Walking up our road recently, we spoke about the paint of various colours that had been splashed around the pavement, the road and on one of the road signs. Apoa said:

I wish there was an election coming up. Then we'd have Barbara Roche and all sorts of people coming round offering to clean it up.

Barbara Roche is our MP and she and some councillors did come and talk to our neighbours about rubbish before our last council elections. They arranged to have rubbish cleared and when Andrew mentioned the grafitti on his wall, she had someone round the next day to clean it up.

B-)

People in Crouch End have organised a campaign to save Hornsey Town Hall

It's a beautiful building that the council have neglected. They say that heritage rules mean it's been too complicated to look after it properly, but I heard an architect say that in fact they've failed in their legal duty to maintain it properly. Anyway, the campaigners had an open day with music and entertainment outside the town hall recently and Apoa just heard that she won the 10's and over category of the 'design the Town Hall Piazza' competition. The judges 'particularly liked the key on the back which helped to identify all your ideas'

The prize is a 10 pound voucher for Woolies.

B-)

teachingforum.net looks like a useful thing, depending of course on whether teachers really use it. My prediction is that school teachers will use it quite a lot to swap ideas, materials, etc. but university teachers already have their own subject-specific fora (I think that's the 'correct' plural).

B-)

Well, this blog looks like it might be in trouble. I'm afraid too many other things are competing at the top of the priority list just now. Which means, of course, that there have been lots of bloggable things but no time to blog them. Oh well.

Seeing as I posted messages about Apoa's school things, I think I really have to say something about it now that the letters are arriving. Apoa got into both the schools she sat exams for, although only one of the letters arrived on Saturday. The other one still hasn't come but we found out by phoning the school. They said it should come soon but suggested we ask our primary school who are told about all the decisions and they passed on the news.

Now we have to decide which one to go for, the main issue being that the school Apoa originally preferred is not the one all her friends will be going to. This meant that she changed her mind in a tenth of a nanosecond but now we're trying to encourage her to spend a bit of time thinking about it before coming to a final decision and also reminding her that it's a decision for the family as a whole and not just her. I'm sure that we'll end up by agreeing with her so it feels (to her) like we're torturing her pointlessly. Kiloh is quite interested as she realises that in a couple of years she'll be at this stage and she really wants to go to the same school as her sister. Neither of these schools have a significant sibling policy so they could well end up heading off in different directions every morning in a couple of years. There's a real temptation to go back to the original plan which was to go to the borough school over the hill where siblings are guaranteed a place.Still, it's good to know that this will all have been decided by the end of the week.

It's a serious rites of passage week for Apoa who had her ears pierced on Saturday and will be having her 11th birthday disco on Saturday.

B-)

Apoa went to her very last secondary transfer assessment yesterday, which was a music audition. We came out of the school around 5pm to find heavy snow, thunder and lightning waiting for us. We enjoyed the traditional winter pursuit of standing at the bus stop while no bus comes, followed by the bus that crawls slowly past without stopping. Two and a half hours and a combination of bussing and walking and stopping off at nando's later, we were home, where we were greeted by a snowman (or what was left of one after the cheeky boys next door had been round). It's all melting around me as I write so I hope the kids are making the most of it while they can.

B-)

Yesterday I had a chat with a neighbour as she cleaned up after someone broke her car window and tried to steal her prescription glasses(!). If this was a movie, we'd have known that was going to be significant at some point. This morning, Kiloh fell on her way to school and got a bit of the glass in her knee. It was easily removeable, luckily (and lucky Kiloh spotted it as I didn't notice at first) and she was very grateful after it was cleaned up.

Apoa made it to the second exam stage for the last school she's trying for. At least one of her friends didn't, which is a right bloody bore.

Last night the kids pretended they'd heard that she'd got through, which is the kind of fate-tempting thing a grown-up would never do, so I'm glad she did make it. When she phoned to tell me, I got to pretend that I didn't believe her and thought she was just pulling my leg again. So now she's got one more exam, one music audition and one 'assessment', which is an exam for a school that's not selective but tries to take kids from all the ability ranges. Can't wait till she's done it all. But then I guess Kiloh's turn will come round before we know it.

B-)