To fill you in...

Here are the last two months summed up in statistics:

4 The number of incidents involving police that I have driven past on my way home from work- a car crash, a motorbike accident, a fire and a stabbing! (I should point out that all of these incidents occurred in Thorpe Bay or Southend, not in Leigh... Enough said.)

2 The number of places a little boy in my class had managed to break his ankle. Neither of us realised his ankle was broken, so he proceeded to do his spelling test and Show and Tell. What a trooper.

5 The number of choirs I currently belong to. It's great to be a part of so many little communities (some them overlapping) but I have a feeling something will have to give soon... I turned up at my friend Claire's gospel choir rehearsal the other day with 2 music folders, neither of which were the right ones.

7 The amount of Easter related chocolate gifts I received at the end of term. Only two of them were actually eggs- the rest were various farmyard animals. Yum.

1 The number of times I filled up my car with petrol before realising I had left my purse at home. My dad had to come to the rescue, as usual.

100 The amount of pounds I would have won at the casino (at our staff do last week) if I had been gambling with actual money instead of play chips. They had special 'training' tables just for us- I am now an expert at Blackjack. Although I spend most of the evening pretending I was in a James Bond film...

10 The average number of times I check facebook in a single day. Something has got to be done about this.

6 The number of musicals I have seen so far this year. Joseph, Hairspray, Beyond the Barricade, Chicago, Wicked and Flashdance... All of which were fantastic!




3 The number of times I have tried to eat at a Nando's restaurant this week, and failed to secure a table. That's three whole days of daydreaming about a lemon and herb chicken pitta with extra cheese, wasted.

19 The number of hours I have to spend on a plane by myself tomorrow- I'm off to the Philippines again to visit my relatives. I'm very excited!

30 The number of panic filled minutes I have just spent looking for my passport in preparation for said holiday. Argh. (I did find it...)

Another short conversation

Child: What's a stick insect?

Teacher: It's an insect that looks just like a stick. And, (realising this description isn't helping), it has antennae sticking out of its head.

Child: Why?

Teacher: A stick insect uses them to feel and explore the world around it.

Child: Really? I bet it can see really far away too. I wish I had ten eyes sticking out of MY head.

A facebook note

25 Facts about me

1. When I was 16, I was in a sketch with Ant & Dec and Blue on SM:TV Live, doing exercises in a 'gym' sketch.

2. I used to go the cinema solely for the purpose of buying 'Toffee Crisp Popcorn' until eventually they sold out and stopped selling them.

3. Whenever I have a task or challenge to complete, I like to pretend I'm on 'The Krypton Factor'.

4. On two separate occasions, I've been completely and utterly lost in a foreign country on a bus with a driver who spoke no English.

5. One of these places was Rome- my favourite city in the world.

6. My favourite meal is the 'half pizza, half pasta' meal at Joe Rigatoni's in Durham. Nothing else can quite compare.

7. I'm in the Salvation Army, which is a huge part of my life.

8. I LOVE musicals- my current favourite is Hairspray.

9. I am three eighths Filipino, one eighth American, and half English.

10. I occasionally suffer from sleep paralysis, which means that I wake up completely unable to move. Sometimes this lasts for a few seconds, sometimes up to 2 minutes.

11. Last year, I found a two foot long orange snake in my washing basket. After three hours, we realised it had escaped from our next door neighbour's (semi-detached) house!

12. During a sponsored skip in Year 6, I managed 125 skips in one minute. I've never been able to do it since...

13. I have been known to drive a fifteen minute journey to Tesco Pitsea in order to buy one Krispy Kreme doughnut.

14. I once got stung by a bee when I tried to do a cartwheel on the grass and didn't look where I was placing my hands.

15. On a flight to the Philippines, I once received a free upgrade from Economy to First Class. That will never happen again in my life, but I can safely say it was the best 18 hours I've ever spent in the air.

16. When I was younger, I had two gerbils called Bubble and Squeak. They had to be separated when they started to fight, but consequently both died of loneliness. A sad, sad tale.

17. I am lucky to be surrounded by people who are able to make me cry with laughter on a regular basis. Especially Heather, with whom I've developed a strange and unique sense of humour...

18. I've been on some unusual day trips to countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.

19. My first year at Durham Uni was one of the best years of my life- independence, great friends and not a care in the world.

20. I get really annoyed when people confuse 'your' and 'you're'.

21. Once, on a romantic Christmas trip to London, I suddenly got hit by a virus and was violently sick in the middle of a packed out Leicester Square.

22. I've tried to give up chocolate for Lent for the past three years, but have never quite managed it...

23. I still believe that half birthdays should be acknowledged and celebrated.

24. I'm not sporty, artistic or musically gifted. But I am excellent at writing limericks.

25. When I was little, my ambition was to be the girl who dressed up as Tinkerbell and got to 'fly' to the top of the castle to light the Illuminations Fireworks at Disneyland. It still is, if I'm honest...

A short conversation

Year 2 pupil: Miss Allen, look at my new book. Are you a parent?

Me: No

Year 2 pupil: Are you married?

Me: Erm, no.

Year 2 pupil: Oh, that's alright then. This book says 'Adults: KEEP OUT' so when you're an adult, you won't be allowed to look at it anymore.

A bit of spontaneity

I'm not a spontaneous person. I need to know exactly what I'm doing, usually months in advance. But tonight, as I was looking through old family photos, I realised that I really missed my relatives in the Philippines. And then I did something about it. Suddenly, instead of spending the first part of April in a rainy cabin with forty Year 6 children on the Isle of Wight, I'm gonna be spending Easter weekend here:

My family had already planned their Easter break, and asked if it was ok if I tagged along to Mayon Volcano (which is an active volcano- I'm not sure how I feel about that) and the hot springs and waterfalls surrounding it...

It was a difficult decision, but they managed to twist my arm! So it's all worked out rather well.

In other news...

-I'm currently in the middle of 'The Shack' by William Young. I know I'm a little late jumping on the bandwagon, but if you haven't read it- do! It's excellent.

-When bowling at the weekend, I was amazed that the 'chuck and wish' technique I've used since I was seven finally paid off- first strike ever! (This doesn't count Wii bowling and bowling with the barriers up- I've scored many strikes on these occasions...)

-I thought I had more to say, but it turns out I don't.

Dancing on Ice

On Sunday, myself and three friends from work went along to see Dancing on Ice being filmed live in Borehamwood. Because our tickets didn't guarantee entry, the process involved queuing for hours in the freezing cold. We were about halfway in the queue with around 200 people in front of us, so we thought we'd be fine! How wrong we were... the guy handing out wristbands ran out just before he got to us, apologised and explained that there was a huge guest list, and we were now on standby. Most of the people behind us were told to go home, but as we were clutching standby tickets 11-14, we waited. And waited some more. Eventually, at 6.30pm (we'd arrived at 3.40pm) once everyone else had been seated, an announcement was made saying that the first 20 standby people were allowed through... we were VERY lucky.

Now, my friends and I were split up because the only seats available were the ones where friends and family of the celebrities participating hadn't turned up. However, this meant that we were sitting in the VIP area! So it all worked out well. I was sitting with the entire Nolan clan, my friend Janine was next to Alan Carr, Jo was next to Kevin Pieterson (who was rather handsome) and Marie was next to the hosts of Loose Women. And there were a few others we bumped into during the interval, such as Suzanne Shaw and that Angelica Bell from CBBC. Poor Angelica- I made the classic mistake of thinking I knew her when she turned around. Before I knew what was happening a 'Hi!!' had escaped my mouth and she was looking a little blankly at me before politely saying 'Hi!' back. How embarassing! I felt like a prize idiot... until my friend Jo had to step over Graeme Le Saux to get to her seat and did exactly the same thing, but louder: 'Oh, HELLO!' she exclaimed before realising what she'd done. It was very strange.

Has that ever happened to anyone else?

Anyway, we had a fantastic time (even though we were all sitting on our own!). The performances were amazing and for just one single moment I had this thought:

'I want to be a professional ice skater when I grow up.'

Then reality struck and my world came crashing down around me.

'You're 24. You're a teacher. You have no balance or co-ordination. It's too late.'

It was very similar to the time I realised that at no point in my life will I ever grow up in Dublin and have a genuine Irish accent.

Sigh.

Still, if Coleen Nolan can give it a good go, so can I... (the ice-skating, not the Irish accent!)

Birthdays

January has been a busy time for birthdays. As usual, I successfully managed to make my birthday celebrations last about two weeks. There was a work birthday meal, a trip to see Joseph (Lee Mead was amazing!), family meals and an afternoon in London with uni friends (where we found the perfect combination of ice cream shake at the Haagen Daz cafe- Belgian Chocolate and Vanilla). However, the highlight was most definitely the princess themed birthday party meal which Ben threw for Stacey and I (we share the same birthday). We had the whole upstairs room at Ask to ourselves... and a good time was had by all. And I've decided I quite like being 24.

This week, it was Susanna's turn to have a birthday...

She looks like she's having a nice time, doesn't she? Well, she was... until we asked Ben to take a photo of us. Unfortunately, Ben couldn't quite grasp how to take a photo, and took a video instead. Check out Suz's face when she realises what's happened:

Hehehe...