Gosh here we are, Jude and I, last day of school and Mallorca 3-weeks away opening the kids school-work folders for the year and what do we find but... well great stuff - and flippn' 'eck abi produces stuff like this in her fave format, gosh and i'm givng her jip as we walk to school and she's thinking this up if only Bill could read this stuff - gotta tell her it's Hodges and Gonsalves and Duke 'just' tinkled the ivory

the door

Go and open the door
Maybe outside there's
a land of no return
where the fluffy clouds are made of bright white candyfloss
And there are gingerbread houses all covered with sugar lace vines
Little roses made out of astonishingly red skittles with
rolling green fields of candy canes

Go and open the door
You are in a world of weathers
Where it will be raining milk chocolate drops,
Hailing gob stoppers and maybe even snowing icing sugar

Go and open the door
Maybe you will enter a very yummy universe
where you will visit the milky-way of milky ways
Eat most of the chocolate galaxy and just get back in time for tea

by Abigail McNeill aged 9

i'd like to paint

I'd like to paint
the smell of Albion Road on Monday morning
with its strong smell of car fumes, overflowing bins and the laughter of young children going to school.

I'd like to paint
the sound of Jazz fm in bed straight after the
lights have gone out, Duke Ellington blowing
his horn with its magical sound on the bedclothes

I'd like to paint the feeling of a warm fluffy kitten purring in my
lap as it looks up at you in its cute, adorable face
pleading for a saucer of warm milk

by Abigail Mcneill aged 9

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." [Quotes of the Day]