned by teachers at her local comprehensive that we would be doing our daughter’s educational prospects irrecoverable harm by moving to the US.  Fortunately this does not appear to be the case – her school report was positively glowing and she has coped with the transition from her small US high school to mega college style sixth form very well , with a work ethic and academic standard that appears to exceed many of her comprehensive school contemporaries.  I’m not saying the US system was perfect, far from it, but in our particular case I can’t help but think far from being detrimental to the teenager’s education it will prove a positive asset. (This may well say a lot more about her previous comprehensive school than the marvels of a private catholic high school education.)

A second highlight was another pub quiz team win, a nail biting evening with victory clinched by a single point.  Low lights included the dismal weather, a rather poor attempt at Christmas shopping, a trip to the dentist to have my very expensive US crown admired and prodded and eventually filed down, and an overheating cooker – which quite naturally failed to perform the same trick for the domestic appliance engineer when he came to examine it. 

The Christmas shopping is now on hold; a present ordered on line to save a trip to the shops arrived in pieces and had to be returned – to the shop, defeating the whole object. The cat has been cooped up in the house because of the weather and has perfected the art of jumping all over the furniture and chasing scrunched up pieces of paper  around the house – my rather desperate attempts at keeping him occupied. Almost barricaded into the house by a wall of leaves outside the front door I finally lured the cat out in a rare moment of watery sunshine and we did a bit of gardening.

All in all  a rather depressing week, which ended on another low - an over-indulgent Friday night trip to the pub resulting in a very groggy subdued weekend. Another Saturday night eating cheese on toast, drinking a cup of tea, and watching the X-Factor – how to make that sound interesting?

An evening spent with a delicious plateful of heart warming welsh rarebit,  accompanied by sips of refreshingly leafy Earl Grey, whilst watching a pointless exploitive exercise in media manipulation.  

At the least the creative writing course is coming on well.