Going Dewey eyed

School is a great place when there are no children around. Today was a staff training day (the children broke up for the Easter holidays yesterday) and we spent the whole day sorting out the library. Old books were given to charity, and new books were organised by author or subject. But first, bookshelves had to be moved. One teacher took over and directed others as to where shelves should be put. She then changed her mind a couple of times, finally deciding they were best out where they'd started. Another teacher and I suggested a different arrangement, to which everyone else disagreed. After trying it out, we argued our case for so long, everyone got bored and wandered off, so we won and the arrangement stayed. It was later pointed out that one shelf was in an ideal place for leaning on, in which case it would fall over and there'd probably be a flat child incident. Obviously, if that should happen, the other victor and I will blame the arrangement on someone else. 

Being one of the few who knew the whereabouts of the stickers for our distantly-related-to-the-Dewey-system system, I was given the job of labelling the non-fiction books. I often mess up important jobs, so I grabbed Ms Fab on the way to the library, thinking we could mess it up together. It took about four and a half hours and I think most books are in the right place. We didn't get too sidetracked, although we found out there's a Dewey number for books on human hair, and we had to make up categories for one or two books. 

Coming home with armfuls of stuff that was going to be thrown out, I looked at my overflowing bookshelves and longed to get them into some sort of order. I can't work out how to do it though, as they're all stacked up sideways and there are two teetering piles on the floor. Mr Chaos, after confirming that I was being sad and obsessive, has restricted me to six categories: read, unread and half-finished in fiction and non-fiction. At the moment, I have an eclectic mix. Philosophy and religion dominate the non-fiction, followed by myths, children's picture books and 'the rest'. I can't mix hardbacks and paperbacks as my shelves are different sizes, and then there're my study books, which are a mixture of fiction and fact. 

I think I'm just going to have to make Son Number One homeless and take over his room. 

Writing through fog

Please excuse me if I write rubbish today. The school children didn't think it enough to share the latest sick bug with me, they kindly gave me a cold as well, bless their hearts. The Boss Lady was very understanding, ordering me off work until Monday and, no doubt, adding me to the ever-lengthening list of names under a sad face on the office notice-board, which warns staff of who has the latest lurgy. The icky bit over, I'm now just getting through boxes of tissues and pathetically trailing after everyone in the house, because I'm bored. My head's too foggy to study, although I may have a crack at the creative writing later. 

I have to do life writing, so it'll really just be like an extra long blog entry. I was going to write about the month I spent in hospital a few years ago, after my appendix decided to perforate in a spectacular fashion. I only have 1500 words, so will do snapshots of times I remember with affection, such as when I had a reaction to morphine and thought the curtains around my bed had come to life. Or when I saw an air bubble travelling slowly down the tube of my drip and thought I was going to die, but didn't want to bother the nurses. Did you know that coloured photos taken of your insides when they are full of poison are incredibly beautiful and look like something from space? I got shown lots of pictures by doctors who were amazed that I was interested. I wish I'd asked to keep one (a picture that is, not a doctor. Although...). I could have framed it. 'Is that a supernova?' someone would have asked. 'No, that's just me,' I would have replied, modestly.

Do I need to do my creative writing? I could just copy and paste a couple of blog entries. Although someone did actually ask if they could do that, and were told they'd be plagiarising themselves. You have to be careful with that - you never know when you might accidentally sue yourself for writing the same thing twice. 

I have been good, and registered for my next Open University course. I decided I would go for the English Language one, and ignore all the reviews which said, 'Avoid like the plague,' or, 'I hated this course - the worst ever.' I think it sounds interesting. Let's just hope I feel the same way when the course actually starts. 

Non uniform = non work

I read that this year's Red Nose Day has raised £75 million and counting. Thankfully, our school was one that decided to join in with the fun (Son Number Two's high school thought it was a bit beneath them, sadly.) So I donned a red dress, ditched it as I remembered I was on playground duty and an Arctic wind was blowing, and found a rather creased red t-shirt to go with black jeans. I then had to raid the 'change pot' in the kitchen for money, as I was skint. I never seem to have more than a couple of pounds on me, and when the collection envelopes do the rounds at work I have to ask for loans from my children.

The school children were sky-high all day. Non-uniform affects them like that, for some reason. Obviously royal blue sweatshirts have some sort of soporific quality to them. A minuscule amount of work got done in the morning, but the afternoon was given over to what was loosely titled a 'talent show'.  We had acts from every class, including two teachers who are game for anything. If you ever need a violin-playing unicyclist, you know where to come. Mr Chaos showed us what real talent is with his singing, and then we had half an hour until home-time. I suppose we could have fitted a tiny bit of work in...but we didn't. After stuffing ourselves with cupcakes provided by a thoughtful student, it was time to get ready for the weekend. 

Hope you have a good one.

Manners maketh man (and woman)

So sorry - it's been a while since I last posted on here. I've just finished another children's literature assignment, and managed not to procrastinate too much this time. I'm getting pretty close to finishing my present courses: just three normal assignments and two big finales to go. That'll give me another 120 credits towards the degree. 120 more, then it's freedom! Two years until I can read whatever I want to, until I have my evenings and weekends back, and I turn back into a proper family member once more. 

Now, I know this blog is in danger of turning into a non-stop moan, but I read one of those narrow-minded facebook comments today. Not the 'I hate foreigners' one, or the 'men are idiots' one, although they do the usual rounds and I get the urge to delete the 'friends' who order me to share these bigoted statements. No, the one that wound me up today (sorry, I really must stop complaining. I do enjoy it so much, though...) was one that complained about young people all being 'bad-mannered, tattooed morons'. I dislike huge, sweeping statements as they're usually tailored to suit the speaker's prejudices, but being the owner, sorry, mother of three young people, this one particularly irked. Ok, so there are plenty of bad-mannered tattooed morons out there, but they are not, in any way, all 'young people'. And it doesn't figure that all three terms should go together anyway. 

Firstly, tattoo doesn't equal bad, and I'm not just saying that because I am illustrated myself. Most tattoos have a story behind them and are not as shallow as some people like to think. I have one which is a triple moon for my religion, one with the initials of my children and husband, wrapped in ivy (Victorian language of flowers, meaning the love you have for your family, I'll have you know) and a bracelet of forget-me-knots, partly in homage to my grandmother. I have been judged by my tattoos, although they are small and unobtrusive, by people who have also commented '...and they'll look awful when you're 90 with wrinkly skin.' To be honest, if I reach the age of 90, I think I'll have more worries than the state of my skin. So in my opinion, the tattooed moron can have what ever they like - it's a good conversation starter...

Next point - bad manners. Not exclusive to 'young people'. When I was a sales assistant in a book shop, many moons ago, most of the bad manners actually came from pensioners, who thought their age and experience meant they could talk to an 18 year old however they wished. The rudest person I have ever known may be younger than me, but is past the age of being a 'yoof'. She likes to do that 'talk to the hand' thing, so is nearing the age of being severely battered. 

Next time she does it, I'll draw a smiley face on her hand 

with an indelible marker pen. She'll love that...

To the haters on facebook: is it really so hard to try to like people? Ok, there are individuals out there that don't deserve the effort, but to paint all young people as being worthless says more about you than them, surely. I have several very ex students as facebook friends, and they're more likely to be posting angst-ridden statements about their lives (you just wait, it only gets worse...) than putting down other people. I have never seen a narrow-minded, prejudiced post from my teenage acquaintances but I've seen plenty from those who are my age. 

We had a great discussion at school last Friday on whether you can understand someone's point of view if they weren't the same religion as you. The consensus was: why are you even asking us this? How insulting and stupid. That evening, on facebook, an adult had posted a photo with a bigoted slogan that would have made those children shake their heads in disbelief. 

I know not all 'young people' are perfect, but I prefer them to an awful lot of adults at the moment...

Is my tutor on drugs?

Well I got my marks back for my 'poem'. 75 for the biggest pile of pretentious rubbish ever written. I was told I had included some good internal rhymes, which was very clever of me, as I have no idea what that means. My tutor gave me some examples, and it seems that several words had the sound 'er' repeated within them. I thought that was just how words worked. It wasn't done intentionally, but if it gave me extra marks then I'm all for it. 

After that little lift, the Husband, Son Number Two and I went into town and wandered. As usual, our wandering took us into Waterstones and we forced ourselves to drink coffee and eat cake. 

I found it very hard to sit still and be sociable as my chair was facing a sale table. I drank my bucket of coffee as quickly as possible, hoping the others would do the same, but the Husband leaves his coffee until it's almost cold. The sale table was calling, so I willed him to hurry up, and tried to resist the urge to 'accidentally' knock his cup over. The relief when he put his empty cup down so I could go and buy books was so overwhelming, it was worrying. Is it normal to get the jitters when restrained from book-buying? 

It's not as though I don't have anything to read at home. A colleague lent me a doorstop of a book on the French resistance earlier this week, I've just started the fourth in a series of weird books that belongs to Son Number Two, and I really should be writing an assignment on Peter Rabbit and Voices in the Park. So I shouldn't be buying more books or my essay's never going to get done. But I bought one anyway. It's called The Book of God, with a subheading: The Bible as a Novel, which is either going to be brilliant or irritate me hugely. I find religion fascinating. All religions. I have copies of the Ramayana, The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Bhagavad Gita, as well as works on Tao, Zen Buddhism and various other ways of thinking or believing. I was given a lovely Bible that my Great-Grandfather used, and it has lots of tiny little pencil-scribbled notes in the margin. I even have a book by Richard Dawkins, which I bought to balance everything out a bit, but (despite being a Pagan, and believing in gods, not God) it made me so mad that I couldn't read it all. It's still on my shelf and maybe I'll read it when I need to be in a ferocious mood about something (like if the Mother in law decides to visit). 

I do feel the need to do that OU course I once mentioned on religion and controversy, so I emailed student support and they've made sure it'll be accessible to me. So once I've got linguistics out of the way, I'm up for a good argument on all things spiritual. 

Perhaps I should buy a few more books on the subject, just to make sure... 

School Council Shock

Infant stages take-over bid and demands weapons

We have a Prime Minister in the making. It was the first school council meeting of the term, and the very first one the youngest children sent representatives for (they're often overwhelmed by the older ones and sit there in a panic-stricken silence). Up for discussion was how to spend a sum of money to benefit all pupils in the school. They had talked about planting flowers to make the school prettier. They had asked about new break-time equipment, and whether we could have class pets. 'Any other ideas?' I asked. One of the youngest infants stood up, hushed everyone with a gesture and dramatically intoned: 'Nerf guns. For everyone,' then sat down again. The secretary looked at me in a panicky 'do-I-minute-this?' sort of way. There was silence from everybody. I think they were shocked that this Little Guy had had the guts to stand up and ask for such a thing. Forget flowers and all that rubbish - the Little Guy wanted to have some fun and wasn't afraid to put it to the school council. (I was all for putting it to the Boss Lady, but only if staff could be similarly armed. Little Guy did agree to that...). Sadly, the idea was shelved by other council members and a vote was called for. 'I'll be the counter!' said Little Guy, leaping up, and carefully counted the eight hands that were up for prettifying the school. 'That's twelve,' he announced. The secretary looked at me sideways. 'Twelve,' I confirmed, in an eight sort of way. 

The sad thing was, we all left the meeting with great visions in our heads of a school Nerf-gun war. We'd have been picking up foam darts from the field for days afterwards. 

So, if you see news stories of a Little Guy in a dinosaur jacket marching on Downing Street, you know you read it here first... I know I'd vote for him. 

Not my idea of beauty

I recently read a newspaper article on how a mother paid huge sums of money on plastic surgery for her then teenage daughters, so they could look more like Jennifer Lopez (apologies for it being from the Daily Mail...). These girls are now not happy with how they look. Maybe I'm getting a bit past it, but why do so many already lovely girls feel the need to become someone else? There are magazines full of identical 'celebrities' who have all gone for the big lips/fake tan/plastic boobs look, and I feel incredibly sad when I overhear year 5 and 6 girls talking about how wonderful they are. A couple of years ago, we did a topic on 'Inspirational People', and some of the girls said they looked up to someone I won't name, but who used to be a 'glamour' model. They wanted to 'look like her and be famous'. I could have cried. Why do 10 year olds see these women as role models? And if that's the modern idea of beauty, then how sad. 

What happened to glamour (in the old-fashioned sense of the word)? 

What happened to (cliché alert!) making the most of what you've got? 

What impression does it give, if your role model is a topless model? I've been told by someone who wishes to remain nameless (for fear of violent reprisals) that he believes the bigger a woman's boobs are, the smaller her brain. (Just to let you know, this person is twice divorced, and deservedly so. He now lives on his own, surviving on microwave meals for one.) Going along with this theory, I'll have you know that I appear incredibly brainy. 

I do admit to using a similar theory when it comes to men's appearances, though. (Not boob-wise, obviously.) Because it's not just women who want to artificially 'improve' themselves. I think that obsessively going to the gym every day really does not improve the look of a man. Well-muscled men always give me the impression they're going to be incredibly boring (I apologise if you're a nicely-toned deeply intelligent guy...).

I'd prefer someone with a sense of humour

 and a spark of intelligence. 

And now, having insulted half of the western world, I'll bid you goodnight...

Hoping for a bad result

I'm awaiting the marks for my creative writing assignment - the one with the chopped-up sentences that loosely called itself a 'poem'. Usually I hope for a good mark; often I settle for an average one. My latest children's literature was 68, which I feel is rather bleah, but was 9 up on the one before, which was extremely ugh. For my poetry, I sort of want a bad result. If I get a decent one, it will make a mockery of my other decent ones for that course. I worked very hard on past creative writing assignments, and feel the marks were earned, but poetry was different. I didn't read the chapters in the workbook, to start with. Well, actually, that's a lie - I did flick through and read the subheadings. I already knew that poetry was something I would be bad at. I know people say you don't know until you've tried, but surely you must want to try for that to work?

So now I'm wearing out the refresh button on the keyboard, hoping to see my score of...umm...about 47? Just enough so my tutor can acknowledge my use of the English language and basic punctuation. 

On a more alarming subject (more alarming than my poetry? How can that be possible?), I was looking through my blog stats earlier, and noticed referrals from, erm, (how to phrase this?) somewhat suspect sites (blush). In a flurry of panic that these sites had somehow downloaded things onto my computer (I am not computer savvy), I googled the problem, and found this rather wonderful blog entry that explains everything. I'm glad I found it, as the blog itself is great, and is about to be added to the ever expanding list to the right of this page, under the title of 'Blogroll'. Do help yourself to any of those blogs, by the way. Some are by fellow OU students doing creative writing, others are there because they're funny, insightful or just a joy to read. 

And now I must go and refresh my results page...again...

Keeping my promise

Whenever I go into my local Waterstones, I like to browse the children's section. Not just because I'm studying children's literature; I've always thought that books for children and 'young adults' (what a horrible phrase) are written with more imagination than those intended for an adult audience. I am annoyed by, and feel sorry for, those readers who think children's books are beneath them. If I had been a book snob, I would have missed The Hunger Games (which is so much better than the film), The Graveyard Book, and The Book Thief. I would not have a book called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which I bought because I needed to see that title on my bookshelf. I owned two copies of The Hounds of the Morrigan because one had been read so much, it had fallen apart. I say owned, because The Daughter remembered the story so fondly that she took a copy back to Cornwall with her. I like it when that happens - certain stories from your own childhood fill you with so much magic, you always want to own a copy. 

Anyway, several months ago, I was browsing in Waterstones when the man who runs the children's department came over for a chat and to recommend some books I might like. He told me to give Wonder, by R J Palacio a try, and said it was the best children's book he'd read for a long time. He then sold it to me very cheaply, on the condition that I'd read it and recommend it to others.

Different covers, but the same story.

I put it on my 'to read' pile, got stuck into my studies and forgot all about it, until Ms Fab mentioned that she'd just read it herself. When I finish an assignment, I reward myself by reading a non-study book, so I read it. I started when I got up this morning (late-ish, as it's half term), and have just finished it. It should, in my opinion, be read and discussed by every year 6 class everywhere. If you haven't read it, it's a simply-written story of a 10 year old boy with an incredibly bad facial deformity. Up until now, he's been home-schooled, but now he starts school and is exposed to the real world. What stayed with me, was a line from J M Barrie's The Little White Bird, which was quoted by the school's headmaster: 'Shall we make a new rule of life...always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?' 

Ok, forget the year 6's - maybe everyone should read it...

Decision made! (For real, this time....I think.)

Isn't it a nice feeling, when you know what you're doing? I don't get it very often, so I'm sure you'll excuse me while I revel in it. Over the past couple of weeks, various people have offered me some very good advice. They may not have realised it was advice at the time, but that's how I've taken it, and it's been enormously helpful. Please bear with me while I explain how I've changed my mind about my studying yet again....Yes, yes, I know, sorry....

Because I'm just doing a degree to stop my brain atrophying, I've been having a problem choosing my next course. I've got two more courses to do (three, if I can work it without the OU rapping me over the knuckles for doing too many credits). I've been choosing courses because they look enjoyable, as I had no specific target in mind other than 'I like Humanities'. You will know from my blog address that I'm not the best person at making up my mind, so my attention has wandered from myths via literature to religion and back again. I really need to decide by March, when I can register and reserve a place on a course. 

A colleague told me that I should do what I like doing - an obvious little piece of advice, really, but one that I rarely consider, as I feel selfish when I do things just for me (she added that life's too short not to, but I'm hoping I've got a few years left in me yet). I like writing. You know I'd like to try my hand at Na-No-Wri-Mo when I have a few spare minutes and I think that's where the next course choices will come from. So, I'm going to do one on English Grammar, then a linguistics course. Hopefully, those combined with the Creative Writing will turn me into a better writer, making less fewer mistakes. They'll help to give me knowledge I can use, rather than just enabling me to talk intelligently about picture books. 

I know those particular courses are meant to be pretty difficult, but I don't mind if I can see a result from them. And I'm sure you'll be grateful to see some sort of sense coming into these blog entries. 

So now I can look forward to a fun-packed two years. The first course, I've just discovered, will have to be linguistics, simply because it starts earliest. I'm being told that: 'In exploring creativity across a range of genres and social contexts, this course provides a lively introduction to stylistic, sociolinguistic and multimodal analysis. It draws on work in literature and performance studies as well as English language studies.' Should I be worried that I have to look some of those words up? I had wanted to do the grammar one first, thinking that would be useful and help with linguistics. But that doesn't start until next February. (I'm so sorry, this post is turning into a big ponder and is probably incredibly boring to read. I do apologise.) Shall I give myself 7 months off? I'm now eyeing the big pile of books that are waiting for my spare time. It's tempting. Damn it, I've worked hard enough. Grammar first, then linguistics.

Never have I made so many decisions in such a short space of time. Never have I put off so many readers. (And now I'm asking myself whether that should be 'as many'?). I'm sure someone will let me know....