Monday 15-09-21 A Trip to Christ's Hospital

And so on Saturday it was off to Christ's Hospital, for an open day. Christ's is an independent school in West Sussex, somewhere near Horsham. I'd never heard of it before the summer, but friends of ours told us in passing that their son had been invited to apply on the basis of his musical ability. Our eldest is ten now, and so we need to choose her secondary school fairly soon. While we have some fantastic schools in Worthing, Christ's has a fantastic bursary scheme, and some children do get their fees paid for by the school; we would need that, or as close to it as makes no difference, and it is good to see how the other half live every once in a while.
Christ's is so large it must have its own postcode. It certainly is signposted as if it is a village, and as we drove in, it looked like a village. Considering there are only 900 pupils, it was massive. We were told at one stage that they have 19 rugby pitches. The buildings were impressive and old without looking old, if that's possible; the campus had an air of timelessness. And that was of course helped by the fact that the pupils, who were having Saturday morning lessons, were wandering around in their uniforms, which have only changed once since the 1500s, apparently.
It was a very slick operation, we were guided in and handed off to two Year 9s who were our guides for the entire morning. We saw the maths block, the music buildings, pretty much everything that was open. We had a tour of the boarding houses and asked what questions we had. The girls who were our tour guides were confident, pleasant and outgoing, and were a brilliant advert for the school in themselves.
Apparently the selection process is very rigorous: for the eighty places available, there are five hundred applicants. If that was a cross-section of the general public, I would like those odds, but we are talking about naturally bright kids and the output from prep schools, so there has already been some pre-selection. We'll have to see how that goes. We need to go back in October for some IQ tests, and then if she passes that she will be one of two hundred invited back for the residential in January. We've had to pay a £50 fee for the experience, but even after just the open day, it may already be worth it. And if she gets as far as the residential, that will definitely be money well spent.
The only concern really is that the fees are £33k a year. That's more than my annual salary, after tax. Take into account our mortgage payments and living costs, etc., and we don't have any money left to pay for an education. I suppose TW could get a full-time, 35 hours a week job type job, but then she'd actually be paying out quite a lot on childcare for the other two and they would suffer from the lack of "Mum" time.
One thing they did say was that they aimed to have no more than 20 pupils in a class. Davisons can offer that at the moment, as an all-girl state school.
The eldest knows that it is unlikely that she will go there, but it will be a good experience for her, and nothing they said on the day dissuaded her from wanting to go there. So she will sit the exams and take the tests, and we'll see.
The most impressive thing was the marching band. At 12:30 the band appeared, it must have been 70 strong, they were all kitted out in their finest, and marched really crisply. They paraded up and down, twirling their batons and playing some lively marching music, and then they stood still and played as the individual houses marched in to lunch, each in a separate squad, led by a standard-bearer. Apparently that happens every day, even when there are no spectators. It was very impressive and must be unique to Christ's.
All in all, it was an interesting day. We had a McDonald's for lunch on the way home, so everyone was a winner.

Saturday 14-06-21 Summer Fayre Day

So,  Saturday was the day of the summer 'fayre'. On Friday I was working like a Trojan to set it up, and Saturday afternoon I was drinking like a bastard to forget how involved I'd been.
In the morning, I served a *lot* of burgers and hotdogs. It was a hot, sunny day, and the barbecue stall was probably the busiest of the lot. Nothing like making things hard for myself. Oh, it started nice and slowly, but soon ramped up. At times it seemed that the queues were never-ending. In the two and a half hours we were trading, we sold all the meat we had - 250 burgers and 250 sausages, all at full price - which was a good deal. I think we were selling them cheaper than last year, so maybe we could have made more profit for the school funds, but we didn't have to discount any at the end to ensure we sold all the stock.
There was another helper, an old boy, who didn't appear to be interested in any system or organisation. He was a pain in the bum, swanning off and eating the burgers, or stealing the cheeseburgers I had asked for & planned to sell, or taking cash from my customers while I was sorting out the orders. Still, I suppose there always had to be at least one fly in the ointment.
So it was full-on for the full two and a half hours. And once the 'fayre' had ended, we needed to put things away, so we carried tables and hay bales, and deconstructed gazebos and drank beer. Did I say we drank beer? It didn't even feel like it touched the sides on the way down. Then, at about four pm we finished up and went to the pub, for more beers which slid down just as easily. That was a nice session; we all felt that we had achieved a lot, and we're all in a good mood. We were home by seven thirty or eight, to tell the truth I was quite drunk and can't recall precisely. But the kids were in bed and TW fell asleep on the sofa at a quarter to nine, so I brought her up to bed and went back down. I had another bottle of Fursty Ferret and a cider, and then came up to bed.
A full-on day, and I'm glad we only do it once a year!

Friday 14-06-20

Friday was spent at school, preparing for the school summer 'fayre'. It was a day of hard work, lugging tables about and generally faffing. We put up gazebos, because the weather was great, and left them up overnight. TW drove to school and I walked with the children, which was nice. I'd taken the day off work to help TW set up, and it was a bit manky really. Obviously she had a plan of what she wanted to achieve, but to be honest, she's not very good at sharing the big picture. So I did bits and pieces, and everyone else (all women) remarked on how 'good' I was for taking time off and volunteering. I don't feel I did very much; I went to pick up a shop from Tesco Click and Collect, and I also went to the Post Office to pick up a Kindle Fire I'd bought from eBay.
I was begging to leave by 4:30, but as Molly in the Middle had a final practice for her country dancing demonstration on Saturday, we stayed quite late on Friday, putting the finishing touches to it all.

When I got home I tried to fire up the Kindle, but of course it was sold as faulty, and so it turned out. It did get past the boot-up screen to where I should have been able to unlock it; but unfortunately as soon as I touched it, the damned thing rebooted. Since then, I've not been able to get that far again; it's stuck on the boot screen, displaying 'Kindle Fire' in white and orange, and steadfastly refusing to be recognised by my laptop. If my laptop was able to recognise the Fire, it would be relatively straightforward to fix. Unfortunately these things are never straightforward for me... :) So now I've ordered a 'factory cable' and I hope that that might work. I *think* the device is not in fastboot mode, and I'm hoping that the cable can help force that. We'll see. If it doesn't work, I shall just put it back on eBay and sell it, hopefully for about as much as it cost me - £30 inc. P&P.

Wednesday 14-06-18

Well, it's the third day and I think I've run out of things to say. I spent the day at work, the same as usual. I don't want to talk about work though, it's quite dull. It's just office work - relationship / account management.
I did hear a news item on Radio 4 this morning about making the school day longer, so that children will be able to do their homework at school. That doesn't make any sense to me; with my 'Dad' hat on, surely that means that the responsibility for bringing up our children is being taken away from us? And at Parents' Evening at the start of the year, it was stressed to us that bringing up the children was a shared responsibility between us as parents and the school. But if the school now take responsibility for the children doing their homework, surely that takes away our parental duties? Oh well, if that's the way they want it...

I've been quite busy on the Oneplus forums today, trying to get my greasy mitts on an invitation for a Oneplus One. I'm patient enough.
Anyway, that's enough for today - more of the same tomorrow, I expect.

Tuesday 14-06-17

So today I did something really Dad-like; I went to a presentation at Eldest's school about a week-long residential planned for September 2015. It looks like it's going to be pretty good fun; lots of outdoor adventure type stuff, but it's also going to be pretty expensive. We need to provide our £100 deposit by 11th July, and in total it's going  to be £350 for a week away.
There are going to be 140 kids or so, and I'm sure they'll have a great time, it looks like what the Eldest did previously at her First School, but that was only a three day residential, which I believe was two full days' worth of activity. They are not allowed to take their phones with them (aged 10!) or anything they can put a SIM card in, so no iPads either :)
Eldest loved the three day residential, and I'm sure that she will love this. She was apparently really good at orienteering last time, and I hope that she finds a new skill this time out too.
Now we just need to decide where we are going to find the cash to pay for it. And then that will set the precedent, and the other two, "Molly in the Middle" and Youngest will also want to go. That's over £1k in the space of five years for a week away each. I don't think we paid that much to go to EuroDisney - in fact, I know we didn't. Ah, well, the alternative is that she stays at home and has an "activity week" at school. It might be worth £350 to have her go away for a week. In fact, if we pay £1,050 now, can TW & I have a free week? It might almost be worth it... :)

Eco Day at School (TAB First)

Saturday morning and we go to school regardless. For today is "ECO DAY" and our our presence is required.
In truth, Eco Day is just a bit of gardening, but on an industrial scale. By turning up to help, we are probably doing about a term's work in a day for the school. We move soil, weed flower beds, and generally titivate areas so that the school looks nice and attracts 'mini-beasts' (insects to you and me) at the right time of year.
The day was supposed to go on until three pm, but it was raining and a bit miserable, so we called it a day at about one pm. Then went home and had a bath to warm our chilly bones.