The anticipation has been building for a while but we are almost there – our whole school production of The Addams Family takes place next week. We look forward to three performances on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings and also to our matinee performance on Monday afternoon for the children in Year 6 at our local Primary Schools. There are still a very few tickets available via our ParentPay system (please select 'other items' and 'Production Tickets' on your preferred performance date).

I have been watching rehearsals of the production for several months but deliberately only small parts as I want to wait until next week to see the whole show and enjoy it properly. What has been so very noticeable has been the sheer number of students who have been involved both on stage and behind the scenes. We know that we have a wonderful group of Year 13 students – who I can fairly describe as “veterans” of Wallingford School productions – and they are the most fantastic role models for the very many younger students who are involved in this show. We will celebrate this production next week but is also bodes very well indeed for future productions in years to come and that is also really exciting.

The life of the school rolls on with a number of trips, visits and fixtures this week. In particular, it was great to see our Year 10 students attend the Poetry Live event with the chance to see and hear the poets on stage reciting their own work – there really is nothing like it. We are also very grateful to the Merchant Taylors’ Company for hosting a fascinating talk at the Merchant Taylors’ Hall on Monday for our Sixth Form Historians which they took a huge amount from.

This week’s lunchtime House Competition is House Family Fortunes with our regular quiz teams primed for action. The House Lunchtime Football Competition follows over the next few weeks while the upcoming second running of the House Remote Control Car Competition looks like it will be as popular as last year’s inaugural event.