Reasons why Fran is not an Olympic athlete

Overheard at a bus stop.....



I lie.  I overheard nothing.  It was my own conversation.  But, for a moment there, you thought you might hear something interesting.  I hope you enjoyed your nano-second of tension.  It's all down hill from here.

Me: 'So, your father and I are coming up to Sheffield to see you at half-term, then.'

Daughter: 'Yeah, that'll be nice.'


Me: 'Dad says you'll be wanting to visit some remote place called Castleton.'

Daughter: 'Oh, fine.  Okay, then. Yeah.  Let' s go there.'


Me: 'Dad says you took him there before, and you love it there because of the beautiful scenery and the bus ride through the countryside.'

Daughter: 'Well ....'


Me: 'He says you love the whole nature thing, the walking, the views.'


[Pause.]


'Mum, I like it because of the fudge.'


It's at moments like these that my little mummy heart bursts with pride.  There's nothing more rewarding than knowing you have passed on to the next generation the best bits of your personality, your skills, your attributes, your instincts, your ambitions and desires.

I once made a whole batch of fudge to give people at Christmas.  I put it all in a box and hid it at the back of a wardrobe from the rest of the family, forgetting that, in fact, the only person who was likely to raid it and eat it was me.

We gave everyone tins of biscuits from Tesco that year.

Tonight, I am not eating fudge, but I have persuaded the husband to open a box of toffee he was given for Christmas (presumably by someone who could Control Themselves).  I have eaten SO much toffee, and I feel bad, because someone could have used that same amount of toffee to stick together our broken world.

The husband said he was going to put the box somewhere Up High, just in case.  I presume he meant one of the shelves in the house......

Fran's husband was taking no chances. 

I have started a new blog post category called Me and Food.  I should have done it years ago, because the topic seems to creep into completely dominate so many of my posts.

Fran's book on Amazon Kindle - evidence that she can write for longer than 5 minutes

Just letting you know that, should you feel inclined, you can now read my first book called 'Being Miss' if you have a Kindle or something else you can download it to - and it seems to indicate that you can download it to your PC, too, if you don't.  It will cost you less than the price of 10 chocolate frogs.  It is about one day in a teacher's life precarious existence.  And it should make you laugh.  At least, that's the idea.

Here's the link below ...

Ooh, I must go and download that now

And if you do download, and you like it, please write me a review on Amazon.  I'd give you a big virtual hug.

Evidence that 'shaying nosthing at all' could even be good advice for Fran

At this very moment, I have no idea what I am about to write.  I just thought, as it's been so long, I had better put fingers to keyboard and say something.

I think this process is called 'free writing'.  It may also be called 'How to Lose Lots of Followers at Once'.

Not all of Fran's followers found they could get to Paragraph 3

Snap decision.  I am going to tell you about my meals.  For breakfast, I had some Mini Shredded Wheat.  These are essentially like little parcels of thin string, fashioned into what looks like a cushion.  You pour milk on them, and you eat them.  Habits like this, which we Brits have, are presumably what make foreigners think we are weird.  While they are buttering croissants and drinking posh coffee, or spreading maple syrup on a fresh waffle, we are eating parcels of string, and still calling ourselves civilised.

At breaktime, at school, all I had time for was to eat a chocolate frog.  One of my colleagues keeps a box of chocolate frogs (called Freddos)  .. (the chocolate frogs, not the colleague) ... in the fridge and he doles them out to kids who have done something worthy.  The only thing is, often the box is empty, because the rest of us filch them.  In fact, it is Not the Done Thing to go into the fridge and help oneself to a Freddo without saying to everyone else, 'Anyone fancy a chocolate frog?'  After we have got over the obligatory ribaldry about our tastes in partners, we all enjoy a bit of chocolate and then Period 3 with Year 10 and iambic pentameter doesn't seem quite so bad.

Socially acceptable chocolate frog eating

There's something really, really disturbing, though, about this one ....

At lunchtime, I had a sandwich made from my husband's home-made bread.  He makes bread a lot, but, as the saying goes, Results May Vary.  Sometimes the bread is so dense that if I have a sandwich of it for lunch, I can't get up to teach Periods 4 and 5 and they have to organise me a cover teacher.  Sometimes, it's just the opposite, and has so many holes in it that it virtually counts as a diet food and means that after I've had a sandwich, I can eat three muffins and still not feel guilty.  Today it was in between and the only downside was that I wasn't eating it at home while listening to You and Yours and getting ready for a nice snooze.

I will start a new paragraph to tell you what was IN the sandwich.  First, I will begin with the butter.  Butter is a source of conflict in our house.  When the weather is warm, my husband puts the butter in the fridge, which means you have to carve it off the block with a kitchen knife in slivers and lay it carefully on the bread and, to be honest, if I had time to be doing that, I'd have time to write blog posts.   Another alternative is to put some in the microwave to 'warm', but this is easily misjudged, and one can end up standing in the kitchen with a bowl of bubbling butter, wondering whether to go and pour it over the head of one's still-sleeping husband.  When the weather is cold, we leave the butter out of the fridge, but we put the oven on low to keep the downstairs warm and this .....  See previous sentence.

I don't have time to talk about the cheese.  I'd hate to bore you.

For tea, when I got home, I had pizza.  The way we do pizza is that we buy margherita pizzas, just with tomatoes and cheese on them, from the supermarket, then we add bits.  Tonight I had my favourite bits: olives and anchovies.  However, I had so many olives and anchovies that 1) I couldn't actually taste the pizza; 2) I had to drink fourteen litres of water afterwards.  We had slightly overcooked the pizzas and there was that awkward stage during the meal when you're both eating pizza crust so hard that you sound like you're crunching pebbles with your teeth.  You have to coordinate this kind of thing, so that you're crunching at the same time.  In the end, we couldn't get it together, and just had to turn the radio up.  It was such a relief, to be able to crunch out of synch but not to feel shame.

What was funny was that Radio 2 was playing Ronan Keating singing, 'You shay it besht, when you shay nosthing at all' and then suddenly the radio went off because of a technical fault, meaning that Keating was, indeed, shaying nosthing at all, and we were yet again crunching pizza base in total disharmony.  Life doesn't get much more distressing than that.

If you are still reading this, you deserve a knighthood, a medal or, at the very least, a Freddo.

I promise, next time, to stay away longer.  Or, at least, to have more interesting meals to write about.

This is the same person as the first picture, just to show you how much
they aged while reading Fran's thrilling, imaginative blog post

Evidence that writing rhyming couplets for local cats can be a rewarding affair

Cats are more enthusiastic than English students.  I know this because, when I opened the door this morning to welcome a pupil I teach privately from home, a cat from a neighbouring house took its chance and shot in like a nun out of a swingers' party and up our stairs.  It went so fast, it was just a blur, but I saw the look on its face and that look said, 'I can't wait to get in here and onto the bed of an allergic person.  I'm dead excited.'  

'Huh?  I'll make you sneeze, will I?  You're lucky - I was hoping  to induce a full
anaphylactic shock if I'm honest, in revenge for all the times you've kicked me out before.'

Then I looked at the pupil's face.  Let's just say, excitement wasn't the emotion I saw there as she stood on the doorstep in anticipation of our lesson on non-fiction texts.

At least the kids at school this week have been satisfyingly keen.  I've been teaching 'Romeo and Juliet' and this is one of my (and their) favourite quotations from Act II Scene II, when Romeo is having to part from Juliet after the balcony scene.  He says:

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

To illustrate the meaning, I do my best impression at the front of the classroom of a boy arriving at school (cue the dragging feet, the bowed head, the hunched shoulders, the look of 'I'd-rather-be-eating-my-own-earwax') and then one of a boy leaving school (cue the skipping, the punching the air, the lobbing of the homework-stuffed rucksack into a corner of the school field as though it were a ticking bomb).  This little bit of drama goes down well, except that one day soon, while I'm doing the dragging feet thing, an Ofsted inspector is going to come into the room unexpectedly, wonder why I'm moping about at the front rather than leading a bells-and-whistles group work session with multicoloured handouts and a motivational soundtrack.  And then he'll give an 'inadequate' score and, because of Michael Gove, I'll be out on my ear within 3 months.

I have rewritten the rhyming couplet for the cat.  As one does.

"Love goes toward love, as cats toward others' houses
But love from love, as cats from chasing mouses"

This same cat, whom I shall name Puss-ain Bolt in honour of its speed, caused quite a stir at Christmas.  Our next-door neighbours (not the cat owners, who are at number 4) went away.  But then, on Christmas Eve, there was a knock at our door and the neighbour from number 4 was standing there looking desperate.  'Do you have next door's number?' she said.  'Our cat is locked in their house.'

Apparently, Puss-ain had got into next door's house on the 23rd while they were packing to go away and they didn't know he was in the house.  Then, when the cat hadn't arrived back home on Christmas Eve, number 4 couldn't find him anywhere, until someone said, 'I think I've seen your cat sitting on the windowsill inside number 13 amongst the fallen-over Christmas cards and the dying poinsettia.'

In the end, we managed to find next-door's mobile number, and to get a key from someone they'd left it with, and Puss-ain was saved from having to have his dinners posted through a letterbox until New Year's Day.  'It's just as well,' I said to the relieved lady from number 4, 'because I can't see that your cat would have so conveniently posted his poop back through the letterbox for easy disposal.'  She's quite a posh lady and seemed to find this comment distasteful.  I don't think we'll be invited round for coffee and Bourbons any time soon.

It was all very exciting, the cat drama, and livened up a Christmas Eve only broken up otherwise by the cooking of 48 mince pies (which mysteriously became 42 before they'd even cooled), and the Great Sellotape Search, and the finding out that the port bottle only had a half-inch of port in it just after the shops had shut.  And then we had the argument about who wanted to listen to 'A Festival of Nine Carols' on Radio 4 and who would rather rub themselves up against a giant cheese grater.  And then we remembered the 17 people we hadn't sent cards to and tried not to rejoice at the massive savings in stamps we'd made.  And then we recommenced the Great Sellotape Search.  You know, the normal stuff of Christmas Eves all over Britain.

And now it's the 14th January and all that Christmas malarky seems so so far away.  Except that last week I bought three rolls of Christmas wrapping paper in Paperchase for 48 pence each and was as excited as an English student arriving for her lesson a cat who's snuggling up in someone else's anti-allergenic soft furnishings.

A little story to 'ring' in the New Year. Har har har.

I loved this BBC news story about the woman who found her lost wedding ring round a carrot she dug up from her garden.

Things you don't expect to find when digging up your dinner

I have my own ring story.  Our family was at a big Christian festival once, the kind where thousands of people bring tents and camp together and then have to spend the week trying not to argue with their spouses because everyone can hear you being not-very-Christian.

My husband was working as a milkman at the time.  Why is this relevant?  You'll see.

Towards the end of the week-long festival, my husband lost his wedding ring, having left it in the gents' facilities when he went to have a wash.   He came back to the tent and I asked him where his ring was, which was when he realised what he'd done.  I considered having a tantrum about it and calling him a few names, but I couldn't risk everyone hearing.  Instead, I said, very loudly, 'DON'T WORRY, DARLING HONEYBUN SUGARPIE, I'M SURE IT WILL BE FINE - I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, WHAT'S A LITTLE LOST GOLD BETWEEN US, MY SWEET, MY LOVE, MY ANGEL?'

We went along to Lost Property and were sure there'd be a person at the desk who would say, 'Hey, Sharon, where's that wedding ring that was handed in this morning?' and there would be his ring and it would all be sorted.

In fact, the person at the desk picked up a plastic box in which there had to be at least 30 men's wedding rings, shook it about a bit and said, 'Good luck!'  Apparently men's wedding rings were one of the most common things to be given in.  All I could think about were all those poor Christian wives who were having to call their husbands 'Honeybun' for the first time ever.

We didn't need luck to find his ring, though, and this is where the milkman thing comes in.  He'd been working as one for 5 years.  Why would this make a difference?  It's because years of carrying 4 or 5 full bottles of milk between his fingers had built up the muscles so much that his fingers had actually changed shape.  The ring, accordingly, had done the same and was now more oval than circular.  So we knew instantly which was his ring.  It was the only one which looked like it belonged to an alien.  All the others were perfectly round.

Round ... and still lost.  I wonder how long those other wives kept up the Honeybun thing.

He thought she was getting up close and personal, but she just wanted to hiss
'Pick up your socks, you DORK' without anyone hearing

A recipe for tubercular mince pies which would grace any 18th century costume drama kitchen

I am peering at the screen with stinging, watery eyes due to a streaming cold, and I am sneezing every 33 seconds, and the dripping of my nose would shame a Chinese water torturer, but don't you worry, Isabelle and Frances, about pressurising me to write a new post while I am suffering thus.

No, don't you fret, my dears.  I am sure you are both sitting there with your feet up, sipping mulled wine, healthy and thriving, while you fire off your comments about it being time I shifted my carcass and wrote something.  No, I'm not bitter at all.  I am very pleased for you, that you are not victims of The Worst Cold in History and can enjoy your Christmas holidays without using up enough Kleenex to soak up the Indian Ocean and leave its bed dry and all its sea life flapping about wondering FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WHO PULLED THE PLUG?

I have been making mince pies.  No, this isn't my excuse for not having written a post since early December, although the way I make mince pies (bake 6, eat 4, bake 6, eat 4) could well account for such a mammoth pie-making session.

I discovered this afternoon that making mince pies with a streaming cold makes the whole process far more complicated.  You have a nano-second, when the nose begins to drip, to grab a tissue before you glaze the mince pie with something less acceptable to most people than the usual egg yolk.  [Most? Don't you mean all?! Ed.]  [You ARE Ed, idiot!  You don't have an Ed!]

Any relatives reading this who are due to come and stay and may be offered a mince pie ... I SWEAR TO YOU I got away from the pies just well in time.

Then (to continue with my method for Tubercular Mince Pies) after you've blown your nose, you have to wash your hands again, in the interests of anti-slobness, and washing pastry-plastered hands is not just 'washing hands' as any cook will know.  It means scrubbing away at them with a scourer or a vegetable brush, and then pretending you weren't the one who made the scourer/brush unusable next time the washing up is done.

Any relatives reading this who are due to come and stay ... you are NOT to use this as an excuse not to do any washing-up.

What slaving over home-made mince pies for your family despite being near death does mean, though, is that you feel completely justified in partaking of that well-known medicinal remedy: the newly-baked mince pie.  You deserve some reward for such sacrificial service.

Mind you, I now have, as well as the streaming cold, a missing upper palate, its skin stripped away by mincemeat-flavoured lava.  This is rough justice, in my view, as all I was trying to do was comfort myself in the middle of my suffering.  It was nothing to do with greed.  *coy expression* *annoyed expression at having used the asterisk thing after vowing never to*

The pies are all baked and packed away and will need to be put on a Very High Shelf, just in case any of my family who are reading this arrive on Boxing Day, and wonder why I have bought several packets of mince pies with dodgy use-by dates from the corner shop rather than making my own ...

Merry Christmas to all, especially to Isabelle and Frances, who wrote especially to say they were missing me.  On the other hand, after my earlier venomous diatribe, they may not even have read this far, and may have just unfollowed. *Bites lip in regret*  I feel regret about that, and DON'T NEED ASTERISKS TO EXPRESS IT.

Fran was in such a hurry to find which High Shelf the pies were on that she didn't realise
she was scattering tissues as she ran

 

Evidence that an insight into others' lives can make one feel inferior

I've been sitting in my living room, by the fire, thinking what a nice house I live in.  I was perfectly content.  Happy with the decor, though it's a little tired.  Pleased with my old radio, burbling away while I mark exercise books.

And then I watched this on the BBC news website .... check out the link.

Proof that I live in squalor compared to these guys ....

Fran started on her campaign to live the life of the more privileged