That was the week that was

Well I hope you've all been reading J's blog because obviously nothing was happening here!

It was a relatively quiet week. We spent the weekend looking for a new mattress as the old one was pathetic. We ended up spending more than we wanted, but what price a decent night's sleep? Of course it was raining off and on, just like home we hear. In fact with continuous rain, and fatal floods you'd be forgiven for thinking we were in the Coromandel. And not much warmer either... Still, Italy has been in the thirties and is expected to remain so for August, so soon I hope to be writing complaining about the heat!

Our other trip to Sicily looks to almost be confirmed, and that'll be quite a contrast in weather conditions we expect.

I got another 3 days work this week at John Cabot which is quite a nice school. It's end of year for them on Friday, so the kids were a bit 'off the wall'. They are introducing an interest project next (school) year where they are giving one whole Y8 class PDAs as learning tools. They have camera (with video), audio recorder and so on, so the hope is that teachers will try to blend in aspects of multi-media to their teaching. Kids could record stuff as they go, and notes and homework, etc, could be given out this way also. They're all connected to the wireless network to enable this. My first question was "What happens if a kid forgets or loses his/her PDA?" I suspect that it won't be long before there is an awkward number of students sans equipment. Christ, a good quarter of them can't remember a pen!

The mattress was to be delivered today as I had no work booked. Of course they rang this morning to ask if I wanted to work and I had to say no. Honest I did. I lugged the new one up, disposed of the old one, posted a couple of parcels (One for L, A, T & K; the other for J but his by slow boat to China). The PO workers are on half-day strikes at the moment so the queues were a mile long by the time they got back. Then the busy-body next door pressured our concierge to have me shift the old one from where I'd put it pending J and the garage key. Still it ended up in a proper storage room so better than the garage anyway. Then I had to remake the bed, vacuum the floors, clean the lino. (Have I convinced anyone that I was busy?) The sun was out briefly during all this but has gone away again. Good thing I suppose, as J would begrudge my day off even more if it was sunny.

I might go and test the new mattress - it's been such a tiring day...