I had a hectic week last week, trying to catch up with work I should have done last half term when I was struggling because of a virus. Today has ben another bad day, coping with manic seven-year-olds in a local primary school. Some didn't seem to understand what was expected of them in a school, and one lad, by no means stupid, didn't know how to do up his own buttons.

It was a wet weekend, but I managed a bit of digging between showers. Now that's sorted, I'm going through my seed collection, sorting out what needs to go in over the next few weeks. I had hoped to plant my broad beans this weekend, but no chance due to the weather and the amount of digging I still had to do.

What a difference from a couple of days ago! Heavy rain last night pretty well wiped out the snow, which was already melting steadily. Just here there's nothing left but the remnants of the odd snowman. It's all gone on one side of my plot, but there's a fair bit still on the other, which is shaded in the mornings. On the other side, where the ground slopes towards the north, away from the sun, some plots still have a lot on them. I managed to do a fair bit of digging, but I still felt shattered afterwards. I'm feeling a lot better than I was though.

Snow!

I'm still coughing and feeling bad, but at least the headaches have gone. All Birmingham schools were closed for the last two days of the half term due to snow. Thusday was dreadful; the college I work at was open, but at least it's only a few minutes' walk away. One guy made it in from Leicester. All the staff were there; there are three colleges in the group; London had ten staff off, and Cambridge 'several'. A lot of students didn't turn up. Yesterday I should have been doing supply somewhere, but the schools were still shut so I had an unscheduled day off.

Actually, it wasn't too bad for most of the day; roads were clear until about four, when snow started to build up again. The evening was chaotic. I went for a walk around the site; the pics speak for themselves.

Bad weekend

Last weekend was the first for three weeks that I was feeling well enough to spend more and on hour or so on the plot, but it was really bad in another way. My wife was due to fly to Freetown (capital of Sierra Leone) on Monday, but there was a last minute hitch with her Sierra Leonean passport. The result was that she ended up flying on her British passport with no visa. We thought she probably wouldn't be allowed on the plane, and as she had a non-tranferrable ticket, she'd have had to pay all over again to get on Friday's flight. It's not cheap either. I had a splitting headache for two days solid, until I heard that she'd managed to blag her way onto the flight. It vanished as soon as I got the news. There was no problem at the other end; you can bribe your way through anything over there. I managed to speak to her briefly last night on a very bad line; she was o the ferry from Lungi Airport to the mainland at the time.

I managed to do a bit of digging, and the snowdrops and Hellebores are doing really well.