Jamie brought all her work books home from school today in pre­par­a­tion for the end of year. She also brought a pile of papers, draw­ings, etc. I’ve been look­ing through some of her work and it is fant­astic! I’m really sur­prised at the qual­ity and depth of some of the work she has been doing. She tells us next to noth­ing about the work she does. We do try to ask and express an interest, we are full of praise when she deserves it and sup­port­ive when she needs helps. But we get next to noth­ing back! It is very frus­trat­ing. I also found a cer­ti­fic­ate show­ing that she had taken and passed her bronze level key­board exam 10 days ago! She was in bed when I found it so I couldn’t ask, but she hasn’t told us a thing about tak­ing this exam or that she had passed it. *sigh*

I made my phone calls this morn­ing: The inland rev­enue are still a huge dis­or­gan­ised bur­eau­cracy! I got trans­ferred from one depart­ment to another, and in the end I have to fill in a new form and I may as well have not bothered with the last one. I also found out I have been pay­ing tax on a bene­fit I haven’t received for the last four years and will have to try to claim it back! The invest­ment com­pany I phoned about sur­ren­der­ing a policy have decided to rip me off! I lodged an offi­cial com­plaint! I also had to phone the hos­pital to chase up an appoint­ment that I have been wait­ing for. It still hadn’t been made, but the lady I spoke to was able to do so whilst I was on the phone. So it has taken them more than a month since they received the refer­ral from my GP to make the appoint­ment, andthey still wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t called them! I still have to wait more than a month to actu­ally go into hos­pital for the appointment.

After lunch Jan and I went down to school for the show. I hadn’t real­ised it was going to be in the church. We got seats and settled down to wait. Even­tu­ally the kids came out and star­ted the show. They did about ten songs from Joseph. They were really quite good. The PA sys­tem stopped work­ing so it was a little hard to hear the soloists, but all in all they did very well. The cos­tumes were good too. I took some pho­tos and will put them in the gal­lery soon.

After cof­fee and bis­cuits in the par­ish hall, we went for our appoint­ment with Jamie’s teacher. As usual she was full of praise for Jamie. She did not have a single com­plaint to make. She said she could not recall hav­ing to tell Jamie off for any­thing at all this year! She read us a story Jamie had writ­ten as part of her ‘optional’ SATS exam she took in May. The story was fant­astic, and it had been graded by the year six teacher at level four, which is the level she will be expec­ted to attain in year six. She is cur­rently in year four, and will start year five next year. Her teacher assures us she will be doing year six work next year as she as pretty much attained year five level already!

I have a day off work tomor­row! I’ve got some phone calls to make in the morn­ing (deal­ing with the Inland Rev­enue — yeuch!), and then we’re going to watch Jamie sing at school. The school are doing some songs from Joseph. I’m really look­ing for­ward to it. We’ve also got an appoint­ment for Par­ents Even­ing tomor­row where we will get a chance to talk to Jamie’s teacher about how Jamie is doing in school. We got her end of year report on Fri­day and it was excel­lent as usual! Still, I would like to know that she is being stretched enough. I wouldn’t like her to get bored.