Roman Hill Middle School, Lowestoft

Mike Farley as Good King Hal, and Helen Budd, Assistant Events Manager at Leeds Castle, working their socks off at the recent Royal Jousting Tournament.  BTW, Irn Bru tastes like crap.

I love this picture on the right.  Darlene from Leeds Castle sent it to me the other day and it just makes me laugh so much.  It almost looks like dear little Helen Budd is resting her feet on my head!

Today was yet another return visit to Roman Hill Middle School in Lowestoft in north Suffolk.  Thankfully my journey up was painless compared to a couple of years back (see this blog passim) and there were no major road traffic accidents or horrendous roadworks in Lowestoft itself.  In fact the only two things that ruined the journey up was the fact I had to leave at just before 6am and most of the journey was spent listening to the inane brainless ramblings of Sarah Kennedy on Radio 2.  Considering it is only a couple of days after the Air France plane crash, the idiotic woman was jabbering about her own experiences of Air France on a recent trip to Egypt.  Apparently it was a "jolly nice airline", which I am sure will be of monumental relief to all the mourning families across the globe.   And as today was a polling day in the European elections, she assured us she would not be digging any political stories out of the newspaper reviews that she does each day.  Now Sarah has her political colours very firmly nailed to her mast most of the time and you would have to be pretty dense not to work out her political leanings, but she was not going to make any comments about the impending implosion of Gordon Brown's government in the elections - but she reckoned the day was going to be entertaining and "jolly interesting".  Someone get this buffoon off the air because....damn!  But enough of my Will Smith impressions from "Men in Black".

It was great fun at the school today.  A group of about 80, very enthusiastic children, and some lovely teachers - but not dear Rebecca Haste from previous years.  She was busy having a fun time in Australia, and I can't blame her!  She'd heard my inane jokes for the previous five years and probably considered the antipodes as the best place to get away from them this time around.  We had a fabulous day with the only draw back being we ran out of time to find champions in the jousting!  We had a ladies race and a gents race, but that was it!  No final!  Perhaps next year.  The journey back was less of a drag as Sarah Kennedy had gone home to nail four CWT of blue bunting to the front of her country mansion.

I have spent this evening trying to teach James how to play "Super Mario Cart" on the Wii, and he is slowly getting the hang of it, but he is still not quite getting the idea that driving in a straight line is the quickest way to win a race.  Never mind, I am sure even Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button had these problems at first.  Tomorrow I am back at Northwick Park in Canvey Island.  Should be a good one.