Season's Eatings

I'm not very good at organising things for Christmas. We have a cupboard that must be opened with caution, in case there's an avalanche of chocolate boxes and snacky stuff. All that food that I thought I needed to get in for Christmas tea, but everyone was so full after lunch they said, 'Phew, couldn't eat another thing, thank you.' There are now regular calls from someone opening the fridge: 'This should have been eaten three days ago; is it still okay?' If it smells all right, then go for it, I say. But, that cheese looks a bit dodgy and our rabbits are getting so fat on expensive vegetables. I know there are awful statistics on how much gets thrown out per family, and we rarely waste food, so I feel dreadfully guilty at binning anything. 

For the second year running, we went out for our family Christmas dinner. With The Daughter and her boyfriend safely back in Cornwall, my parents came with us to a nearby restaurant, where we had a wonderful lunch and left the washing-up and a large tip to other people. On the way there, Son Number One plugged his iPod into the car speakers and we had to listen to Elvis. He said that's what happens when you're forced to listen to BBC Radio 2 all day at work - you start liking crap music. He played a bit of early Stevie Wonder, and I told him I didn't mind that, as it was Motown. 'No, it's not,' he said. 'It's Stevie Wonder.' To which Son Number 2 (the guitar player) rolled his eyes and sighed. 

For the first time, my uncle declined to join us. Instead, he stayed at home with a ready-meal and the Christmas Downton Abbey special. My parents said he was being a grumpy bugger, but I could see the appeal. Not of Downton Abbey, but of making less fuss and feeling obliged to join the festivities. We don't celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday - more of a family one. But not being Christians doesn't mean we can avoid Christmas. I feel a hypocrite for taking part in the celebrations. If anything, I celebrate Yule, but none of us have the option of saying, 'Actually, can I work through Christmas, because it's not my thing?' It's how our holiday calendar is set up and that's that. So if my uncle wants to lock the door and have a normal day, then fine. I've sort of lost respect for the Christmas of today's Western World. If it was purely a proper religious festival, then great, but for too many people, it's now an over-dressed, tarted-up time to have too much stuff. And the commercialism starts in September, for goodness sake. I've seen too many photos on Facebook from people who are saying, 'Hey, look at the big pile of presents I got! Look at how much money people spent on me!' 

I'm going back a bit now, but when I was little, yes, we got together as a family, but even the youngest children got dragged to Midnight Mass by my Grandparents. I remember trying not to fall asleep during the sermon, and being brought back to life every time we had to stand up and sing. Then I would be mightily embarrassed, because I thought everyone would be looking at the little girl standing next to the big Yorkshireman who was singing too loudly. My Grandmother would sing in a very high-pitched voice, which would get my cousins and me giggling and into trouble. Maybe it was because I was younger, but Christmas seemed simpler and more important, even when I was a little six-year-old heathen. There was a Christmas tree in the corner of the kitchen, but that was it, decoration-wise. It's never going to be a religious holiday for me, but I wish it could be quieter and more respectful. 

Anyway, despite me saying that I'm not good at planning things, we have already organised next Christmas. We are going to Cornwall. We've booked a farmhouse, and are going to spend the week with The Daughter and her second family. It's not going to be big and gaudy; it's going to be simple and about the people who are important to us. This plan, as many do, started after a few drinks. We were at my parents' house on Boxing Day evening, and my mum said, 'I wonder what we'll be doing this time next year?' And Son Number One said, 'Well, you know Sis keeps saying about Christmas in Cornwall...' Then my dad said, 'Why not? Let's do it.' (Which is the opposite of what he said when we kind of hinted about it last year.) So, now we're booked up. Daughter's boyfriend's parents have converted some barns on their farm, and we'll be staying in one of them. And even though the alcohol has worn off, we all still want to go. Sorted.

VD and the death of the complex sentence

As I waded through rubbish on Facebook this morning, putting off another assignment, I was puzzled by the amount of people wishing others 'Happy VD'. What a strange thing to be happy about, I thought. Perhaps it was to do with the release of the 50 Shades of Grey film? (And, no, I won't be watching it. Come on, you should know me better than that by now...). Of course, as my coffee started to work, I realised such posts were by people too lazy or too bad at spelling to write 'Valentine's Day.' 'And Merry STD to you, too,' I was tempted to type, but was too much of a coward.

I have started to write my new assignment, as it's due in by midday on Thursday. That's to say, I have opened a Word document. There it is, minimised at the bottom of my screen, occasionally calling out, 'Excuse me!' and being ignored in favour of... everything else. I have a pile of books and journal articles in front of me, which shows everyone my obvious eagerness to get writing. One is a book that arrived this morning (look, it's the half-term holiday this week; I have plenty of time to do this. She says.). The book's called Kissed by a Fox and is honestly about animism, although the title may have taken your imagination briefly along another path. When I looked up the title on Google Images, so I could include a photo on here, my computer started sweating unpleasantly; I have decided to use something grammar-related and far less interesting. 

That leads very clumsily to the grammar course which 3 of us went to this week. I've not mentioned Mrs GSOH for a while, but she now works at the school every morning and lunch-time, adding her little touches of insanity to the place. Anyway, she came with one of the reception-class TAs and me to be updated on grammar-lesson changes to the National Curriculum. Now, I love writing, and can hopefully write coherently most of the time, but I don't always know what the different bits of writing are called. When we got to the course, we started looking through the handouts that had been left on the table. One was a glossary. Cohesive devices...? Was that to do with grammar? We started wondering if we were on the right course. Maybe this was car maintenance, because that sounded like a kind of spanner. Fronted adverbials...? Perhaps this was biology. Passive, possessive, being stressed and subordinate?? What had we got ourselves into?

The tutor arrived before we could escape. 'Every school has a grammar snob,' she began, and the three of us looked at each other and nodded, while knowing it definitely wasn't one of us, because we had never heard of modal verbs. Anyway, we muddled our way through, and nodded sagely at all of the slides on her power-point. The coffee break was spent eating biscuits and worriedly sharing our lack of knowledge. 'I know semi-colons,' I said, relieved that I understood something, 'because we did them last week with the year 6s.' 'That's good,' replied Mrs GSOH, who then pointed out that I had chocolate on my face. Bloody hell - why can't I go somewhere and at least look intelligent?

So, what did we get out of the course? There is now no such thing as a 'complex' sentence, apparently. And this is because 'simple' sentences can be very complex (like grammar courses). We now have to talk about how many clauses the sentence has. And 'connectives' are now known as 'conjunctions'. We learnt that little children are very good at using passive sentences to get themselves out of trouble. I learnt that I know very little about grammar, and must take more care when eating. 

Husband + internet = trouble

I recently won a pile of children's books from the National Book Tokens website, and thought it only fair to pass them on to the children at school, so we started a story competition for the older class. I have spent the best part of the morning typing up one of the entries onto the school book blog. I have come to the conclusion that we really need to crack down on exclamation marks. I was determined not to edit the story I'd been given, but my fingers itched every time I finished a sentence. Exclamation marks! Everywhere! Everything was so exciting! Exclamation Marks Anonymous could be run as a lunchtime club, I thought. "Hi! I'm Laura! And I'm addicted to excessive punctuation!!"

Anyway, that's one story down, and another three to go. I'll leave the winning entry until last as it's seven sides of A4 paper in tiny writing, and will probably need breaking down into several blog posts. It's worth reading, though. The one rule was that the story had to be set in Australia, as that's where the book offered as a prize was set. Common themes were: koalas, incredible coincidences and magic portals. 

While I was busy typing, I was relieved to be interrupted by a knock on the door. It was two incredibly pretty girls who asked to speak to my husband. After hearing that he was not in, they said, "Only, he was on our website and ordered a Book of Mormon." Gobsmacked is a particularly unattractive word, but describes my reaction perfectly. Because they were nice people, and I didn't want to be rude, we ended up having a ten minute conversation, during which we discussed a mutual friend who was a Mormon, my mother's religion and a range of other things, all while I was working out how to kill my husband. 

The Husband is well-known within the family as being a real techno-phobe. It takes him a good half-hour to type a short email, and he still can't get his head around the spell-checker. The other day, he was trying to find out the timetable for a local pool league and ended up accidentally creating a facebook account. We have frequent cries of "What have I just done, here?" from the computer room, to which Son Number Two will sigh heavily and go and put things right.

Oh well, he'll have to sort this one out himself. He's been left a phone number for the lovely Mormon ladies, with instructions to contact them so they can either come and talk to him or cross him off their list. I'm going to make sure I listen in to that conversation. "Well, you see, I thought I was ordering some fence panels... " 

But I don't want to go to school...

Day one of staff training, and the morning on child safeguarding brought back some pretty rubbish memories, so it's amazing, brilliant and wonderful to come on here and find out I've reached over ten thousand blog views. 10,333 to be precise. I cannot thank you enough for reading the garbage I regularly churn out. When I started this... goes to check... wow, exactly two years ago, (I wasn't expecting that) I got excited when I had two readers in one week, and I see that just yesterday I had 91 readers (and that's not dubious Russian websites, either). Thank you. 

So, yes, back to work today. The children join us on Thursday, so that's two days to remind me of the ratbags we've inherited this year before I spend the weekend binge-drinking. Actually, I'm looking forward to getting back to normal. I've missed the children and the busyness of the school - spending six hours a day reading is a luxury, but it does give me a headache and makes me fat (because I have to drink coffee and eat biscuits while I read), so I need to get back to work.

I have decided to take a leaf out of The Daughter's book. She's been doing a thing called 100 Happy Days, and posting her photos on Facebook. I've seen pictures of concerts she's been to, her cosy bed which is festooned with fairy lights, Cornish beaches and cups of coffee. It's a nice idea, and makes me realise that I tend to bypass the nice things and whinge about the irritations. 
And so - the first pictures of things/people that make me happy, starting with my children. (I will include The Husband on here when I find a photo he approves of...).   

The Daughter, obviously the most gorgeous girl in the
world, here with her boyfriend who is nice
enough to be included with these people who make me happy. 

Son Number One. Cricketer and owner of
many pairs of sunglasses. 

Son Number Two. Guitar-player and generally
laid-back guy.

So that's my first example of what makes me happy. Not sure if I'll be able to think of a hundred things without getting boring, but at least I've shared the most important one. 

Phone phrustrations

I have finally been dragged into this century, phone-wise. Not only do I now own a smart phone, I have it on contract (I just heard the thud as The Daughter passed out). My old phone - second hand from one of the children, as it turns out most parents' phones are - finally gave up the ghost last week. Thankfully, we had a load of old mobiles which we were going to put into the next charity bag through the letterbox, so I dug one of those out and made do with it, although the black flip phone made me look like a Star Trek extra.

Yesterday, we went into town and I got the cheapest contract I could find (no, I don't need 500 do-dahs of internet access, thank you. How many calls do I make a week? Maybe three a month... But unlimited texts would be handy so I can answer the texts of everyone else on unlimited texts, instead of having to text, 'Sorry, have only got 15p of credit left.') The shop girl was good at disguising her sympathy for this poor, friendless customer, and kindly showed me the way round the mini-computer it seemed I was buying. 

Unlike The Husband, I do read instructions, and spent several hours last night working out exactly what my new phone could do. I accidentally phoned a couple of Facebook friends in the process, but I've now got a list of contacts, and have changed the boring screen-saver to the old Calvin and Hobbes one from my old phone. 

If you find a phone with this screen-saver

and less than 20 contacts, it's mine...

The problem I have been wrestling with all morning is the ringtone. The ones on the phone are mixture of bleeps and electronic burbles which, when heard, make everyone in the vicinity look at each other and say, 'Is that me?'. For the last rather-a-lot-of-years, I have had The Cure's song 'Friday I'm in Love' as my ringtone, and have got so used to it that, even when I hear it on a cd, I still reach for my phone. The children are so familiar with it that they shout, 'Phone! Oh, it's the radio, never mind...' So I would probably never answer my phone (to all those people who never call me) if I had anything different. That being the case, I have spent over three hours trying to find a way of downloading the song onto my phone and turning it into my ringtone. Sad, I know, but I have finally done it. Son Number One would be proud. He gets more than a little frustrated when The Husband, feeling instructions are way, way beneath him, keeps asking how to do things. We get role reversal, with the child berating the adult for not even trying and giving up too easily. 

Anyway, I'm getting used to the phone, and can now join the throngs of people who sit in pubs and ignore each other. I can check the weather rather than looking out of the window, see what stupid photos people want me to share on Facebook, and talk about apps with the best of them. 

And now I must continue with my assignment. I have written half and done it in record time, with my case study showing that my friend really needs therapy before she drives herself and everyone else quite mad. Although... it is lunchtime. And the house is empty because everyone's gone to a football match. So, lunch and a couple of episodes of House first, then I'll carry on with the essay. Possibly.  

Getting side-tracked

Why does 'using the internet for research' so easily turn into two hours of following links, checking emails, watching random videos on Youtube, ordering CDs from Amazon and being nosy on Facebook? I have found that the internet does not speed things up, it adds up to a whole lot of distraction. I know I have no willpower, so I have to bribe myself. When my assignment's handed in, I can order a new paperback, for example. I know I'm not alone in this. One girl on an OU Facebook group says she buys a huge bag of sweets when an assignment's due. Every time she completes a paragraph, she allows herself a handful of sweets. She admits that her paragraphs get very short towards the end of her essays. I read about her methods when I should have been researching Hinduism. 

 Something I found when I should have been looking

up information on religious guidance.  

I've not had any feedback on my RE assignment yet. The tutor probably has an awful lot to write and may have had several quiet moments, rocking in the corner. Meanwhile, I have started writing notes for my counselling course (on how mental health is represented in the media). Only 1500 words, I aim to get finished this week (well, I better had - it's due in next Monday). 

It's going to be a strange week at work. The class I usually work with are going to the Lake District early tomorrow morning, and Ms Fab and I have to do a three day first aid course. With a test at the end. Auntie Mo was meant to do the course, but got out of it due to a school trip with the infants. She's helping to take 30 children to the seaside on a steam train. Hopefully, she'll leave the right ones behind. Then I've got two days of supporting a member of staff who's already told me she won't need supporting, so maybe I can get some library work done, or make play props. The two oldest classes are putting on a school play next month. Thankfully, the props are fairly simple this year. In the past, we've made animal masks, a giant bird's nest, a time machine, a cardboard cow and the houses for the three pigs, amongst other things. This year, the play's about pirates, so that's fairly easily dealt with. Swords, beer barrels and fish, I think, are the main things. The cast can provide their own eye-patches and stripy t-shirts. 

Well, roll on tomorrow. Three days of first aid. With Ms Fab. I can't see that an awful lot of work is going to get done, somehow...

Don't mention the war

Because I am meant to be doing an RE assignment, I am spending far too much time on Facebook on things totally unrelated to study. I now know that I will spend my first half million from my best-sellers on a watch which shows the planets' orbits in real-time (see here). I also know that yesterday was, apparently, World Turtle Day. The 'What career should you actually have?' quiz on BuzzFeed says I should be a humanitarian, so that's okay. I obviously chose the correct things to take to a desert island, and the right city to live in (even though I've never been to Cape Town). 

Scrolling through pages of facts and opinions, the one thing that stands out is that some people really are offended by an awful lot of stuff. And they like to tell everyone about it. There was a newspaper article this morning about a church near here, which had to remove a sign because it offended one person. The sign said, 'If you think there is no God, you’d better be right,' with flames underneath the message. I would have been more affected if hell was represented by pages of quadratic equations, but I actually thought it was quite amusing and in no way offensive, even from the point of view of a practising sinner. 

There are too many things that we're afraid to say or write in fear of offending someone. I don't mean deliberate racism / homophobia etc, but remarks that someone will skew to make offensive. 

It's probably wrong of me, but I get a bit of satisfaction when the 'That's offensive,' comments start bringing out the inner teenager in people. I like a page on Facebook called 'I f*cking love science' (yes, I can see the irony in what I've typed...), and it's full of amazing science-related stuff which has actually taught me quite a bit and has added an extra bit of wonder to things, but there are lots of whines about the 'offensive' title of the page. Here's a copy of one example:

• 'I really do wish you folks would eliminate "f*cking" in your site. It just sounds too sophomoric and gratuitously crude for me to re-post.  

• 'Get over yourself.   

•  'Don't look then, you precious snowflake.'

• 'That's too bad then.' 

• 'I agree. I have wanted to post a few items but I did not because of this.' 

• 'Copy and paste, people. Copy and paste.'  

• 'Feel free to feel smugly superior for not swearing if that is your pinnacle of human achievement, but many others disagree ~ considering a rich and full spectrum of emotion represented by various intensifiers to be a useful linguistic tool, and the discovery of new insights into how the universe functions to be closer to the pinnacle of human accomplishments.'

•  'In other words, f*cking deal with it u absolute bender.' 

Forgive me if that made me snigger. 

I know we shouldn't go around purposefully upsetting people and being thoughtless, but when some deliberately go out looking for things to be outraged by, I have little sympathy. Be outraged by starvation and famine, child brides and war, not the way someone has said something. 

After having probably wound up a few people with that, I'm now off to not do any work. Like Son Number Two, who is upstairs shooting zombies, I will be starting my homework 'tomorrow'. Or sometime.  

Face-ache

I know I don't have to read everything my friends and acquaintances put on Facebook but, being very nosy, I do. I am starting to find that some people are being so closed-minded and negative that I'm tempted to delete them from my 'friends' list. But I don't, because I'm sort of fascinated by how horrible they're being. Since the start of the year, when Britain opened its borders to Romania and Bulgaria, we've had the predictable spate of 'keep them out' posts. I wonder how many of those spreading intolerance can trace their families back to the beginning of time, without encountering anyone from other countries. 

Then we have the 'all men are bastards' posts, usually from unhappily divorced women who have found it impossible to find a new partner. They post about how all women should be free and independent - doing what they want, when they want, without having to consider the needs of anyone else. Because it's good to be greedy and self-centred - everyone will love you for it.

When I moan about all of the above to Son Number One, he just shrugs and gives me a bit of teenage advice: 'Haters are gonna hate, Mother.' I know... sigh....

There are also the irritating pictures that I'm invited to 'share' with everyone I know: 'Share this if you have a daughter your proud of.' I do have a daughter I'm extremely proud of, but there are enough spelling mistakes in the world without me sharing them with the whole of Facebook. 

On the other hand, through Facebook, I do get to see what The Daughter's up to and make sure she's not been washed away in the Cornish storms. I keep in touch with various relatives I've not seen for years, and get to be jealous of the achievements of old school-friends. I get book recommendations and warnings of OU courses to avoid. So it does have its pluses. 

Son Number One said, years ago, 'You know that nobody lives in your hippy, rainbow-coloured world, don't you?' but it doesn't stop me wishing. 

Happy birthday, Dad

My mother phoned yesterday. 'It's your dad,' she said. 'I had to phone you...' I instantly reached for the car keys and hoped I had enough fuel to get to the hospital. 'His remote-control helicopter crashed into the neighbour's garden - he's had to knock on their door to ask for it back,' and she fell about laughing. 

It's his 69th birthday today and he's probably celebrating it by downloading new games onto his computer. I got him an Amazon voucher for his present, as he has a long list of books he wants to add to his Kindle. He's got hundreds of songs on iTunes and downloads them onto his iPod, which he plugs into the adapter he made sure was included in his new car. If we're having computer problems, he's the first person we phone, and he has to rephrase his computer jargon as, often, I have no idea what he's talking about. 

He's really enjoying his retirement, and the only time my mother worries about him is when he takes his credit card to PC World. 

Actually, both of my parents are making me feel old. My mother's thinking of getting a Facebook account and regularly phones to tell me not to call her next week. 'We'll be in Austria... it was a last minute deal. Just in case you try to phone and think we're dead.' Oh... okay... thanks Mum. 

Happy birthday, Dad. You're great the way you are... just don't break anything, okay?

Plodding on

I've been good, and have spent the evening doing the transcription activity for my next assignment. It would have been incredibly difficult and time-consuming, but a fellow student shared a tip on facebook - she said that if you download something onto Windows media player, you can play it back at half speed. This not only made everything so much easier, it also added to the entertainment factor, in that the speaker sounded like a very drunk Ozzy Osbourne. 

So now that's done, I have to read the rest of Carter's book. I love reading and I'll give anything a go (I read Twilight, for goodness sake), but this book is a real struggle. Carter does love words, that's for sure, although several people have pointed out that he's not so keen on commas. One teacher doing the course said she has to go through each chapter adding punctuation before she can read it properly. It's given me a better understanding of some of the struggling readers at school, though. I've read two chapters so far, and I've read some sentences two or three times, but if you were to ask me what I'd just read about, I wouldn't have a clue. Most of my OU courses have made me feel a bit brainless to start with, but I think the feeling will last a tad longer with this one. I also feel a bit peeved as it's not really about language per se, but rather about how it's used creatively. Oh well, I've only got five more assignments and a final essay to go. Sigh...

Another thing that's making the reading of Carter's book so tedious, is that it's made me think of a different book that I now need to read. Sometimes, something will remind me of a book or story, and I have to read it immediately. For example, Son Number Two and I were watching a Bear Grylls thing on people who got stuck in a canyon, and I then had to go and re-read the 127 Hours book (Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Much better than the film, but you knew that.) Carter spends so much time explaining terms he's made up, that it reminds me of the Lemony Snicket books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which 'complicated' terms are explained by the author saying, 'A phrase which here means...'. 

The best children's books ever

As much as I like a huge number of children's books, I have to say that A Series of Unfortunate Events has to beat every one of them. I read them all (there are 13) to Son Number Two as they were published several years ago. We would finish one, laughing and sniggering every evening, and then have to wait several months for the next one to come out. They are great books for adults to read to children - they're like Pixar films in that the bits that appeal to the adults go right over the children's heads. They taught my son so many bits of useless information and more about apostrophe-use than any English teacher. If you're a teacher, you have a duty to read them to your class (you can link them in with the Tudors somehow...).

As I know that I have to finish Carter's book, I'm bribing myself with a non-stop read of all 13 books, from The Bad Beginning to The End. I'm still not optimistic, though.

Being creative with chainsaws

I think I'm reading the most boring book on earth. It's the set book for the first half of my OU course on language, and is meant to explain how 'everyday' language-use is creative. My Facebook group for the course is coming up with some very creative uses for the book. I'm not into burning books, but I'll make an exception for this one. 

One student thinks the book is wonderful, though. After comments of disbelief, she told us that it's cured the insomnia she's suffered from for three years. I am finding this part of the course boring. The second half looks at creativity in literature, so I'm hoping that'll be more interesting. I've decided that as long as I pass this course, I don't really mind what score I get - I just want it finished. It's made me realise how much I loved my Children's Literature course, which was hard work but fascinating. My next (and final) course will be, I have decided, 20th Century Literature. I want to end on a high, and that'll give me a BA in Humanities with Literature. It also gives me an excuse to buy lots of books. 'Yes, honestly dear, I need all of these for my course....' Actually, what drew me to that course was the fact that the reading list includes Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. That was the first 'grown up' book I read, aged about 9. (I followed it with Stephen King's Carrie, and was more frightened by Mrs Danvers than by buckets of pigs' blood.)

The assignment that I should now be working on involves transcribing a clip from an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage, which is apparently a science/comedy chat show. What good this will do me in future life, I really don't know. People who have started have said it's taken them over two hours to transcribe five minutes of chat. That means I really should get a move on, especially as we have to add 2000 words on how the transcription shows creative use of language. But it doesn't have to be in until December 5th, so I'll examine the creativity in some books first. People on Facebook can be very creative as well, so I'll peruse that site for a while. Purely for educational purposes, obviously. 

Actually, I wasted too much time on Facebook this morning. Someone had posted this: 

and I spent rather a long time reading all of the comments. 'To Kill a Mockingbird with a Chainsaw' was one of my favourites. A father had just finished reading to his child, so his result was 'The Cat in the Hat Comes Back with a Chainsaw.' I see an 18 certificate movie in that one.... Mine would have been 'Language and Creativity with a Chainsaw', which would make it a far more entertaining book. 

What else? It's Children in Need time again, so I had to ask the class for fundraising suggestions. We always have a non-uniform day, but the question was: what theme were we going with? (Why do I always get asked to do these things while the teacher escapes??) Anyway, we had some inventive suggestions, some of which I liked very much, but were rather impractical. I loved the 'dress as your hobby' idea, and the 'dress as a member of staff' idea, although that may have been too much of an eye-opener. One year 6 suggested an animal theme, but went too far by saying we should then organise a safari on the school field, in which the juniors preyed on the infants. We have predictably gone with a pyjama day, or dressing in 'odd' clothes, which one of the children said I do anyway. Cheers. 

Anyway...

Yesterday, before I got distracted by my lack of intelligence, I was going to write about my favourite primary school teacher. He was someone to be frightened of, if you weren't in his class. He was pretty terrifying if you were in his class, but I've noticed that he is fondly remembered by many people in a Facebook group related to my old school. He was very 'old school' (forgive me) in that he hurled board-rubbers and bits of chalk at anyone who wasn't concentrating, and so we all quickly made sure we concentrated. He got cross when we complained at how hard maths was, and he told us that we didn't know what we were talking about: we had it easy. When children groaned at that, he made us spend a whole morning working out problems in pounds, shillings and pence, in pounds and ounces, and feet and inches (we were 8 and 9 years old). He banned the word 'nice' and told us that we wrote boring and predictable stories. To 'help' us become more interesting, he gave us spellings to increase our vocabulary. So I learnt to spell words like 'serendipity', 'discombobulate' and 'chiaroscuro', amongst others. (I admit that I still have to check the spelling of the third one.) Because we kept getting our punctuation wrong, he banned apostrophes, and we spoke like members of the royal family for a day. 

After spending a couple of weeks in fear of upsetting him, we realised he actually had a wonderful sense of humour, and we revelled in his sarcasm and biting comments. I remember a day when he decided my fringe was stopping me seeing my books properly and he ordered me to get it out of the way. Telling me he had no 'female fripperies' such as hair clips, he took the largest bulldog clip he could find, and pinned my hair up with it. I made sure I got my hair cut that night. He taught us an awful lot. Like the difference between 'can' and 'may', mainly learnt from us asking, 'Can I go to the toilet?' 'Of course you can,' he'd tell us, before roaring at us for leaving our seats. We quickly learnt the lesson and, devils that we were, gloried in others being caught out. He was so strict, that other teachers sent troublesome children to spend the day in our class, so there were many victims. 'Where the bloody hell do you think you're going, boy?' would echo down the corridor, and some poor child would probably no longer need the toilet anyway. 

He'd no doubt be sacked today - he swore at us, smoked a pipe in class, and told us we were all idiots, but I can honestly say I learnt more from him than any other teacher since. I see an awful lot of children at school today who have no respect for adults, and their parents let them get away with murder. They're cheeky, answer back and think they can do what ever they want in the classroom. Unfortunately, our board rubbers are flimsy little plastic things, that would not give a satisfying crack to the head, even if we were allowed to throw them. Politically incorrect and written with tongue firmly in cheek, but I'd love to send some of these children back in time. Got it easy, they have...

Happy Father's Day (and, yes, that's where I want the apostrophe)

Here in the UK, it's Father's Day. A friend and colleague has recently had a Facebook discussion on apostrophe placement in the above phrase. (I know it seems to be fashionable to have a 'rant' on Fb, but he's far too laid back to rant. It was definitely a discussion...). On Father's Day, I celebrate the fact that my dad is better than any others out there, so I want this to be HIS day. Even if he is in Italy and left his mobile phone at home, so I can't actually tell him how brilliant he is. He's always been a strong support to me. He sold his Trafalgar House shares to get me into a private Nursery Nursing college in Reading. When I left after a term because it was too posh and I didn't fit in (I didn't own horses and Daddy didn't have his own yacht - what a deprived child I was), he picked me up without complaint and took me home. I felt dreadfully ill on the journey as a term's worth of stress and bitchiness was left behind me, and he held my hair when I threw up in a lay-by and didn't mind when I cried my eyes out for the next fifty miles, feeling a hopeless failure. Thanks Dad. I know you've done many other brilliant things, but that journey sticks in my mind as being one where you made me feel loved again. 

Today is also my wedding anniversary. I've been married 23 years today, and there's another thanks I have to say. The Husband has stayed by my side through good and bad. I've had bouts of depression, when I must have been hell to live with, but he was always more than supportive. He's been a brilliant dad himself, and hasn't repeated the mistakes that gave him a rather unhappy childhood. He supports me through whatever inexplicable phase I decide to go through next, even if he predicts I'm heading for disaster (and then he helps me pick up the pieces with no 'Told you so'). Thanks, Mister. 

And he knows me so well that, instead of flowers and chocolates, he's bought me a big bottle of malt whisky. Cheers!

Big words and stylistics (but not The Stylistics)

Two books for my September course arrived today, and I got that familiar 'what have I let myself in for?' feeling. Luckily I recognise it from other courses now. I like to get ahead by ploughing through as many of the books as I can before the courses start, and there are always lists of words I've never seen before and which make me panic and feel stupid. I suppose it does show that I actually learn things, though. I can read back through the Children's Lit stuff that made me buy a new dictionary, and understand it perfectly. (Well, apart from anything written by Kimberly Reynolds but as her name is used as a swear word on the course forum, I'm not too fussed by that.) Anyway, the new course is in two parts - the first is on sociolinguistics (which I must learn to spell correctly), and the other is on stylistic analysis of poetry, plays and prose fiction. It looks fascinating, but involves lots of Big Words. And every time it mentions stylistics, I think of the soul group from the 70's, which doesn't help. 

Other courses-wise, I've finished. The final, big assignments have been sent, and now I just wait until August to see how well or badly I've done. I sent them in a bit early, as I wanted to get them out of the way, but it meant I had to leave the course Facebook groups. People kept writing about all the topics they'd covered, or they were asking questions about things I'd not thought of including, and it was all making me wonder if I'd done everything wrong. And I don't think I have...

On another topic, our school library is in the process of being catalogued by a lovely lady who's throwing most of our books out. I think she was pretty shocked that lots of our non-fiction is almost as old as I am, and politely told me that we need to buy new books. To which I politely replied that we had no money. 

Yes, we know what happens next, and 

I'll try not to...

Anyway, it turns out that our library is a bit of a mess, and she won't have time to catalogue all of the books. As I had eagerly agreed to be trained to run our library, it looks like I'm going to be in for quite a bit more work than I'd bargained for. And as I don't get any time out of the classroom, I may have to do some negotiating, timetable-wise. (I will try not to cry this time, though.)

On a happy note, The Daughter travels up from Cornwall tomorrow to stay for a few days. We haven't seen her since Christmas, so I'm looking forward to properly chatting. She's driving up, as the price of train tickets has gone through the roof, and I shan't be able to relax until I get that text saying she's arrived (she's staying with my parents as her allergy to our cats makes her quite ill now). I'm in awe of the way she will happily hop in the car and drive anywhere. My journeys take great planning and I play 'what if?' scenarios through my mind all of the preceding night. 

So if I'm not back for a while, I'll either be catching up with The Daughter, or buried under a pile of books. I'm hoping for the former...

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...

I saw three trains go sailing by...

The daughter is on her way here for Christmas. She left Cornwall in the early hours, and made it as far as Plymouth before the landscape disappeared under water. Trains were cancelled, replacement buses reversed into things, and slowly, slowly, she makes her way here through the rain. 

(Photo: BBC)
Cornwall

And school has finished for the year. Do I cheer, or quietly sob with relief? I was given lots of wine, so soon I'll no longer care. (Have no fear, Dear Daughter, I will leave you a bottle or three...)

We finished the term with a walk to the village church, for our Christmas service. The vicar sees himself as a deeply funny, Bruce Forsyth type character, starting sermons with, 'Nice to see you, to see you...' to which the children just sit silently, staring at him, no doubt thinking he's a complete plonker. Which he is. Sitting in the choir stalls, the oldest juniors, the class teacher and I could hear nothing of the sermon, so we passed the time by picking out the various carved animals in the church. The boys I sat next to kept muttering things to me out of the corners of their mouths. It sounded like Humphrey Bogart telling me about phoenixes and griffins. We even found an elephant. 

On the way back to school, supposedly full of Christian spirit, one girl asked me about the likelihood of her being reincarnated as a fish. I do love working with the older juniors. They're so strange. Actually, I'm thinking of using that conversation in my next creative writing assignment. The short story has been sent (scarlet fever, made as twee-less as possible) and next up is poetry. I'm aiming more for a Michael Rosen feel, rather than Wordsworth. Poetry is also the subject of my children's literature assignment, so I'm hoping they'll help each other on the way to some amazing marks (gives hollow laugh).

And now I must go - there are chocolates to be eaten and facebook updates of the Daughter's progress across the country to be read. If I don't write before, have a wonderful Christmas, and thank you so much for reading this rubbish. 

School Christmas Chaos

3 days left at school until the Christmas holidays. It's hard to work with those who are on a continual high (and I'm talking about the staff here). Last night was the annual 'do' at a local pub. Every year, people have a few drinks and get creative. Hacked-off waitresses are left to deal with nativity scenes made of ripped up crackers and drinking straws. One of the TAs does her famous napkin trick (I'm not going into details - the blog gets blocked by Google if I add adult content), and sly photos get taken which are hastily deleted from Facebook.

This lunchtime, it was the children's turn. They sat in the school hall while staff and governors served them their Christmas dinners. It was noisy. Some clever person had bought crackers with whistles inside. Well, that won't happen again - lesson learnt there...So we served them turkey, sausages and veg followed by ice cream. After gravy was spilt, roast potatoes shot across tables, and children stole each others ice cream, we scraped all the veg in the bin and sent the children out for an extra long break-time.

You can guess that our school Christmas tree

 looks nothing like this...

Next was my favourite bit - carols around the Christmas tree. We did the tear-jerkers like Away in a Manger, and Little Donkey. We did the irritatingly happy-clappy ones like Mary Had a Baby. Ms Fab had secretly taught the year 5's and 6's extra words to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, which looks set to become a new school tradition. Then it was The 12 days of Christmas, which we make ultra complicated by making the girls and boys sing different bits, that they have to stand up and sit down to. The children are brilliant - it's the adults who are rubbish and get dreadfully mixed up. To finish, and to wind the children up nicely before we sent them out to their parents, we did Jingle Bells, with added jingle and shouty bits. 

Over the next couple of days there are class Christmas parties, where the children will 'play games' (argue over who won at Pass the Parcel) and eat (until they're sick). The standard of party dress depends on which class you go in. Reception children are in jeans (boys) and princess dresses (hopefully just the girls). Infants are in jeans (boys) and leggings with Christmas jumpers (girls). Juniors are in jeans (boys and some girls) or tiny skirts (the rest, who get very cold at break-times).

And then we have Friday, when the children get another long dinner-break so the staff can do their 'Secret Santa'. We have to sit in the staff room and, one by one, open our pressies. 'Oh, that's lovely!' we hopefully get to say. I'll let you know if mine is lovely, or if I get another weird hat-thing. Gulp.

Oh, the irony...

I read a great blog yesterday, by Katherine Preston. She'd written a bit about irony, and how it's not the dreadful thing that's painted in this article from the New York Times. I completely agree. You may have noticed that I would not get through the day without a heavy dose of irony. People who take themselves too seriously are not attractive, no matter what they look like. Everyone needs a sense of humour. Working with certain children, I would go mad if I couldn't turn being told to get f***ed  into a joke: "Ok, but do you mind if I finish the lesson first?" makes them look the idiots, not me. 

I did make an idiot of myself yesterday, through trying to do a good deed for Mr Chaos (last time I do that, matey....). Most of the staff stayed late after school to put up Christmas decorations in the corridor and classrooms. Mr Chaos had a set of lights for his classroom tree, and, because there were some bulbs missing, we weren't sure if they'd work. He plugged them in. "Are they working?" he asked. "Yes," I answered, then they went out. "Oh, no, they've stopped...they're back on...oh, hang on..." Ok, so no-one told me they were flashing lights, but now all of facebook knows. Cheers for that...

So now the school is all Christmassy. The post-box is ready outside our classroom for those hundreds of cards being sent in the next couple of weeks. It doesn't matter how many letters of instruction we send home, we'll still get lots of cards that just say "To Joshua," or "To Chloe," on the front, and we'll have to work out which of the several dozen people it's meant for. I will have many interesting variations of my name, no doubt, not helped by the fact that another teaching assistant has a very similar name. We've often taken home each other's cards and had to bring them back the next day, "This must be yours, it says 'Thanks for being lovely,' and I know I haven't been, not to this child..."

A Quick Note...

Just a quick one to promote a great site. If you're a facebooker or a blogger, go and take a look at the Blogging page on facebook. It's a very friendly and helpful page run by Hasnain. I'm shamelessly plugging it as he's done me a huge favour and featured my blog on the page. Have a wander over and say hello.