BT - PROBABLY THE WORST TELECOMS PROVIDER (?) IN THE WORLD?

Now that the Part 1 move is over, life is starting to settle down a bit here at Shrivenham and, with one exception, this has been a pretty relaxing week.  Ronnie has been away up in London seeing various big-wigs in DFID, the Foreign Office and the MOD so I have been left to get on with the day-to-day 'stuff' of getting ready to move to East Africa.  The one exception has been BT's complete and utter failure to transfer our phone line and broadband from Stafford to Shrivenham - something you would have thought was their bread and butter!  They are now saying that it will take another couple of weeks before they can do it, and quite frankly if that is the case then it will not be worth doing at all.  Then comes the argument about cancelling our contract and why should we pay a cancellation fee when they are the ones who messed up!  I will keep you up to speed with what happens in this soap opera, but so far I think I may have the upper hand - it is with the 'line manager' for a decision at the moment so we will see what next week brings.  Exciting eh?
     Oh, just in case you were thinking that my ego had taken over completely, the reason that I have started every blog so far with a photo of me is just to keep the beard watchers happy.  I notice that Alex Clarke has now joined that fraternity (a worrying prospect I have to admit).  Thank you to everyone who is following the blog by the way - over 60 of you last week which is very pleasing to know.

Bye, bye Kia :-(>

It was a bit of a shock when I finally managed to put the Kia up for sale on Autotrader at about 11pm last Saturday and had sold it by lunchtime the next day!  I had rather hoped that it would take two or three weeks to sell, giving us that extra flexibility of having two vehicles to run around in for longer.  However, I got a good price and it is one thing less to worry about.  

Hello Landcruiser :-)>

At the same time the Rev Charles Okongo, a friend I met during my visit to Uganda back in March, has very kindly arranged everything so that my new vehicle (a somewhat elderly, but very robust series 70 Landcruiser) will be waiting for me in Kampala when I arrive.  The cost of vehicles in Uganda is unbelievable, and of course getting one that you can be sure is safe and reliable is very difficult even when you are in country.  To get one sourced and bought before arrival is nigh on impossible - unless you have wonderful friend like Charles.  Praise the Lord for putting Charles in my path :-)

One thing I have been having to get used to this week is having neighbours again.  Having had the luxury of living in the spacious, splendid isolation of the Station Commander's house in Stafford, here in Shrivenham we are in amongst the people again.  Very good for my socialist leanings and very good for the soul too no doubt.  However, not so good for my Victor Meldrew tendencies.  In fact, we are blessed with very good neighbours either side (although I am not sure that they are saying the same about their new neighbours in their own blogs).  

Neighbour cat Clyde at rest on top of the chicken coop 
next door - what I describe as his 'Clydeaway'.

Both have large pet fraternities in what are fairly small houses - a Weimaraner called Oliver and a black and white cat on one side, and a Labrador called Alfie and a very smart Burmese cat called Clyde (plus an unknown Jack Russell and at least half a dozen chickens) on the other. I have attempted to enlist Clyde as a stand-in Chad, but whilst he is very chatty he has not yet shown any signs of wanting to jump the fence and come and join me for a tuna lunch.

On the social front we had an excellent outing on Wednesday evening.  After a long day trudging up the M6 and back to hand over the old house in Stafford before collecting Ronnie from the station, it was wonderful to be able to spend a very chilled evening with Claudia and Nic Piercy and their two sons Noah and Timon. They are old friends from church when we were in Marlborough many years ago and we haven't seen them for over 3 years.  We had a fantastic supper with Nic barbecuing fresh sea bass over a big wood fire on the patio.  The food was wonderful - apart from the curious appearance of some whelks.  I don't know what possessed Nic to buy these monsters, but I have always had an irrational aversion to them since I was a child and try as I might I could not manage to eat even one.  Pathetic I know, but there you are. Sadly I omitted to take the camera so there are no suitably scary photos of whelks roasting on an open fire.

Ronnie in action

Finally - and it must be finally as I hear the call of 'time for some housework' in the background (I have never understood Ronnie's mania for cleaning; I survived 3 years as a student without ever cleaning anything and I do think that an over-insistence on hygiene can be unhealthy) - we met up with a few of my future colleagues for a picnic lunch in Regent's Park this week.  Although they obviousy were not as lovely as my Smallwood friends, I do think that they all showed potential for becoming so as I get to know them better.  As a result of the meeting, which included my new Head of Primary, I managed to finally get hold of copies of the end of year reports of the Y4 students who will be in my Y5 class next term.  Unfortunately they are clearly a long way behind where I had hoped they might be - most of them read more like Y2 or Y3 end of year reports from Smallwood. I fear that next year is going to be a struggle for all of us! One thing that is clear is that I am going to have to teach myself phonics - something I never really got my head around at college and have steered clear of until now!  If any of you out there know a good place to go for information about ReadWriteInc or synthetic phonics then do let me know.  I am a little concerned that I will not be able to do justice to the needs of my new class next year.  I have always felt that my strengths lay with bringing on and stretching those children who were in the top end of the learning bracket, but have never felt that I was particularly good with those who really struggle with the basics.  On Wednesday Claudia asked if I was going to use this blog for prayer requests - well here is one for any of you praying for us, 'Please Lord, let me be able to teach those who are clearly struggling to learn, as well as I hope that I have managed to teach those who have been doing well'.