 |
|
Review of 2003 | |
| I'd say the highlight of this year is that Nic has become a teacher. Last year she did some supply work for Marling grammar school in Stroud and in February a permanent part-time job came up. She applied, did the whole interview thing and got the job! She works 2.5 days a week which is ideal for fitting in with the children and all the other stuff she does. She teaches languages of course: French, German and a bit of Spanish. Nic's still keen on playing tennis at couple of time each week if she can. Now that Ben's fourteen, we've given him a training course in babysitting and sometimes Nic and I sneak out to tennis together - Tuesday and Thursday evening are the club sessions at Painswick tennis club where you can just turn up play with other members. We never thought that Ben was going to be a brainbox. Perhaps it's his pretty boy good looks, or all the sport he plays, or the number of girlfriends he has. Maybe you know already, but he goes to The Crypt grammar school in Gloucester. A couple of weeks ago, his head of year came into one of his classes and asked to have a word with him. Ben thought 'uh-oh, what have I done wrong?', but imagine his amazement when the head of year said that he was going to get a commendation for his work in English. But that's not all, imagine his even more amazement when last week his form teacher told him that he'd got 5 A's in his half-term report and that he'd come third in the class! Ben's also gone and got himself a job: he works on Sundays at the Golden Heart pub in Nettleton Bottom (about a mile from Brimpsfield). He works from 10.30am to 4pm doing basic food preparation (ie getting the salads ready and microwaving a chocolate fudge cake), taking food to people and clearing tables. He gets £19 and is therefore considered quite rich amongst his friends and by me and Nic. I wish I had that much spending money each week! At a recent parent's evening, Alex's teacher told us that our daughter was wonderful, but we knew that already. She's always been keen on doing homework (she's a bit strange like that) and when she gets home from school she'll often sit down at the computer and start writing a short story or collect pictures of animals off the Internet and compile them into her own little wildlife book. However she's keen on all sorts of other things as well: Brownies on a Thursday night, football club after school on a Tuesday afternoon and, like Callum and Jamie, she's just joined the Leeds United Junior Strikers Club. Her amibition is to play football for Leeds. Good girl!
Callum's also getting keen on sports as he gets older. He often asks me if we can play football in the garden; recently
he was declared "a natural" in his tennis lessons and he's moving up to Jamie's class. And you should see him wrestling
with Jamie in the lounge or playing rugby - Callum's quite big for his age and charges at Jamie like a train.
|
|||
