First things first: Tom's game is here now so you can all sleep easy in your beds. Just as well, considering it's nearly time to start thinking about his Christmas present for this year. The parental unit is coming up to visit this weekend so I will give it to them then to take back to Horsham.

So on Thursday we went to Germany. We had to get up disgustingly early (well, 5am), then we drove to Luton airport and found all the students (seven of them - Andy, Ray, Vicky, Mads, Bhavisha, Christina and Rachel). We flew with Easyjet to Dortmund. We were only in the air about 40 minutes which was good. Then we took taxis to Bochum, after we found a taxi driver that spoke a few words of English (I can read a bit of German, and say a few words, but I'm not good enough to hold a conversation. I can read menus and things like that). We stayed at the Ibis Zentrum which is where we've stayed before, it has the smallest hotel rooms I've ever seen but it is clean and the staff speak English. Then we had some lunch and poked about the town centre for a bit.

At half five we all met up at the hotel to walk over to the Starlight-Halle. Mark and I were a bit concerned that we couldn't remember the way, but we found it. We met Mark's friend Adam (Floyd) at the stage door and he took us into the theatre to watch the skate warm-up. Most of the students hadn't seen Starlight Express before so they thought the set and the skating was fantastic. Then we were taken back through to the foyer and bought programmes and things before it was time to go in and watch the show.

We had really good seats - towards the back of the paddock, Mark was on the edge by the track, and I was next to him. And I had forgotten how much I love that show when it's done properly (ie not the UK tour, although they tried their best). The bridge and the skates and the lights and the smoke and the costumes and the music. Someone had obviously looked at the UK tour version and they'd made a few changes to the Bochum show, but thankfully, there were also changes that they hadn't made - for example, they still had A Lotta Locomotion (well, 'Ne Lok Mit Locomotion) instead of that godawful A Whole Lotta Locomotion that the tour has. But the beginning of the Rap had changed to the newest version, although it segued back into the older one part of the way through. Also, more pyrotechnics (from Electra's gauntlets, from Greaseball's skates, and from the bridge after the final final).

Oh, and the reason I like going to the theatre with Mark's students - they all love musical theatre and they came out of Starlight Express absolutely buzzing. They were asking Mark whether they could have lasers at their theatre at the college, and a bridge, and could they do Chess on rollerskates.

Anyway then we realised that we hadn't had any dinner so we went to look for somewhere. We found somewhere that was open and ate very nice pizza. Then we went back to the hotel and went to sleep (it was about 1am - you never knew I was such a dirty stop-out, did you).

The next day we didn't have to leave for the airport until about 3:30pm so we (Mark and I) hung around at the hotel until we had to check out, then we went into the town again to try and get some lunch. We went to a bakery that sold sandwiches and I tried to order in German, which worked as we did get some lunch, but both I and the lady behind the counter got very confused. Then we wandered round the shops a bit and bought some Ja! cat food for the cat (he likes it) and some chocolate. Then we sat at the hotel for a bit until we had gathered all the students, then took taxis back to Dortmund airport and got the aeroplane back to Luton. And then home.

On Saturday evening we went to Mark's cousin's wedding reception over in Essex. I wore my cream pretty dress and my new pink cardigan. All of Mark's cousins always seem to remember my name and I can only keep about half of them straight...he has three sets of aunts and uncles and it's a bit like one of those logic problems because each has one son and one daughter. And some of them are married and some not. I need some kind of crib sheet. It was a bit of a posh do, with an open bar and fireworks and casino games to play. They had a prize for who could win the most play money at the casino and Mark's cousin's daughter (age about 7 or 8) won it.

And this week I've been working and houseworking and all the normal boring stuff. So now we're all up to date on my life.