Finished school on Friday - and as usual, managed to pick up a nasty cold from those bug-infested children. By Friday I had no voice at all - which was interesting! FACT: If you whisper at children, they will whisper back!! Actually this worked with the staff too! We were all doing hand signals all day!

We took the kids to the pantomime on Thursday - an unknown thing to the non-Brits, but it was very enjoyable. Basically its a comedy fairy tale usually(Jack and the Beanstalk this time) where the main character, the Dame, is a man dressed up as a woman. The lead young man, the Principal Boy is a girl and the jokes are usually VERY corny! The audience joins in a lot ("Oh no it doesn't! Oh yes it does!...BEHIND YOU!!) and is it great fun. Despite coughing my way through it, I loved it. Apart from our 200 or so kids, there were about 100 old folks, who actually really liked having the kids there. Pantomimes aren't much fun if no one joins in, so our children shouting along really helped.

Anyway, by Friday night and the staff Christmas do, my voice had some alcoholic lubrication, and I was able to croak at people. Sadly no one got that drunk and the Michael Jackson tribute band had us all sniggering. Now, just Christmas to survive...