Crowne Plaza Hotel Manchester City Centre

... we have had since we arrived. Lots of laughs and reduced to tears in the end. I think the 2 kids may have also enjoyed it.
The Villain from Coronation Street and the star, Aladdin, from Hollyoaks. A pleasure for the ladies in the audience.

Great night.

... are manageable from that respect. Form 1 (very enthusiastic students and they are an absolute scream; I really enjoy teaching them) Form 5, studying the development of the symphony and recording in the recording studio (amazing set up with full desk and pro tools), Lower 6th (perhaps my favourite group) and Upper 6th (a different challenge). A change in the dynamics of the classes is apparent when you have senior classes that are streamed in ...

... few people will stay with us for along time - sharing stories from home, sharing their food and enjoying thier fantastic smiles. The joy on their faces and their excitement as they entered Goa (for the first time) was infectious - nine hours on a train which passed far too quickly..... Joss, the thirty year old who graduates next year has promised to keep in touch...... we hope he does and who's to say we can't be there when he graduates in april?????

On to Goa and to stay with our ...

... the gorge up the gorge” debacle followed by kilometres of what, bog? on top of a mountain?!! where the hell were we?!! Also, damn the reservoir where, having run out of water, Ryan requested that I wade in and try and get some water for boiling. Cold! Muddy! Undrinkable! Squidgy!

... of this food"!), but rather hilariously said it was nice to be sat with someone on a plane who was smiling for once, rather than some narky beggar. I just laughed, enjoying the irony. Finally, finally, we arrived in London, and I met a bit of a show-off but essentially friendly South African girl at baggage claim, and we talked about New Zealand a bit (one of her husband's many homes is there, you see - they also own homes in Chelsea and Australia and Cheshire and all ...

... woman from Denver who, between coughing fits tells me she is going to hospital in Delhi for "treatment" and a nutty old indian woman on the aisle who refused to let me in and out of my seat and continued to bark at me in Hindu for the first couple of hours. We eventually bonded over an armrest and a flavourless inflight curry. After grabbing an hour's doze we arrived at dawn in a hazy, crazy Delhi......

... or more to the point me trying to find our way home and Lisa just trying to walk. She was having a good time though, thought everything was very funny, even her falling over a couple of times. We did make it and i think we passed out, good times. The next day we..... i don't like saying the next day, sounds very much like someone in primary school writes a story. On the morrow ( i don't even know if thats the right thing to say) took the ...

... English boys about football (soccer) and football (afl), and they invited us to a match tonight between Man United and Liverpool, but we're too hungover to want to go out. We also enrolled in Manchester Aussie Rules which is apprently just a **** up, a barbeque, English boys trying to play footy and Aussie boys playing footy. Now its recovery time on the coach with some English fish and chips and some English foxtel...

... and places I could see before the brutal grasp of reality was ready to drag me back across the Atlantic. After a couple night on the twins' couch where no options presented themselves, they started flooding in. The plan quickly became to scoot down to Canterbury for a day to see Helen, who I'd met in Cambodia, and then saw briefly -- and groggily in the Dubai airport. (We had discussed going to Cardiff to visit Kate, her traveling buddy when we met seven months earlier ...

... and erupted when the players appeared on the pitch. Nothing will compare to watching Eric Cantona playing and the stadium lost a bit of magic the day Eric left. I will never forget the day I saw David Beckham play for the first time, and take pride in knowing I recognised how good he was well before he was so famous. Luckily I never saw ...