Off to the University for the first of 4 days of a ‘learning burst’, I was quite looking forward to seeing everyone although as usual slightly nervous of the assessment day. This course has the fairly odd and in my experience unique process of self and peer marking. It entails reading an appraising 5 other 5000 word essays and then being prepared to sit and discuss what people have offered up. It has got easier over the last year, but still it is slightly anxiety provoking as we try to offer critical evaluation of not only our own work but also that of each other.

It is plain to see that we have all improved in our ability to challenge the literature and to apply the context of our own situations. This is the first time however we have conducted any kind of research of our own, but this process offers an insight into our own working practices, even if some of us struggle with action research as a methodology and some just struggle!

Harrow-on-the Hill looks lovely in the winter sunshine from the classroom and we can even see some of the boys of the great and the good playing Rugby. I have enjoyed the discussion’s we had today, even if at times it seems that the process has been unnecessarily protracted. Off I go then to my car.

I am clamped!!! This morning, I had gone to reception to ask for a blue sticker. It is such a long time since I was last in this car park that my sticker is still yellow (2005/6 colour), I had also paid and displayed. Some time during the day the sticker removed itself from the windscreen and dropped, unseen even by the digital camera of the parking police onto the floor of the car. Much arguing and £75 lighter (he would not believe my story and said there was no evidence I hadn’t just got my blue sticker) I leave the University for home. How am I ever to give up midweek snacks and wine if my life is to be one long episode of stress? I can hardly believe the injustice of it all, but then isn’t that just the story of my life these days?