I am working like a dog trying to keep my head above water. Let me put anyone out there who thinks teaching must be a doddle straight. It’s really hard work. No really, it is. It’s not just the “how hard can it be to teach children how to add 23+31”? You can’t imagine how complicated that is to teach. We may all think that’s a simple addition that anyone could do but when you’re six and it’s the first time you’ve come across it, it’s sort of like trying to teach us adults astro-physics!

I’ve spent the entire weekend planning lessons for next week and considering my teaching workload is only 5 lessons of the 25 that will be taught next week, that gives some indication of how long it takes a teacher who’s planning a full week’s lessons to do. I think that in time it gets less onerous for many reasons, not least because you get quicker at doing it, but that doesn’t detract from the scale of the task.

This afternoon, therefore, after breaking off from work for a couple of hours to watch the footie, we decided to take advantage of a break in the weather and do a good, long walk with the pooches. These stones, known locally as “the Pipers” were almost at the end of the walk and as you can see, they have their feet in water! A bit like me really – I feel as though I’m constantly wading through “stuff” to stay afloat.