Shylock, pizza and Open Evening

I am struggling to write this a bit as my fingers are hurting. Why they're hurting I don't know.

Anyway, J went back to school yesterday which is good. His English teacher phoned on Friday and said she was concerned that he'd been off for so long and she hoped he wasn't going to fall behind the rest of the class and what was wrong with him? I felt a bit like saying 'Oh well, as it's the start of his GCSE courses and he's got controlled assessments coming up I thought it would be a good time for him to have a few days lazing around at home watching Youtube videos.' He's ill that's what's wrong with him. Tonsillitis. Anyway I said we would look up the 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Merchant of Venice' passages he's meant to be studying and she told me that they're studying the father-daughter relationships including that between Shylock and his daughter and J would know who Shylock is. (Actually I know who Shylock is). Anyway she is going to go through it with him over a couple of lunch times which is really nice of her.

Year 10 isn't an easy year at the best of times but it's definitely got off to a shaky start for us. J has been quite unsettled by all the changes - dropped some subjects, new teachers, different pupils in his classes, Maths BORING, which we have sorted out with the teacher, hopefully. Misses doing History and Geography, hates English and RE but thankfully Art, Graphics, Science and German going ok. Then he got ill as well. Just praying that things get better.

Tonight he was helping at Open Evening, playing the steel pans in the Music Department while P and I hung out in Costa. Because of Open Evening he finished school at lunchtime and we went to Pizza Express, having got a special offer - starter, main (limited choice ie pizza) and drink for £10 each. Not bad. I had a Quatro Formaggio pizza which was a mixture of four cheeses but it was a bit too cheesy for me really. Tried a bit of P's 'La Reine Pizza' which was nicer. I hate it when that happens.

Then we took back J's new school trousers which were too short and went to Waterstones to look for  GCSE German book which we couldn't find, then went to WH Smith's and still couldn't find it and J got in a hump because he said we wouldn't get home any earlier than normal which we didn't and he had to spend the time until Open Evening doing piano practice and Chemistry when really he wanted to be playing computer games. (Have I mentioned that piano is going a lot lot better with new teacher? In fact his playing is transformed.)

There's lots more I could write about (and in fact there is something big happening in our lives but I can't blog about it yet) but my fingers are aching and I need to go to bed.