I'm used to finding chocolate bar wrappers, bits of paper, broken pens and the occasional two-pence piece on the floor of my classroom, but today I got a bit of a shock.

During my year ten lesson I spotted what I first thought to be a balloon, but after closer inspection I turned out to be wrong - damn sex education and family planning clinics. I decided to leave it where it was rather than fussing about and making my year tens all silly.

How on earth did it get there? On second thoughts, I rather not know.

To much delight We had the day off yesterday due to bad weather. I was actually at school at seven o'clock without a snowflake on the ground but by eight-thirty was skidding home in my little car pretending to be a rally driver. So maybe the 55 mile round trip was a little bit wasteful, but it was just what I'd do in an ordinary day, only without any kids being rude to me in-between.

Another great plus was that I got to listen to Terry Wogan - a rarity in these due to my OCD-esque desire to get to school at the crack of dawn.

As if that weren't enough, yesterday's day-off meant some of the pupils decided to extend their half-term holiday. I should have been teaching nineteen year tens this afternoon but only eight showed up - and one of those was fifteen minutes late, but I was so happy that the rude chavtastic ones weren't there that I didn't really care. I really got into the spirit of things and took great relish in doing a formal register and reading out all the names including those I knew were absent.

I wish all my classes were that small.