Martham Primary, an Essex visit, extreme heat and World Cup Finals.

Anne of Cleeves and Good King Hal being attacked by a triffid, mere nanoseconds before both spontaneously combusting due to the hot sun - but then they shouldn't have touched it.

Martham Primary School has changed it's name at some point in it's recent history. Now when I first started doing my Henry shows there, they were still called West Flegg Middle School. My how things change! The first big change I noticed was the weather when I drove up to Essex from Somerset on the Thursday. What had been warm, but still reasonable weather in Somerset had morphed somewhere along the A303 into a full blow heatwave when I got to Basildon. On turning off the air conditioning in my car and opening the door, the sudden onrush of heat was the equivalent of being slapped in the face with a hot towel. Anyway, it was great to see Amanda and James again. My son is just gorgeous (I know I am biased) and was in a very cuddly mood for most of the weekend, which was perfectly alright with me. We had some fun time together, going to Hylands Park in Chelmsford on the Sunday for instance. There they had a small food market on with one stall specialising in home made sausages. James took great delight in grabbing a tooth pick from the seller and having a try of virtually every sausage they had on display. He was just going back for a second bombing run when I hauled him away! It was also fun watching "Shaun the Sheep" episodes with him on the BBCi player - we were nearly crying with laughter at a couple of the episodes.

Anyway, back to Martham! I got up at about 5am on the Friday morning and was on my way by 5.45am. The drive up was relatively easy and most pleasant in the early morning coolness. However by the time I got to the school the heat had set in properly. It was lovely to be back at Martham which is a delightful school. The teachers are lovely and welcoming, the children fun and polite, and all in all it is always a wonderful place to visit and do a presentation. We had a fun morning, particularly with one lad who was dressed up in a home made Henry VIII outfit who I took great delight in calling "Mini-Me" all day! After a lovely lunch of fish and chips, we were back for a fun afternoon, and it was a loud one as well. The stocks were uproarious fun and we finished with another belting Jousting tournament. Yet again, the gents stormed to a great victory. Can they snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? This now makes the scores very interesting:

GENTLEMEN 24 - 27 LADIES

Hmmmmm! Interesting, very interesting... I got everything loaded back into the car, turned on the engine to get the air con going, and was alarmed to see that the outside thermometer reckoned the current temperature to be 35 degrees! Now that is HOT!!! I was so glad of the air con. I got back to Essex relatively easily. We had a lovely weekend together, even spoiling James by taking him for an exciting breakfast at Burger King on the Saturday.

I watched the World Cup Final on the Sunday night as Holland kicked lumps out of the Spanish, and the Spanish then took to leaping around, rolling on the floor, clutching "hurty limbs" and writhing about as if in the middle of electro-convulsive therapy. It made a mockery of good football and just about summed up this crappy World Cup to a tee. Oh, and Nelson Mandela turned up. (Not in Essex you understand). I wonder if F W de Klerk go an invite?

I saw Amanda and James off to work and school this morning, did some tidying up for Amanda, and the washing up (what a nice chap) and then headed for Somerset. The traffic was awful. There had been an incident on the M3 this morning and the motorway had been shut for quite some time. Even though now re-opened there was still a knock-on with cars queuing back onto the M25. I finally got past that, then got held up with loads of tourist traffic at Stonehenge AGAIN (I blame the Pandorica) and then even more tourists driving incredibly slowly in the fast lane and not really overtaking anyone. In the end it took me over 4 hours to get home. And now, despite some early rain and coolness, we now have the heat back. On with the fan...