Teddy Axtell goes to school again

Teddy Axtell came to school with me yesterday for Children in Need. He's been following the adventures of Grayson Perry's Alan Measles in Germany enviously and is looking forward to seeing the exhibition at the British Museum.!
We had some enormous ones as big as the children themselves, and some dressed up for the Best Dressed Teddy competition. We raised 300 pounds - a great effort.

Ready for school

Studying and enriching his vocabulary!

Teddy enjoyed all the attention - he's quite tired today! He is over 70 after all.

Thankyou flowers

I played the piano for Bernadette Farrell (composer of lots of the music we sing for Mass at school) last Wednesday evening at an Assembly at Battersea Arts Centre, for London Citizens, in which some of girls are involved, as the person she had asked pulled out at the last minute. I had this beautiful bouquet as a Thankyou!

Lovely colours too!

Pumpkin

This handsome pumpkin became a cassarole with lentils and sour cream from a recipe by Nigel Slater, and also a Pumpkin and Coconut Loaf - lovely with a cup of tea!

Gunpowder .....

.......but no treason and plot!

Lorna and Richard hosted a great November 5th party last night. Wonderful food and mulled wine and good company, with plenty of fireworks to make the evening go with a bang!

Happy Halloween!

Did you go trick or treating this evening?! Whoooo! We used to have such fun Halloween eves as children; not trick or treat, because it wasn't really done, but teddy ghosts, apple bobbing, gingerbread, toffee apples and pumpkin pie at home, and parties for our friends at St Mary's Hall - good job there wasn't a graveyard at the church - that would have been TOO spooky!

En France pour le shopping

I hopped across the channel to Calais yesterday, and did a wee bit of Christmas food shopping. I didn't have long owing to time-table changes on the coach and SeaFrance on strike congesting the ports, but had a good day none the less.

                               

 

Rodin's The Burghers of Calais

To honour those killed in the Wars

Bijou et si joli !

Beautiful wrought ironwork on doorways

Even the coal-hole is so pretty!

Lovely selection of squashes

Getting into the Halloween spirit

100th Blog!

I've just looked at my stats, and see that up till this one, I have posted 99 blogs! So to bring up my century at the crease, here are some images of Christchurch local schools were commissioned to design in 2009, in the railway station.I had noticed them before, but never photographed them, until Monday, when I had a whole 10 minutes to spare before the train came to go back to London. The brief was "What does Christchurch mean to you?"

The Grange (my Almer Mater) brought the Priory, the monastery ruins and the Avon and Stour to the fore.

Twynham looked at individuals' impressions as a collage.

Highcliffe represented the beach at Mudeford

             Makes waiting for the train very pleasant!