I am outside, trying to separate a 25 metre set of Christmas lights (“warm white,” I’ll have you know. I’m keeping it classy) from the house. It all starts simply enough. I know how they’re attached. All seems straightforward. I was there when they were assembled, after all, one torrid night in early December in…

Writing this, I feel almost giddy with the realisation that we have had not one, but three snow days in the past two winters. Back in my London days, working in a city that enjoyed a snow day roughly once a decade, and at a school that would stay doggedly open if the four horsemen…

I have killed a plant. A dracaena marginata, no less. They are impossible to kill, I am told, by the Received Wisdom. You can’t go wrong with one of those palmy things with the spindly leaves. They love ill-treatment and general neglect. There is one in the school reception, and someone actually hung baubles off…

The school have sent a strongly worded email. Not just to me, I hasten to add. Clearly I’m not the only one whose waning enthusiasm for Biff, Chip and Kipper books is beginning to show. Four times a week, children must read, it says. Four times a week they must have something written in their…