Singing (or speaking) for your supper.

I suppose it was inevitable that this bit of news would pop up evntually: David Cameron is writing bis memoirs and expects to earn £1.5 million from doing so. Apparently this is rather less than the deal made by Tony Blair but they explain that by telling us that Tony Blair was better known in the USA and so would sell books over there too. The Americans must be even less interested that I am in David Cameron's memoirs. 

If he doesn't make enough from his book, then he can top it up with charging £50,000 per hour to give after dinner talks. That's a phenomenally huge amount of money for an hour's talking. I suppose you might argue that he has to prepare his talk beforehand but, even so, he's hardly going to be working for the minimum wage!

Imagine getting used to being paid to speak after a posh dinner. Then when his wife organises a dinner party, he has to speak for free. How hard will that be?! I remain totally bemused by the whole after-dinner-speaker industry. But then I have a friend who earns large sums of money, not in Mr Cameron's league at all, however, as a "consultant". Having been a primary school headteacher and an inspector, he is deemed to know how the system works and is invited to visit schools and advise them on how to prepare for inspection. 

It's one way to supplement his pension, I suppose.

Having spoken to former colleaugues recently about the state of affairs in sixth form education, I am quite happynto have no more to do with any of it, even if they offer me a huge "consultation" fee.

No, I am quite happy to do my own retirement thing, with no pressure from anyone.

Today we walked around the area marvelling at how many grids were blocked by silt and stines from the huge rainstorm we had last week. Almost a week on and there are still huge piles of mud all over the place. I heard of one near neighbour whose fairly new car was ruined by the storm. His parking area is enclosed on three sides. Mud poured in and covered the wheels of the car, seeping into the engine and fouling the electrical system and, this being a new, modern vehicle, the computer system. Will his insurance cover it? Or does mud count as an Act of God? Who knows?

I would show you a picture but, try as I might, I have still not fathomed how to add pictures when I post from the iPad!