It is a mixture of personal anecdotes, observations, skites about my son, Thomas and sometimes some things vaguely intelligent. For much more intelligent comments on education, social software and the like check out the blogs of my colleagues at www.core-ed.net
A walk through Ecchinswell’s St Lawrence churchyard, with the smell of the yew trees reminded me of this poem-
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on [...]
I spend Tuesday in primary schools in Nottingham and could not fail to notice that the World Cup has attracted attention in the schools. Apart from the children (girls) who were wearing England headbands, the children were interested in the fact that New Zealand were playing in the cup and in fact were playing the [...]
It was announced this afternoon that the new British coalition government were axing or suspending a range of projects agreed to by the Labour government since January 2010. They include a range of building and roading projects (including a new hospital), two major projects which will effect Sheffield jobs and cuts across a number [...]
Walking through the city this week I have come across all these colourful elephants. The Elephant Parade is a conservation campaign to highlight the urgent crisis faced by the endangered Asian elephant. Developed by www.elephantfamily.org, the event sees over 250 brightly painted life-size elephants located over central London this summer.
Each is [...]
Driving around Essex this week we began to wonder if the new Conservative coalition in Britain was taking open government a bit far, but in fact this sign is for the Kelvendon Hatch Nuclear bunker, decommissioned in the 1990’s and bought by a local family to turn into a tourist attraction and film set. Great [...]
Hilary & I went for a lovely walk on Friday evening up to Alexander Palace which sits majestically on the hill overlooking Crouch End. The Palace built in the 1870s has has a chequered history and has suffered from two major fires in its life time. In fact the residents of the Haringey [...]
Have spent the past four days staying with a friend in London before heading to Essex and work with colleagues at CORE Education UK. It is been great being back in North London, especially as my arrival coincided with the hottest weather this week with blue skies and 25degrees+ every day. Have managed to juggle [...]
Spent an enjoyable evening at the National Film Theatre watching BBC Four’s new film Lennon Naked, starring the wonderful Christopher Eccleston. The story follows John Lennon through a particularly turbulent part of his life following the death in 1967 of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein. The film was very well acted by all concerned but [...]
After Sony announced this week it was halting the production of floppy disks the BBC News Magazine set out to discover who still buys and uses this computer storage medium. More than 1,000 readers e-mailed in response to the Magazine’s request to explain their attachment to the once universally popular 3.5″ diskettes. Their top 40 [...]
A UK village which raised £37,000 to offer 200 homes the super-fast broadband that BT could not deliver has launched its network. Rutland Telecom will offer the residents of Lyddington speeds of up to 40Mbps (megabits per second), after other telecom firms had said it was not economical to provide fast services to the village.
Getting [...]
We spent the Sunday morning in Brecon, and watched the parade of soldiers from the local barracks through the town to the War Memorial, and then followed the parade up the hill to the beautiful Brecon Cathedral for the Remembrance Day ceremony.
Brecon is home to The Royal Regiment of Wales and a company from [...]
Due to the scarcity of accommodation in Cardiff on match day, and the very high price of anything that was available for that night, I ended up reliving my past and resorted to the YHA near Brecon for the weekend.
After years of staying in hotels (admittedly some more dodgy than others) being back into an [...]
Whilst we were in Cardiff I dragged Derek to the Dr Who exhibition- a good way of staying out of the rain, and for gaining some street cred with Thomas and his friends as well.
Thomas and I are big Dr Who fans and it was good to see some of the props and costumes from [...]
3 September 1939- 8 May 1945 (in Europe at least)
Lest we forget
