Here comes the sun.

By far the best half hour of my day today was when I came home from school (after marking those state-wide level-of-achievement-watchamightcallit English tests for hours on end) and had this flash of inspiration to grab my A.S. Byatt novel, a blanket and a woolen jumper and sit outside on my roof for a while. There had been a light frost during the night, but the mid-afternoon March sun was just strong enough to warm my face and hands. It was also a great place to do some of the homework assigned to me by my new voice therapist yesterday which includes

• breathing deep into my stomach - in order to become better acquainted with my diaphragm; pretty hard to do when you spent the best part of the last twenty years self-consciously pulling in said stomach,
  
• poking two fingers into those jaw joint holes near the ears - so as to loosen the jaw and release the pressure that's been building up during the school day,
  
• not clearing my throat anymore - the hardest habit to break, I'm telling you...
  
• There's more even weirder stuff, like singing whilst breathing in instead of out - Go on, you try it! It's the strangest sensation. And sound. - But I didn't try that on the roof. Didn't want to push my luck, seeing as I'm not supposed to be on the roof in the first place. On second thought, sitting cross-legged on a roof making choking-duck noises might just do the trick and secure me that bit of (prescribed) extra holiday I could do with. Hm, maybe tomorrow...