Well yesterday was a good day. I did my second Teaching Observation day in a local secondary and I requested to be put in with all the tough classes and thats what they did . Very interesting and it is a good job that I have never seen teaching , in this country , as anything but a varied mixture of educationalist , social worker and policeman. I would say the policeman aspect was prominent yesterday but as always most of the kids were alright. Two of the kids got very stroppy and confrontational, and after the lesson the teacher said " I'm glad you were there, you really helped" which is nice but a real shame because no teacher should be put in the position where they are facing potential violence.This great teacher of mathematics was quite shaken afterwards. It got better in a later class where one of the young scholars had been excluded from her previous school for stabbing someone with a compass! Oh boy.

It got even better in the evening when I went up to Butterknowle to play at the Open Mike night and the welcome was as warm and friendly as ever and the music was great . All of Button Hole Jam were there and they've got even stronger in their playing so I had to be on my toes with the harmonica . Warbling with Klara Whiley with my countertenor voice was gorgeous as always and it was nice tootling with the rest of guys and Heather Dunn the keyboard player who was well on form.

We played a song of hers , a waltz and the words were lovely and very moving strapped onto a very nice melody. Good stuff . A fine lady called Heather Cummings had brought two of her brilliant pies and that was great . I asked her to show Fiona how to make such great pies and this could save our marriage because Fiona is now taking on some of the cooking . Its not so bad she knocked up the Iranian Rice last Friday and it was as good if not better than I do . She was following my recipe of course but she excelled and went beyond that. I'm being eased out of the pack useless, crippled , an old dog without a kennel!