Mongoose

Yesterday turned cold with a real bite in the air in the afternoon. I was told that the first snow fell on the North Shore mountains, but even today, the mountaintops are shrouded so from here we can't see.

Yesterday the day was long, in the evening we had a meeting at work, and since the copper wire had all been stripped from the floodlights in the car park, it was very dark indeed, but inadvertently, a point was made, one of our city councillors was there.

And yesterday I finished a task that has been hanging over me. One of those tasks that you keep finding ways of avoiding. Now I'll have a few days' peace before starting to fret about how I could have done it better, I was always like that with exams too.

Another new show - Bionic woman. Not only is this one more programme with a British actress playing an American - Hugh Laurie certainly opened a can of worms - but yet another where almost every shot looks familiar, filmed in and around Vancouver.

Today, out with a grade 3 class, we saw a Garter snake making its way lazily through some logs. I was surprised that it was warm enough. One of the mothers, who had previously lived in Bombay, back when it was Bombay I guess, either that or the people who live there still refer to it as such, said that her family had lived in a high rise block in the city.
Even so, often, when they looked down into the courtyard below, they would see cobras, which could grow up to nine feet long, and sometimes they would see a mongoose attacking them.
'You get used to it,' she said, ' and it teaches the children respect.

I guess it does. All sorts of things can teach children respect, but frankly, cobras at the base of your block of flats seems awfully efficient as methods go.