Half term and Halloween

The half term holiday is nearly over and, for a change, I've actually done things other than read and drink too much coffee. 

The Daughter plus Boyfriend drove up from Cornwall on Tuesday and are staying with my parents until Sunday. I feel very guilty that they can't stay with us, but The Daughter's cat allergy won't allow it. I have broached the subject of re-homing the cats, but The Daughter pointed out that she's only up this way a couple of times a year, so sacrificing the cats would not be fair on Sons One and Two. Life with my parents is probably more interesting anyway, as they live in a nearby town rather than being out here in the sticks. So yesterday was spent catching up with The Daughter's life - she's just got a new job to help her get through college. She'll be working on mental health wards in Cornwall as a sort of supply-mental-health-person. There must be an official name for it, but she's basically getting loads of experience towards the job she eventually wants to do, which can only be a plus for getting into university. I am, once again, a very proud mother.

Son Number Two and I have been climbing and spent some time trying the bouldering cave. It's like climbing, only sideways. It's a bit like the games everyone plays when they're a child: the 'Let's-get-round-the-room-without-touching-the-ground' thing. Only I did touch the ground several times. Thank goodness for crash-mats and painkillers...

I sent in my first assignment of the new course, and got it back within 48 hours - a record return from an OU tutor. I scored 70, which is not great, but you've got to start somewhere. As I waffled and argued myself round in circles, it's not too bad I suppose.  

Guess what? I did housework, too. Yes, I know it's a shock, but it's that time of year again, so I thought I should make the effort. I think, of all the festivals, I like Samhain the most. It's a shame to see the back of the Summer already, but I do prefer Autumn. It's nice to be able to draw the curtains, shut the world out, and enjoy being together in the evenings. And Autumn television is so much better than the rest of the year, even if it is still slightly rubbishy. (The Paradise did get me reading Zola though, and I'm ashamed that it's taken me so long to read his books.) This evening, no doubt, we will have dozens of local children at the door begging for treats. I just hope my own children haven't eaten them all. I bought sweets early, which was a mistake, as both sons have been eyeing the bags and I caught Son Number One picking out his favourites. He's suggested that we turn the lights out and pretend we're not in, so he can have all the sweets himself. Just to remind you, he'll be twenty next year...

Thankfully, we've not had an anti-Halloween assembly this year. A few years ago, we had a vicar who gave an assembly on how Halloween was a festival during which evil Pagans tried to talk to the dead. I happened to like that particular vicar very much, but his assembly made me boiling mad. At the time, Son Number Two was at our school, and the uneducated comment upset him greatly. I also had to fend off stupid questions from The Son's close friends, who knew my religious beliefs. For those who want to know, it's a festival to celebrate the end of the Summer (hence the housework - you're meant to clear out all the rubbish of the year). Yes, it's associated with death, in that the weather's getting colder and plants are slowing their growth or dying off. Years ago, it was a celebration of the harvest being safely gathered (hence apple-bobbing games and pumpkin and turnip carving), and some animals were slaughtered for food because they couldn't be kept through the Winter. Today, it's used as a time to think about those who have died (not talk to them, for goodness sake...), so we might light candles for remembrance. 

As far as 'Trick or Treating' goes, it's a commercial thing, and not one that I particularly enjoy. My children have never really got involved in it, as I think it's cheeky to hammer on doors asking for sweets, though American friends have told me it's a great family and party time for them. I suppose it's done very halfheartedly here - it's not done with a spirit of fun. Quite often, the four year olds who bang on the door are wearing masks from horrific and disturbing films (which I can only hope they haven't seen) along with their normal clothes. American friends have sent me photos of really inventive, non-scary costumes, often home-made, and the whole thing seems to be far more pleasant than the nightmare we've turned it into. We don't do it as a fancy dress parade. We do it as a big mess. 

Knife-wielding children and other darlings

The dreaded course has come and gone. Predictably, it was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. We didn't have to do the awful 'lets go round the room and introduce ourselves' bit - we just had weird questions to answer to the others on our table, and that was easy. I found out that Ms Fab's childhood ambition was to be a posh nanny to a rich family. I actually started training to be a posh nanny to rich families when I was 18, but found the other students unbelievably snobby and one-dimensional. They lived for money, thought status was everything, and were generally judgmental and unpleasant people.  I lasted a term and couldn't wait to give my horrible nanny's uniform to a charity shop. 

Anyway - the course. It was run by a mental health doctor and nurse, plus a woman that was some kind of behavioural therapist, so they knew what they were talking about. Ms Fab and I had gone with the intention of learning more about some of our badly behaved/irritating children. Sharing experiences around the table, we soon realised that, actually, we were total wimps who were making something out of less than nothing. One girl had just managed to shut herself into a room before a child attacked her. She'd slammed the door and the child drove his knife straight through it. Makes you look a bit pathetic to say that a student drives you mad by licking pencils.

We found that a teacher on the course had taught one of last year's Horrible Boys. She'd been describing an incident of temper flare-ups and meanness, and Ms Fab and I kept looking at each other and saying how it reminded us of a particular character. 'We used to have that boy,' the teacher told us. 'He was a year four and scared the hell out me. Used to stalk other children. Glad to get rid of him.' 

It was a very interesting course, and we've already signed up for the next one they're doing in March, on children's anxiety. Some courses are such a waste of time, but this one was full of practical ideas and common sense. And the tutors were brilliant. One told us how she'd licked the bottom of her shoe to prove to a student with OCD that the germs wouldn't kill her. She said she'd spent the next week praying not to be ill, as the child would think he'd been right all along.

The other people on the course were okay, although the girl who'd been the target of the knife-wielder was rather irritating. She spent the course applying hand-cream, checking her nails, sending texts and eating. I could easily have taken a knife to her myself. But, no, maybe she was using avoidance techniques. Perhaps she was doing these little rituals to make herself feel safe. She did leave the room once - maybe she was under stress. What were the triggers to her behaviour? Did she need calming down and a nice person to talk to? Maybe she had PTSD due to the knife incident. Maybe she was just being a pain in the backside. 

Broken knees and bickering

Today, the class teacher was on a course, so we had a day in which I, Ms Fab and Mrs GSOH were in charge. I use the phrase 'in charge' very loosely here. We did all the lessons we should have done, but we did them with more chatter and disorganisation than are normally allowed. 

I took the opportunity to take out three of our Moody Girls, and gave them a lecture on how everyone was fed up with the argument they'd all managed to string out since Monday morning. Poisonous glances have been shot across the classroom at regular intervals - if you'd been standing in the way, you'd have had holes burned right through you. Sneery faces, squabbling at break-times and pointed whispering-behind-hands have been the norm this week. One girl had tried to patch things up, but had had her apology thrown back at her because 'it was said in a funny tone of voice'. 

I was using a 'funny tone of voice' myself, when I sent them into the library, as I was speaking with gritted teeth. Two girls were happy to make up, but the third was enjoying her sulk far too much to stop. She folded her arms and gave me a look that told me she'd watched Mean Girls too many times. We'd tried to deal with the situation nicely, earlier in the week, so I just said that I didn't care if they weren't friends and never spoke to each other again, but everyone in the class was sick of their arguing. I then returned the least guilty of the three to the classroom and told the others I was giving them five minutes together to sort it out. There was to be no screaming, and no blood-stains on the carpet, I added, then left them to it. 

Five minutes later, I returned to two girls showing their true ages (ten), in floods of tears and mid-hug. The class can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Until next time. 

We also had a problem with a broken knee. One boy had been helped in at break-time and was sitting outside the office with an ice-pack and a sympathetic friend. 'I think I broke my knee. I can't walk properly,' he told me. He confirmed that he could move his leg '...a little bit. But it really hurts when I do this.' And he then twisted his knee cap in a way that made me wince. After sending his Sympathetic Friend back to class, I told him, 'Sit there until you feel ready to come back in. We're just getting the iPads out.' He was in the classroom before I was. 'I managed to click my knee back into place,' he informed me. 

Jolly good. 

Neil Gaiman on the importance of libraries and reading

A lazy post on my part today, but an important one. Neil Gaiman did a talk for the Reading Agency on how vital it is to read and encourage children to read. 

I'll post some extracts, then include the link to the article. 

'We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.'

'We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I'm going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It's this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things.'

'Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. "If you want your children to be intelligent," he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.'

There's more here. Please read it. 

Must crack on... when I've done this. And finished my book, and...

Well, I've fallen on my feet as regards tutor allocation this year. I've just received a 17 page email from mine, that points students in the right direction for getting decent marks in their assignments. He seems to have a great sense of humour, which he'll certainly need when he reads my work. He writes wonderfully, which is reassuring for someone teaching a linguistics course. He's also made it clear that he's not impressed by unnecessarily big words: 'don't be tempted to call a spade a horticultural vertical soil penetration device,' we are told. That would be good advice for some of the students on the course facebook page. There are a small amount of them who think they come across as being uber clever by using ten really long words when two short ones would do. What they've actually done is panic some people into thinking the course is too difficult to understand. Three (out of a group of a hundred) have left the course already, and we've not even done the first assignment. 

Because of this highfalutin, pretentious bull, a rival facebook group has been started by students who speak everyday English and spell things wrong on occasions. Needless to say, I joined it. 

My first assignment has to be in by next Thursday. I've done most of the reading, and will hopefully bash everything out at the weekend. I can't do it at the moment, because the Class Bookworm has lent me a wonderful book about a servant girl who can do magic. I was going to save it until after my assignment, but made the mistake of reading the first page to see what it was like. 

It looked like it had the potential to be rather twee, but it's written with great humour and reminded me of Howl's Moving Castle. I do like exchanging books with the children, especially the Bookworm, as she has very good taste in authors. There's a 'reading cafe' thing starting at school soon at which, one teacher told me, stories are to be read and shared and generally celebrated with the children and their parents, in the hope that they'll start reading together. But only teaching staff are allowed to be trained up for it, so I'm in a bit of a sulk about that... 

I am honestly astounded and disgusted that some parents (in fact, most parents, if I go by what the children tell me) do not read to their children. I always, always read to mine (when they were younger. Now the eldest is in her twenties, she'd probably object to being forcibly read to). We started with picture books and moved on to Jane Hissey's Old Bear stories. Favourites included Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows. As they got older, we read Terry Pratchett's children's stories and Lemony Snicket, who taught me more about the correct use of apostrophes than any English teacher. The final read for Son Number Two and I was, I believe, Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, about a little girl who gets lost in the woods and hallucinates about meeting the God of the Lost, whose face is made of wasps. (He was about twelve at the time, I hasten to add, in case you think I was reading that to a three year old.)

Anyway, I must go and do some OU work. Although, I've just discovered House and have recorded all the repeats on Sky. I've only got fourteen hour-long programmes to watch...

My Little Pony and other mysteries

You meet some strange characters on a Brownie camp. Ms Fab and I ate our Saturday packed lunch outside with the girls, as they were better company than most of the bossy women. Two Brownies (not from our little bunch) came and joined us, and one of them spent a good half hour explaining the plot of every single episode of Charmed. This was, we were informed, a programme about three teenage witches. They were sisters, but didn't know they were sisters, and one died, but didn't come back to life because you only do that if you're into dark magic. We learnt an awful lot from this young Brownie - mostly that she watched far too much television. 

When she had finished talking about Charmed, she started on My Little Pony. When The Daughter was very young, she had a couple of these funny-smelling, pastel-coloured horrors. They had long, nylon manes, which got tangled and caught on buttons, and I think they were some of the first toys she put in our yard sale. It seems these things now have their own television series. Again, we were told about it in great detail. 'Cutie Marks', which are kinds of tattoos on the ponies' bottoms, denote the jobs the animals do. Some make clothes, apparently, which is a bit of a puzzler as they don't have fingers to hold needles and don't actually wear clothes. Never mind. We had to concentrate, in case we got asked questions at the end. They were nice girls, but it was quite a relief when they finished their lunches and ran off to play. 

After lunch, we helped put tables and chairs away in the hall. That was when we saw a sign that said, 'Chairs are not to be stacked no more than 10 high.' Someone had typed that out, laminated it and stuck it on a cupboard door. And nobody had questioned it, or ripped it into tiny little pieces whilst calling the sign-writer an embarrassing idiot. As we read various notices on pin-boards, Ms Fab and I wished we had brought some red pens with us. We mentally underlined information on the 'forth activity of the day'. We added imaginary commas to a rambling paragraph on the need for everyone to help tidy-up. We managed not to call the woman at the decorating cake's table a moron. And then we realised that we really should have left our school selves at home as we were getting more than a little wound up by it all. 

As I mentioned yesterday, our local Cub Scouts were camping close to us. When I got home, it was mentioned on the local news that Bear Grylls, being Chief Scout, had paid a surprise visit to another camp in the area. I bet our Cubs were totally miffed about that. They didn't mention it to me, though. I must remind them about it tomorrow. They didn't actually say much about their 'proper' camping. Our Brownies were bouncing about and telling everyone about their weekend, but the Cubs stayed pretty quiet. If they hadn't spent all Friday boasting about how much better they were than us, I might have felt sorry for them. But I didn't. 

Not that I would ever admit it to them, but Scouts do seem to have a much more exciting time than Brownies. Take their Chief Scout, for example. I think we have a tiny twig from the Royal family tree for our Chief. I bet she didn't climb Everest or join the SAS. Scouts go canoeing and do archery and interesting things without miles of red tape and risk assessments. Why can't we do that? 

On the other hand, I am glad I didn't spend the weekend under canvas. And khaki shorts are so 1980s, darling. 

Ain't no coffee strong enough...

Well, that's out of the way for another year... Will I have thought of a good enough excuse to get out of next year's Brownie camp by the time another Autumn rolls around? I doubt it. 

Ms Fab and I arrived bright and early at, umm, 9.30. One letter said we had to be there at 8.30, but we 'lost' that one, and kept the one with the later time to hand, in case we were challenged on our timekeeping. Thankfully, we were sent straight back outside to direct cars into a nearby field to park and unload. Little girls were led into the centre by very cheerful-looking parents, lugging enormous suitcases (the girls were only staying for one night, but it was amazing how many teddies, blankets and various bits of useless rubbish they needed. And socks. The amount of socks that were found lying around that 'didn't belong to anyone' was ridiculous). 

We had discovered, on Friday afternoon, that our local Cub Scout pack were also camping at the centre, only they were 'proper' camping, they informed us with scornful sneers. 'You Brownies don't do proper camping, in a tent and everything. We do.' After that gloating statement, I didn't feel too heartless at enjoying the sound of rain pelting down all night. From my cosy sleeping bag, indoors. How I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning, when I can ask them if they slept well. 

There were lots of bossy women about. They didn't ask anyone to do things, they told and ordered. They stomped about, enjoying their power-trips and leaving wakes of sighing people who rolled their eyes and looked at their watches. Ms Fab and I ended up helping with face painting. We were ordered around by a woman with an alarmingly large rear-end, and I told Ms Fab to shoot me if I ever got so big that I, too, had to walk through a door sideways. 

After popcorn and sweets, the girls got a good sugar-rush before bed, and propped themselves up in their sleeping bags to watch a Disney film together. At 11-ish, they quietened down and we headed for bed. At 1 am, they were spoken to, as they were being noisy. At 2.45, they got a stern warning. About 4-ish, someone went through and yelled at them to be quiet or else. At 6.30, one of our girls came through and tearfully asked to go home, as she had a bad cold and wanted her mum. She was hugged and taken back to bed. At 6.45, we gave it up as a bad job and got up. Thankfully, our replacement arrived after breakfast, so we blearily made our way home. 

I have lost count of how many cups of coffee I've had today, but I'm still in a fog. Woe betide any child who crosses me tomorrow. Especially if they're a Cub Scout who had a good time. 

I don't want to Carry on Camping

Ms Fab and I have to help out at a Brownie camp this weekend. Not that I'm feeling jaded or anything, but let me give you the reasons I don't want to go:

• It's getting cold.
• It's meant to rain hard.
• I spend all week in the company of children - I don't need it at a weekend too.
• I don't eat rubbishy food, especially things like burgers and other minced-up stuff that is provided on Brownie weekends.
• It's on a circus theme, and circuses and pantomimes make my skin crawl.

Yes, I am a miserable kill-joy, but have realised I am not hearty enough to be a Brownie leader. This is not me being old and grumpy. I was young and grumpy as well. Team games were never my thing - I would invent injuries to get out of playing hockey at school. It seems as if, to be a Brownie leader, you need to be into playing bingo, singing songs that don't make sense, and having pointless meetings that run an hour late because everyone's discussing their grandchildren.

I am secretly hoping (well, not so secretly now, but still hoping) that I will get the same telling-off I got two years ago at Brownie camp, but was too much of a wuss to do anything about. One of the ladies in charge of the whole thing made everyone pray and sing a Grace before meals. I didn't join in, because it's not my thing, and I think it's wrong that religion (any religion, other than 'Let's all get on with each other,') is brought into something that is basically a youth club for little girls. The Guiding promise is specifically worded around love for 'my god' to encourage multi-faith and multi-cultural membership. Anyway, I got told off for not joining in. It wasn't a good example to the girls, apparently. So, lying and pretending is a better way to go about it...? This year I imagine the same hearty woman will be about, so bring it on I say. 

Ms Fab is in a similar mind. We don't mind the Wednesday evenings - that's an hour and a half of arty-crafty stuff and enjoying each other's company. The Brownie camp involves splitting up 'our' girls from each other (so they get to know girls they'll never see again), which often results in tears, major wobbles and pleas to go home. They are then made to take part in boring and pointless activities run by scary women. We have outdoor things to do, which involve a ten minute health and safety talk first, but never things that involve risk or excitement. No wonder so many girls go and join the Scouts instead. 

Ms Fab and I have to stay the night, which involves sleeping in a hall with all these hearty females who are alarmingly uninhibited. I am expert at getting changed inside a sleeping bag, and have no wish to have bits of overweight ladies flashed at me. Our shift ends on Sunday morning, when our two colleagues take over from us. 

They better get there early, is all I can say. 

Letting the side down

Going to pick up Son Number Two and his student buddy after their day at music college, I got stuck in a long queue at traffic lights. As the cars coming the other way ground to a halt behind someone that wanted to turn right, I stopped singing along to my CD in case I looked stupid (it was Gracelands - one I used to sigh and complain all the way through when my parents played it.) As I sat there and hoped I wouldn't be late picking the boys up, I happened to glance at the driver in the car next to me. Hmmm, I thought. Forty-something, I estimated, and wearing a nice suit and loosened tie, tapping his steering wheel in time to music that was probably far cooler than Paul Simon. To my embarrassment, he clocked me looking at him and gave me a rather naughty wink and a grin. The poor chap obviously had bad eye-sight and I just hoped he wouldn't crash his car on his way home, but thankfully the traffic lights changed and I was able to drive on before he saw me blush deeply. 

Now, I know I've let the sisterhood down by not being offended and disgusted by such behaviour (and, no, I didn't start it by ogling male drivers, I just glanced, thank you). Actually, I find it rather sad that builders are not allowed to wolf-whistle any more - as teenagers, my friends and I felt disappointed if we didn't get whistled at. Whilst researching this (read: wasting time on the internet when I should be studying) I found this article which, although a few years old, makes for interesting reading. And read the comments on it: hmm, yes, those diet coke ads... double standards indeed. Is anyone asking these poor men how they feel at being portrayed as sexist stereotypes? 

Imagine the complaints if this ad featured a woman 

being stared at by five men...

Comments on other forums (it's either blogging or making tea - I'm making this last as long as possible. Don't stereotype me into the kitchen!) say that some women feel intimidated or in fear of being attacked if men smile or whistle at them. 'Oh, blimey,' is all I can politely say. When I was young, I was attacked and can assure these women that being winked at is in no way comparable.

So should we all behave, and pretend that we don't innocently appreciate attractive people of the opposite sex (or even of the same sex, if that's your thing)? Are Ms Fab and I bad people when we stop talking just to watch the nice postman with the orange mohican cycle past? I promise we're not planning to attack him. Well, I'm not - I can't vouch for Ms Fab. 

I can't even do that 'hailing a taxi' whistle, although some of the year 6 boys tried to teach me a couple of years ago. It wasn't pleasant, but it passed a maths lesson...

It's never too early for a mid-life crisis

Is a mid-life crisis because we're afraid of getting older? Or is it that we can finally do what we want, without getting told off by The Parents? Actually, I'm not entirely sure, because Ms Fab has been a Bad Girl and is afraid of telling her mum. Whisper this next bit: Ms Fab got a tattoo. Shhhhh...

It's actually rather lovely. She has a thing about feathers, you see (no, not like that). They appear when she's feeling a bit down, or sometimes they just appear. Not the little fluffy bits that blow about, but proper flight feathers. She says it's been happening for years. When she said she'd been thinking about getting a tattoo, I recommended a guy I've seen a couple of times in a nearby village. The look of him would have scared my grandmother, but he's lovely and a wonderful artist. Anyway, the deed is done and she's looking upon it as her mid-life crisis moment. 

I had my first tattoo after spending a month in hospital a few years ago. Like Ms Fab, I'd been thinking about having one for ages, but was afraid of the judgments people might make. After having been told that I was extremely lucky to be alive, I thought 'Sod it,' and have since lived life as I wanted to, and not as others might have wanted me to. 

Even so, I can remember a family dinner at which the Sexist Uncle saw one of my tattoos and said that he hoped it was 'one of those transfer things'. I was, I think, about forty, but still felt as if I was in for a telling-off. He's now got used to them, and my ear-piercings, but think he may faint when he sees the Dr Martens that I've at last worn-in. I've had a few compliments on them, but he remembers DMs as something worn by skinheads in the 1970s (mine have roses embroidered up the sides, but I'm almost tempted to get some old-style cherry-reds just to wind him up).

The Husband has recently passed his fiftieth birthday, and there's no sign of a mid-life crisis yet (or, at least, not that I've found out about...). He's already found out that woman are rather expensive to keep, so I don't think I'll be exchanged for a younger model. He's not into prestige cars, but used to like motorbikes, so I'm waiting for the day that the Harley Davidson appears on the drive. 

My mid-life crisis car would be a VW camper, complete with rainbow stickers and surfing lessons in Cornwall. Of course, if Jake Gyllenhaal wanted to come along for the ride, I wouldn't complain...

Ugh...

I understand the sighs and groans from the year 5 and 6 children when they're given more homework. I can empathise with those who have great difficulty thinking up a believable excuse for not handing it in on time. I felt for the boy who slumped on his desk at 9.15 this morning and moaned, 'Why do we do so much work?!' 

Yes, the new Open University course has officially started, and I have to remind myself why I'm doing it all in the first place. Actually, I've mostly convinced myself that my two worst high-school teachers were wrong, and that I'm not totally stupid. I've 100% made up my mind that I'm not going into teaching (I'm having far too much of an easy life being a teaching assistant, and I don't like paperwork or being cornered by parents). So, really, the money's being spent on staving off Alzheimer's and avoiding rubbish on tv. Plus, I just have this course then one other and I get a day off work, a do at Ely Cathedral, and my mum can have a good cry when I go to collect my honours degree. And so on I slog. 

Linguistics this year, and I've finally got past the horribly boring chapter on metaphors (and it really tried my patience. Just about everything we say, according to someone I can't remember the name of, is a metaphor. The one that's causing arguments on the OU forum is 'on Tuesday'. This is a metaphor, we have read, because you can't actually be on Tuesday. But some are saying lots of things about the use of prepositions that I don't understand and have kind of lost interest in because it's all a bit 'aren't I clever?').

I am now onto bits about how spoken narratives work, and how we change our style of speech to fit in with other people, which is far more interesting. The assignments are not too bad. I'm not looking forward to transcribing loads of speech, but I like the look of this one: '"One must be an inventor to read well... There is then creative reading as well as creative writing." Discuss this in the light of your study.' Unfortunately I have to wait until May for that one.

As light relief from this self-imposed torture, Ms Fab, Mrs GSOH and I have started what is turning into a habit, and that's going out for dinner a lot. We have found each other rather good company and share a love of gossiping whilst eating until we can barely walk. We are, we have found, nicer people for being occasionally reprehensible. 

It's funny how you can make almost instant friends with some people. I had spoken about two sentences to Ms Fab ('Hi! Son Number Two was wondering if your Son Number One would like to go to the football this Saturday?') and my friend-seeking radar said, 'She's my sort of person.' And she was. I can't remember the details of my introduction to Mrs GSOH, but I liked the way she marched down the corridor and smiled at me whilst threatening, between gritted teeth, to murder last year's Horrible Boys. At the same time, there are people I've worked with for over ten years that I wouldn't put in the 'friends' category. 

Well, I've wasted enough time on here tonight. I am actually two chapters ahead on my course reading, so am allowing myself to go and read a proper book. And when I say 'proper book', I mean this:

It's his new children's book and is huge fun. I'm going to sneak it into school and read it to the class when no-one's looking.