6.39am and it is not a school day, though my feelings are strangely akin to those felt by our new Year 7s earlier this week. I’m about to start my journey to Dulwich (no, I didn’t know either but it made me think of Margaret Thatcher) for researched 2013.
In the half light this morning, I couldn’t actually see why the whole thing might not be an elaborate scam. Why were those tweets and website any more convincing than the emails one receives about revalidating bank security details or vague acquaintances marooned in south America suddenly needing to borrow a fiver? Why don’t I stay at home and go to my local agricultural show, fundraising for the scouts and looking at very big cows with the rest of my family?
But it is worth trying..because (clap your hands if you believe in Twitter) this could be for real, and it is rather unusual. A ‘wiki-sourced‘ event which I doubt any one is attending because it is part of their formal CPD or because their Head told them to. For a start, we are all going in our own time (take that Mr Gove with your snide allusions to teachers finishing work at 3.30) and secondly the price was affordable for individuals to pay themselves. Heck, I am not even a teacher .. But I am going to believe that the qualifications for attending are interest and enthusiasm and that these might be my people, emerging from the twittersphere. Right, just going to find my copy of Ben Goldacre’s education paper for a re-read on the train, and I am off.
To be continued
Harry Potter is a significant theme in our house. The children were at the perfect age. We read the books together at bed time, conducted intensely excited night-time forays to buy the later volumes at midnight publication, and we relished the films. I am not ashamed to admit – although perhaps I ought to be – that our house contains Harry Potter crockery, glassware, cross-stitch sampler and quite a lot of Lego.
This means that the death of lovely Alan Rickman gave us pause. Continue reading 
lesleyjonesberry 