Just call me Prof.

First go at teaching in 15 years.

Social work students are just so inspiring and the new breed are so bloody bright.

Not that there are not very clever, focused and committed people in SW today, just that are a lots of others too.

It was great being there with people at the start of their career, I hope they will still have the vision and views they had today 20 years on.

Then again, there is still a lot of the person I was 20 years ago here today.

I hope they can keep that too.

Sometimes things could not go better if you planted them. Knowing I was there, a family friend crashed the lectures and I had to ask her to leave as a scenario that was about to be presented to the students was about someone she would quickly recognize.

And some of the information, she would not need to know, of course this meant that as the students got to grips with the very complex situation presented to them they knew this was the real deal. This was not made up, possibly their first contact with a proper case and a real set of lives.

They read the notes and there was a horrendous jangle, someone had dropped a pin.

They were simply great, too good, some of the things they asked made me think; "why didn't I think of that?"

I have been on a hell of a high today, I am now feeling a bit drained and wiped.

Back to the thankless daily grind tomorrow

Early night tonight.

R

Turning on the heat.

It us really lovely here, a fire beguiles and delivers heat at the same time.

We are not to badly served by a couple of days chainsawing, we have a reserve of wood set aside for the depths of winter, dry cut wood stored indoors that should be good for warmth in winter.

I am starting to get the hang of chain saw sharpening machines.

Tonight we have a mix of hard and softwood to burn thankfully we have closed log burners so we can safely use stuff that spits everywhere as all it does is rattle the glass.

Motor wise we are working towards our usual simple situation MOT's are running out and the 806 has another electronic fault, this time with the brakes.

Oh boy - hunt the problem again.

The Xantia has yet to be assessed for a new MOT but luckily the idiot lights on the dash are all off - so far.....

I have a nice quiet weekend in store, a days teaching on Monday sprung on me on Thursday.

Part of me is excited, I have worked towards this for years, part of me is bricking, it's money where my mouth is time. It would have been nice to have a bit of time to prepare though.

GULP.....

R

Children......

Children can be a delight great to have around, fun etc.

Then they get a bit older and well....

Today we have lost ourselves in a frenzy of work, the chain saw has been in overdrive and the reason?

Taliesin comes home for college soon and he will need to see that enough has been done.

He will certainly note that no more scrap has been moved and that it's still where it was yesterday.

Firwood will undoubtedly meet with approval though of course we "could have done more if you worked a bit harder dad"

Children - baaah

R

Something for the weekend sir.....

Friday was a day we each had our own little hard time.

Management was left in charge of 2 reviews, predicted to be toughies and seemed to get through it all OK.

I went off to what should have been an easy straightforward meeting. Hmmmm, lets draw a line under that I think I got through it OK.

So it was back and of course off we went for our wild weekend away.

Loading the plugeot up and up the motorway drop off a child at nans and onwards into the traffic....

45 minutes in the car park M5 was enough for any sane man, and me.

Still a bit of brisk driving and we made the ferry with 20 minutes or so to spare.

I am a fan of Brittany Ferries but am less sure about their latest offering the Armorique. For a start there's the name, this is the second ship they have named that and the first was a monument to instability. The management was once feeling sea sick even before it was off the berth! Now, don't get me wrong, it's a roomy modern ferry, comfortable, well appointed and it only has a self service restaurant.

One of the nicest things about BF is the food, a lovely sit down 3 course meal in a proper restaurant but not on the Armorique, it's carry your tray all the way.

Then again, we had a generous portion of steak each, nice cut of meat and well cooked, a red wine of bewildering brilliance and change out for 25 pounds and that was for both of us.

All was well with the world, or was it?

Now, I am going to be careful as to how I put this. Not all people are the same, some people are erh different, some people are very very different, some people are, quite frankly; downright odd.

Odd people are grist to managements mill, some people say that's why she lives with me.

Send her into a room full of people and out she will come with all the odd types in tow.

Naturally she found not one but two, two really amazingly odd people, together they were an odd couple. Soon it became clear that the odd couple had taken a real shine to us.

She wanted us to go to their cabin with them, this was not good in a seriously not good sort of way.

I have been told that I am not very good at reading women, if only that were true. Illiteracy can sometimes be such a blessing...

Now, if I was not enjoying this someone else was reveling in delight, a wicked mischievous gleam was lighting her eyes like a lighthouse in the storm that raged around me.

I did consider some sane coherent responses like running screaming out the room or jumping off the ship. I also considered slipping away discreetly and leaving management to extricate herself. Something which could have been fun if watched from behind a chair at a discrete distance.

But of course I had to factor in logistics, management had decreed that we could save a few pounds by not having a cabin and sleeping on the deck. There was a real possibility that I might lose contact with her and should I not find her again her fertile little imagination might hit overdrive and that would not be at all good.

Eventually, we managed to give them the slip and settled down for a none to uncomfortable night on the floor in a quiet corner of the reclining chair lounge.

Well, quiet isn't the exact word I would have chosen. Besides managements serene snoring there was the couple somewhere over the other side of the room who seemed to have a copy of Karma Sutra; started on page one and were well on their way to their goal, finishing the book by dawn....

Next day, we decided we would not be put off by the odd couple, would not be cowed, so we left it till the very last minute then broke cover and made a mad dash for the car deck. Not quickly enough, they were waiting for us, or rather she was.....

That was us safely on our way, driving on the right, right on time.

Excellent time we made too and arrived at the house.

It might pay to slip back a few days here.

The management is, if I may say so, super efficient. She is quite superb in all she does so of course I knew there was no need for me to ask if she had packed the keys to the house. I just knew she would have.

She of course has the same faith in me, She knows I am super efficient and superb in all I do. So, of course she knew there was no need to ask me if I had packed the keys to the house.....

There we were then outside a locked house, locked out.

The builder, who I had asked to return the keys to the letter box hadn't. Then he was probably sulking after I told him I could have windows made in Wales, bring them with me on the ferry, fit them, spend several days down the pub, eat out, pay for the ferry and still have lots of change from what he quoted me.

In fact sticking a zero on the end of the bill I had here for changing some windows on our house in Wales would not be enough to make the bills equal, I didn't think he was pleased.....

Hmm, all the timber and bits I brought to seal the windows was a bit unnecessary and wasted. Still the strimmer was useful and put to use soon we had finished all we had to do and we were at a loose end.

Intermarche for it then, that job done it was loose end time again, what to do?

"Lets go up the trois marchands!"

This of course our local eatery but that does not really do it justice, it's the sort of restaurant that every town in France used to have where the cuisine is never nouveau and the food is simply brilliant. Having each invested €11 wisely; we left full of 4 course meal. Onwards to Morlaix, ignore the supermarkets there and on to St Pol, Red Cash and a car load of wine. On again to LeClerc and the far nicer St Pol branch.

This was going swimmingly well, in we went to Roscoff and our residence for the night the hotel Triton. Thankfully we had decided to stay in a hotel otherwise it would have been kipping in the car!!

The evening was planned, into Roscoff and the my favourite creperie in the whole wide world; Ty Sauzon. Which was of course full.

On to CReperie le Poste packed with locals and proper fast food the Breton way.

In serious danger of digestive explosion back to the hotel and sleep.

We would not normally stay in a hotel but the alternative would have been out of the house at 5 am a mad drive to Roscoff and then embarcation.

Instead we had leisurely out of bed, copious coffee and over to the ferry 5 minutes drive away.

The day was made by a nice surprise. Not the Armorique on the berth, but the Pont Aven.

With the Pont Aven having a proper restaurant we might need to lunch on board.

Which of course we did.

3 courses, starting with as many langoustine as I could pile on a plate, that's rather a lot a lovely steak, then a decimation of the desert board.

I am not a desert person - unless it's France, I can always make room in France.

At the very last moment we sprung out the restaurant and drove home. Management drove - funny that could it have been the 10 pounds spent on unbelievable red...

God; that was such a good weekend.

Home and Tallie and D had rearranged the place all the wood had been stacked, the back of the house seriously tidied.

The weekend had been such a serious funfest we went back to bed Monday to recover.

Today, the chainsaw came out.

And I started the scrapheap challenge.

Sorting the mound of metal outside the house so that we can start to rebuild it.

R







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Child protection

Today as I said I am part of a team looking at child protection training for social workers.

Thing is I am a bit peturbed.

Child protection is central to what we do, but it's not about teaching people procedure.

It's about social work as part of a progressive restitutive system and broader concerns about the distribution of power within society.

Looking at how power in an individualized setting can be used for bad, but also recognizing how social work can be a tool of the repressive state apparatus. operating within a hegemony created around an acceptance of inequality as inevitable and unchangeable.

R

Ikea clearly now the rain has gone....

The day today has been glorious, simply ideal to get stuck into wood cutting, or finishing up stocking on the winters needs or any number of out door type things.

Having decided to spend the rain day outside working, sensible then that we spent the first decent day of the week in the car and on the road.

An expedition to IKEA, perhaps I am getting cunning in my old age, but I came up with the the rather clever idea of taking the smaller car rather than the worryingly cavernous MPV.

Even better was the news that management has misplaced her IKEA card. That's: lost IKEA card, forgotten pin for Visa and snapped her bank card.

Could be a good day financially then....

We got through the day having resisted a lot of things and bought only stuff classed as needed. Well personally I think new hoses for the fire engine are more needed than things like beds but I understand she might not really get priorities right.

Still we managed the whole day and home in plenty of time to get oil for Tallies motor bike.

Tomorrow it's back on the wood so I bet it will rain. Friday I am in a work meeting all day so naturally there is bound to be a heat wave.

Interesting observation that UK Social Work Degrees do not necessarily include modules on child protection. Yeah, suprised me too, still that is all to change and, I might even get a say in what is taught on ours.

R

Goodness gracious me....

It's unusual to report a day of solid progress.

Of course It had to start badly.

Today I had to unload 2 tons of wood that has been sat on the truck for a bit, first step; get the lorry where it needs to be unloaded. Damn those posts! should have ripped tham all out years ago, that was another bedford bumper bent then.

Anyway got the truck where it needed to be and a bit of progress to report. Well no, the digger started and then did not really want to run. Felt like a fuel problem, plenty in it though said the gauge, check the filter, check the pump, all looking ok hmmmm.

Lift the lid off the fuel tank and errrr well enough about what I saw in there or rather I didn't.

Next on get the truck unloaded, not a long job and soon I was on my way back to the woodyard.

6 tons in total moved or put another way 1/3 of what we need for a winter.

Bumper straightened too, by the time honoured drive it into a post method. Luckily that one slipped under Taliesin's radar, I would not hear the end of it.

The man himself is happy enough, the engine for his pit bike is in, the oil is going in so he should be happy tonight.

The postie though was less than impressed, the posties round here drive their vans as if they belonged to someone else, which of course they do. So anyway, there I was driving in my usual buisnesslike manner down to the woodyard when the postie was coming the other way driving like management on a bad day and in a hurry.

Brakes all round then, of course the old Bedford has none of these new fangled ABS, or load sensing brake system thingies. What's more it's on off road tyres which are great for mud, not at all as good on wet tarmac. Of course I am quite used to the old truck going sideways under hard breaking, I got the impression the new postie had not seen this sort of thing before.

Impressed is one way of describing it. She sat there a little while after I had driven past, not sure why.

But of course damp tarmac tells you about the weather, today, working outside and it was raining. It rained all the time I was working and, as soon as I finished the lovley warm sun broke through the clouds.....