As there are no doubts hundreds (maybe even thousands) of school children bent over laptops writing about what they did over half-term, I thought I might as well join them. I should love to be able to report that I accomplished what I’d set out to do, which was absolutely nothing. I reckoned that as most of the country’s teachers were (supposedly) having a break, I could do so too. Unfortunately, a malignant Fate, to use Dornford Yates’ wonderful phrase, decreed otherwise.

Fortunately, waiting times have been cut dramatically since this photo was takenFirst off, a close relative decided to get carted off to Accident and Emergency. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait as long as long as the poor person shown in this photo. Then his wife managed to get herself ill. Consequently, we spent a lot of time during the week visiting and doing good works. So the book I’d been planning to write didn’t get written. I didn’t even get as far as the title.

I did, however, manage to write/rework a couple of articles about educational ICT consultancy:

Using An ICT Consultant and

ICT Consultant Or ICT Interim Manager?

Plus, I rewrote the part of the ICT in Education website that deals with my own consultancy services and started a Testimonials page, and had a good meeting to boot.

In other words, all was not lost, and I also rediscovered the fact that the food in the local hospital is not too bad. I do hope, though, that I don’t have to avail myself of the restaurant facilities again.

As the TV broadcasting companies used to say when there was an unplanned interruption, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible -- once I've caught up with some emails and some new work that came in. Look out for a review of the Learning Without Frontiers conference for starters. In the meantime, read my semi-rant entitled Computer Science Courses Should Be Left To The Experts: Teachers