I paused en route home from work last night (it is now 12.30am) to replicate the photo that I had taken on the final day of term 2 just before Christmas. It’s been a long term and there is a decidedly spring feel as we edge towards the end of February. It is evident in the photos here; the one on the left with the covering of snow and the one on the right taken yesterday. It was great cycling weather, as predicted in the post from the coffee shop earlier in the day. My journey home was marred a little on arrival home; I discovered that I had left my wallet at work in the coat pocket that I was wearing when I got the lift to school from my SENCO friend Jo… No money, no debit card at home, no prospect of a glass of wine at the end of the week, let alone the end of the term & no friend available to drive me back to Henley to pick it up (the three I tried all had good excuses from meeting up with lovers in Gatwick to seeing the Home Secretary in Sonning). I forked out for a taxi back to Henley and then back to Reading. The cost? £25. 🙁 That said, I had a wide-ranging conversation with the taxi driver as we winded our way through the countryside to Henley; he was a Punjabi Sikh who had come to the UK in 1965 and had ended up working in the RAF and then for the Mars corporation in Maidenhead. A nice man… He deposited me back in Reading town centre and logic says that I should have been a bit pissed off after having to hand over 25 quid for an entirely avoidable trip back to work and back home, but I felt lucky to have met such an interesting individual. The wine helps…