Leaning tower of poppadom

Stage one of my birthday dinner, stage two being a delicious curry, and stage three a yet to be determined dessert (but probably a creme egg).

Early start* to finish off lesson prep for this morning. Last night I had sudden inspiration for a fun lesson about pirate, treasure maps and learning the English for left, right, forward and backward. It went down very well with the little kids, less well with the bigger ones - two of whom were so giggly they had to be sent to opposite ends of the room to calm down a bit. When pirates weren't working their magic, a song with 'left and right' popped into my head so I started doing that with them "You jump to the left" I said "and then step to the ri..i...i..ight". Happily I realised I was doing the Timewarp before we got pelvic thrusts (not sure that would have helped calm down the gigglers) and turned it into a bizarre song of my own invention. Hmmm.

Once home, Mr B came out to help me sort out the garden fence. He pronounced the ground 'really hard' as he was struggling to hammer in metal spikes for the gate posts. Something I had spotte when I was digging it all... Anyway, after lots of mallet action we have two gate posts and two regular posts installed - only 14 to go.

Lunchtime English was cancelled today (by me) so I spent lunch and the rest of the afternoon trying to divert myself from the pouring rain outside, which had halted progress on the garden fence, with buying chillis seeds and having a nap.

* the start of the day was much cheered by TallGirl having got up even before me and decorated the kitchen with happy birthday stuff, presents and a beautifully arranged plate of chocolate digestives for my breakfast. No other cards today, but I think at my exalted age I probably have to get over myself a bit where birthdays are concerned.