Yesterday was my last day at work. Today I drive to France for a couple of weeks holiday and then I become a student teacher. No more wages for a year. Although I've been at the same company for 21 years I was hoping to sneak away from work quietly withut a big fuss but the boss phoned me mid-afternoon and told me to stay put because they want to do a presentaion at 4 o'clock. I hoped I wouldn't get emotional.

The boss gave a speech about how important I'd been to the company and how everyone was going to miss me and then he gave me a Creative Zen 40mb! My collegues then gave me cards and gifts and I gave a little impromptu speech about how much I'd enjoyed my time there and working with them and how I'll miss them all but I'm looking forward to my new challenges. I got a bit choked up a couple of times and it started a few people sniffling. After I'd shaken everyone's hands and said goodbye I left the office for the last time and when I looked back as I drove away I have to admit that I had a tear in my eye. So that's it then, I'm a student. Weird!

Just 4 more days to work and then we drive to France again for 2 weeks holiday. Now that I'm going to be without an income for a year it's not really a good time to go but we had already booked before I knew whether I'd got a place on a teacher training course. Whilst away I need to spend some time refreshing my knowledge of Chemistry, Physics and Biology at the levels I'll be teaching so I'm packing a textbook and a laptop + interactive CD-ROM. I'm quite apprehensive about the cut in our family income but we've made a few economies in our domestic budget and on paper it looks alright. I've already been approached by two people offering to pay me to give their children private tuition to improve their science grades, so that might be a possibility for me to earn a little extra money if the workload of my own studies allows.