Friday 17th May

Big day on the exam front in the Perry household, and Mrs P drops the eldest into school early, as we both spend the day with fingers crossed. I wave off the youngest and then I’m off for double invigilation. That is that both this morning and this afternoon I’m invigilating. It makes me almost feel that I’m back at school.

We had 120 kids in doing Religious Studies this morning, and on reading through the exam paper I wondered why it was called Religious Studies. Apart from one mention of the bible in the first question that was worth two marks, there was no other obvious religious content of any type or faith in an exam lasting ninety minutes. It was all about corporate and social responsibility, which is fine, but why not say that when you name the paper? If the aim was to take religion out of Religious Studies, it has certainly been achieve;, and I can’t help wondering if it’s to avoid upsetting people. The lunatics really are running the asylum on that one.

Spanish in the afternoon is interesting. For the Listening paper you play a DVD which reads the questions out in Spanish for the pupils to answer. The fun bit is the five minutes reading time it gives pupils at the beginning, which is five minutes of silence from the DVD, which had us invigilators wondering if the machine had broken, and greatly relieved when the questions came on. Five minutes of complete silence in a school hall with 60 pupils feels like an eternity.

Later in the afternoon I went to visit the ailing one and was astounded how well he looked for a man who the day before had undergone major surgery. As he sat tucking into sausage, eggs, beans, potato cakes and mushrooms, whilst being fed painkillers intravenously, I wondered quite what all the fuss had been about. It was certainly a relief to see him come through everything so well and major credit must go to the NHS for that.

The eldest was texting jolly messages, and having finished her three AS level exams she was in high spirits. We gave her the evening off being the kind modern parents we are. Later on Mrs P and jay-le-taxi went to collect the youngest before settling down to some simple, non taxing telly. So far so good for the Perry family on the exam front but once the eldest finishes the youngest starts, so we really are taking it one step at a time. It’s just that time of year.

Yours grateful for modern medicine.

Jay