Miss Heather 'You Never Mention Me In Your Blog' Orford

This is Heather:

Heather is very high maintenance. She's also my best friend (admittedly through default- there was nobody else around when I graduated uni...) So, to stop her moaning, this post is All About Heather.

We've spent quite a lot of time together over the last 2/3 years, and have developed a sense of humour which only the other person understands. This means that most of the time we spend together we end up crying with laughter, thinking we're hilarious whilst everyone else just looks on in pity.

A few facts about Heather:

- She was born on 7th September, 1983.

- There is a castle at the end of her road.

- When she doesn't like something, she'll say 'Oh, no thank you. I'm allergic.'

- Furthermore, when she doesn't want to do something, she'll say 'Oh sorry, I can't make it. I have a piano/singing/salsa (delete as appropriate) lesson.'

- She has a (bizarre) obsession with Hanson.

- In the film 'Sex and the City', she cried at the bit where Carrie gives her secretary a Louis Vuitton bag for Christmas.

- She will wear Ugg boots whether it's - 2 degrees or 32 degrees. To get her money's worth.

So that's Heather. We've shared a lot of good times together, and I'm not quite sure how I ever managed to survive without her!

(That last photo isn't really of me or Heather, but I like it.)

Remember that week which featured in my Top 3 Unfavourite Weeks of All Time? It's here again...

This is my life at the moment:



I'm one of those people who has to wait until the last possible moment before doing what needs to be done. Earlier this week, I was reading through some of my old blog posts from this time last year (it's impressive how much time I can spend amusing myself with my own stories). Anyway, as I read the stressed-out entries of a younger, more naive Katie, I realised that I have learnt nothing- a year later and I have Parents Evening tomorrow and a reports deadline in two weeks, and I'm even more unprepared than I was a year ago. But hey, at least I'm not making Wee-Mees to avoid doing work this time...

(No, instead I'm on here at 11.15pm writing a blog post, the night before I have to be at work from 7.45am-10pm and after a really hectic weekend. How I've grown.)

Have a good week :)

It's a whole lotta' fun...

For those of us lucky enough to be born in the Eighties... here is my little entertainment clip (read lazy blog post) of the week:

(Check out Pat Sharp's hair. And clothes. Classic.)



I have yet to meet a person in their early/mid-twenties whose childhood dream was anything other than to have a go in the Funhouse...

Half Term in a Nutshell

See if you can spot...

- Which county is featured (I went there to visit a friend who has just come out of hospital)
- A woodchipper (endless fun!)
- Ips-ich Harbour (you may remember from a previous post that I have a cousin who lives there...)
- London by night
- The lack of legroom at Dickens Unplugged! (A really, really funny show retelling Charles Dickens stories- it was even better than Dickens World!)
- Ben and Rich saluting outside IHQ- Chris took the photo before I realised I was in the wrong pose.

One picture I forgot to include was of Brass of Praise, a Swiss band who came to England to perform at Hadleigh last week (they also performed at the Royal Albert Hall as a little extra gig). They were really good! Unfortunately, they didn't have such a great experience afterwards, when we offered to take them all out for a drink (forgetting we had only two little KAs to transport 16 hungry and thirsty people into Leigh...) It was agreed that while I was playing taxi to the first few, the rest would walk to McDonalds and get picked up from there. Twenty minutes later, I pull up to find them all still outside in the cold. They all ran over and exclaimed:

Swiss People: We need your help! We need your car!
Katie: Why aren't you eating?
Swiss Person 1: We tried to get into the restaurant, but they said they were closed, and that we had to use the drive-thru window.
Swiss Person 2: So we walked to the drive-thru and they ignored us.
Swiss Person 3: (very confused) Then eventually he said that he couldn't serve us as we weren't in a car, and then closed the window.
Swiss Person 4: We said that we were from Switzerland and didn't have a car. He's still ignoring us.
Swiss Person 1: Is everybody this rude in England?

(I should point out here that it wasn't a busy High Street McDonalds. I could understand them being refused if there were loads of cars behind beeping. The McDonalds I'm talking about is just up the road from our corps, reasonably quiet and at the that time of night there were no other customers at all!)

I don't think we made a great first impression. These Swiss people and their high expectations...

The Sexist Book of Cakes... and Rich's birthday

To celebrate Rich reaching the ol' halfway to 50 landmark last week, we thought it would be nice to bake him a cake. So we had a little Eurovision/Cake Baking session on Saturday night. Browsing through Marion's Cake Decorating Book (1970) for inspiration, I soon noticed it was more than a little sexist...

Under the 'BOYS' section, there were the following cakes:

A football













A cricket bat













And a racing car...











All of these were fine. But under the 'GIRLS' section of the cake book, we found:

A sewing machine











A baby













A dressing table













And my personal favourite... an oven:











Oh, how times have changed... anyway, in the end we decided on a simple train design, complete with any small objects Ben could find in his cupboard. Here is the end result:






Yes, those ARE dinosaurs sitting amongst a forest of chocolate eggs. There's a deep and meaningful reason behind the design- if you can guess it, you win a prize... ;)

Rich was very impressed. We then had a lovely meal at Rayleigh Lodge, which is a very nice restaurant (the double chocolate fudge cake is to die for!) I'm the one blocking out Anna's head:

All in all, a lovely weekend.

AAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHH!

What a cruel, cruel trick to play on somebody at 8.30am in the morning...

(My assistant teacher Louise decided it would be hilarious to plant her son's rubber snake in my bag whilst I was taking the children over to assembly- I jumped so much that my hand whacked against the top of the shelf and I now have a lovely purple bruise!)

What a cow.

The Snake

It was a normal Saturday morning. I was sorting the clothes in my washing basket when I noticed a flash of bright orange underneath it. 'That's weird,' I thought to myself, 'I don't have any orange clothes...' As I picked up a towel near the bottom of the basket, I could've sworn it moved in a slithery way. Strangely, I didn't panic (probably because I assumed my imagination had gone into hyperdrive again) and instead went downstairs to seek a second opinion.

Katie: Dad, you're gonna think this is crazy, but I think there might be a snake in my room.
Daniel: Cool!
Dad: (disbelivingly) A snake. Not a belt?
Katie: I know it's not a snake, but if you could just check...

So the three of us trudged upstairs, me armed with a garden hoe (not completely sure why). Dad rummaged through the pile of washing and there it was: a 2 foot long, bright orange, hissing SNAKE!

We stood there in shock for a little while, then shut the door and went back downstairs. What were we supposed to do now? It was at this point I began to freak out...

I phoned the RSPCA, and after a few minutes of 'If you have found a stray cat, press 1. If you have found a stray dog, press 2...' I was eventually put through to somebody, who said she would pass the matter onto a local centre who would call me back. After waiting for an hour, we called back and the woman apologised and said she'd get back to us. We're still waiting for that phonecall now.

We rang the vet, who said they didn't deal with snakes.
We rang the zoo, who didn't have any 'snake specialists' available.
Eventually, we got through to the reptile centre in Colchester, who said that if we threw a towel over it and trapped it in a bucket, they would send somebody round to come and get it.

They had to be kidding.

The problem was, we just had no idea where it had come from. The RSPCA woman asked if I'd been anywhere, at which point I thought I must've brought it home in my suitcase from Spain last month, or even Lithuania last weekend... (I quickly dismissed it coming from Lithuania- even I would have noticed that, surely?!) The neighbours were out and my brother was convinced that they didn't have a snake as they had a rabbit. So we didn't have a clue if it was poisonous or not.

Two hours later, my brother tried visiting the neighbours again. It turns out that the hissing creature in my bedroom was a friendly corn snake called Wesley, who had escaped a couple of weeks ago from his cage. Because we live in a semi-detached house and I have built-in wardrobes, one of which has loose floorboards, Wesley had slithered his way up and made himself at home in my room! Our neighbour was very apologetic and asked if I wanted to hold him, at which point I very politely declined and asked if he could remove it from my house. My brother was much more keen though:

Impressive, isn't he? I still can't quite believe it happened. I'm scarred for life...