Reasons why Being Me is going to be Was Being Me for a while

I'm now on my summer holidays from school, dear friends, and I think there are two ways these 7 weeks could go.

Option 1. I start out with the intention of chasing more agents and publishers for my books/beginning a new novel/writing some articles/trying to pitch a new column/entering some story and poetry competitions, but after 5 minutes of enthusiasm decide to blog/read blogs instead because it's just TOO DIFFICULT.  I therefore spend hours blogging and then find it's bedtime.

Option 2. I decide to have a break from the blogosphere so that I can give myself as much chance as possible of actually getting past that 'it's just too difficult' point.

I know myself too well.  So, I've decided on option 2.  You're a great bunch of followers and I hope you'll stick around so that when that I start 'Being Me' again in September or thereabouts, you'll be looking out for a seminal post about a stuffed animal or an incident on a local bus ....

(And please don't be surprised if, in September, all I've done is planned the name of a main character for a book and sent a haiku off.)

xxx

   

Evidence that I can only cope with easy questions like 'Would you like some chocolate right now?'

If I knew what a 'meme' was - and I still don't, even though people keep saying it - it would help.  I don't know whether to say 'I've been memed by Steve at Bloggertropolis' or 'Steve has given me a meme' or 'Here's some memming which Steve has made me do'.  Whichever way, I hate him.  Look at these questions he's sent me to answer.  What would YOU do with them? 


1. God gives you a free ticket to spend the night with absolutely anybody in the world and the entirety of history – whom do you choose? 


Someone who knows how to use who and whom proper like what you do.

2. Frankie Howard or Frankie Boyle? (This is a separate question and is not related to no. 1 above.)


I don't know who Frankie Boyle is.  I'm not good on culture.  Comedian?  Actor?  Street cleaner?  Whoever he is, as I don't know him, I'll go for Frankie Howard.  Although, as he's dead, this could be a tedious meeting - I'll bring a book.

3. What life skill or ability do you wish you possessed? 


Not laughing at serious moments like funerals or announcements of tragedies.  It doesn't go down well with the rellies.

4. If it takes Johnny three hours to fill a bath with water using a colander and a train travelling at 90mph takes 2 hours to reach it’s destination why does Britain no longer have the right to call itself Great? 


If it takes Fran three hours to work out what the hell this question is about and the answer to that question takes for ever to reach her brain, how is she ever meant to get to bed?

5. Have you ever genuinely wished to be a member of the opposite sex (or are you that already)?


Steve, you are a man.  I am a woman.  That means I am a member of the opposite sex.

6. Do you have any embarrassingly weird interests or hobbies – and if so please explain in detail?


I pick privet leaves off hedges and make little faces in them with my fingernails.  I can't think of one person who would want to read any more detail on that one.

7. Dance, Punk, Goth, Metal, Grunge, Pop, Country, Folk or Classical? The choice is yours.


The choice isn't mine at all.  I am force-fed Classic FM and if I hear Pachobel's Canon one more time I will slit my own throat.

8. If you could change anything about your current lifestyle / life situation, what would it be? And what would you keep?


I want to live in a house like the one in 'Brideshead Revisited' and have cocktails at 4 and dress for dinner.  However, I would still want to keep having egg and chips for dinner sometimes and this may not go down well with the butler.

9. If you were a packet of crisps what flavour would you be?


If I were a packet of crisps I doubt whether I'd have much say.  Do crisps have rights?  

10. Describe the sandwich of the gods. 



Two slices of white bread with Zeus and Triton in the middle and a good helping of mayo.




Now, anyone who would like to have a go at answering these questions, be my guest.  And keep taking the medication.  It will work if you stick at it.

Things I noticed while at the dentist today having some major work done

'I'm going to put this massive wadge of cotton wool in your mouth

 and then I'm going to ask you all about your summer holidays.  Okay?'

At the dentist ....

1. You sit in a waiting room, wishing you were in the mood for people-watching, ie making interesting observations about what others do when they're nervous.  But you are not.  You too are texting people to whom you have nothing decent to say, biting your nails (perhaps for the last time for a while) and curling your toes up towards the ceiling.

2. You read, from cover to cover, a magazine called 'Groom your Dog the Tai Chi Way' or 'Collect Tree Bark as a Lifelong Pastime' and find it absorbing.

3. The words which come over the tannoy ('Fran to Room 3, please) you hear as 'Climb the stairs to your eternal doom' and the receptionist has to tell you it's your turn.

4. You enter the dentist's surgery and hear his opening words ('Hello, Fran, how are you?') as 'Lie down on this couch and let me drill down through your palate and up into your brain tissues until you scream for mercy'.  You only just stop yourself from saying, 'I think I've changed my mind.  I have a better plan for my afternoon which involves putting my head inside the jaws of a starved shark'.

5. You realise that, however handsome the dentist, you and he (should you be free, of course ...) are never going to become an item.  You can dress up all you like in a nice spotty cardi and your favourite black trousers, but all he'll be looking at is your ageing gums, the purple veins at the back of your tongue, and your epiglottis.  It's not a good start to a relationship.

6. Another woman, to whom you have not given an explicit invitation, gets to stare at your face under a bright light under the pretence of sucking extra liquid from your mouth with a vacuum cleaner.  She gets to muse for a LONG TIME on your upper lip hair, the little cluster of moles on your right cheek and the fact that you probably have yesterday's mascara on.  She also gets to dress you in a pair of plastic goggles and a plastic apron, as well as watching you spit into a sink.  She is one happy lady.

7. You suddenly become very adept at making up little games for yourself while there's a shedload of plasticine in your mouth, waiting to set.  These games are called, 'How long will it take for that cloud to go past that bit of the window?' and 'How many ceiling tiles are in this room?' and 'How much of Paradise Lost can I really remember?'

8. Things about pink liquid.  a) Drinking pink liquid and spitting it out of your mouth is much more difficult when your mouth isn't where it was earlier in the day.  b) Pink liquid down your shirt is not comfortable or pretty. c) Pink liquid looks even pinker when it's been spat, not in the sink, but over the edge of it.

9. The dentist's words ('Right, that's all done, then') make you so happy that you mishear them as 'I am not a dentist, really.  I am George Clooney in disguise and I think you are stunning.  Let us run away together on a white horse.'

10. It's best not to smile at the bus driver or any passengers when you journey home, however pleased you are to be out of there.  However hard you try, smiles after anaesthesia don't work as well as they do without anaesthesia, and as you are probably dribbling as well, you don't want to spoil your joy by having to explain to a police officer why you are trying to scare people.

Ten reasons for having a new template that has thousands of books on it

1. I lurve it.
2. I lurve it.
3. I lurve it.
4. I lurve it.
5. I lurve it.
6. I lurve it.
7. I lurve it.
8. I lurve it.
9. I lurve it.
10. I lurve it.

(Oh, HOW ANNOYING.  It was all going so well, with all the 'I lurve its' all being in a nice symmetrical row and then, because of the Number 10, which is two digits and not one, it pushed the 'I lurve it' out a bit, so now it doesn't match.)

(Whaddya mean, lighten up?)

Reasons not to buy educational supplies that taste good

I knew that if I said to the girl on the checkout, 'Look, I know what you're thinking, but the reason I'm buying 16 bars of chocolate is because I am using them in a class on Monday to help students explore the English language' she would have been very cynical about it.  She'd have raised one eyebrow, looked at a colleague in a kind of get-this-fat-idiot! way and deliberately announced, 'THAT WILL BE TEN POUNDS FIFTY FOR THOSE SIXTEEN BARS EACH CONTAINING AT LEAST 960 CALORIES AND A FATAL DOSE OF CHOLESTEROL, MADAM' and everyone in the shop would have looked my way.  And, of course, it had to be today that I chose a bright pink t-shirt.  So everyone would have been looking and thinking, 'But she already looks like a strawberry blancmange!  Why make things worse?'

In the light of all these possibilities, I didn't say anything.  I just kept my head down while she dropped them all in a bag for me (one by one, and very slowly, I swear), paid, and bolted.

But I really AM using them for teaching, it's true.  Studying chocolate bar wrappers is a great way to learn about the language of persuasion, and it's funny how hard the kids concentrate when you say, 'When we've explored the use of English on the wrappers and you've made some EXCELLENT notes, we'll be eating the chocolate.'  It concentrates the mind beautifully.

The whole thing raises some dilemmas, however.

1. I bought 16 bars, 2 each of 8 different types.  This meant that, on the bus on the way home, when suddenly a chocolate craving gnawed at my psyche, I couldn't eat one, because that would have left me with an odd one.  So that would mean I'd have to eat 2.  And that would leave me possibly short for the lesson.  Which would mean having to go back to the shops and replace the missing bars.  (I was just working out when I'd be able to do this when I realised I was at my stop, so I was rescued in the nick of time.)

2. It's hot at the moment.  I'm going to have to keep the chocolate in the staff room fridge to keep it all cool.  Now, all I'll say here is that teaching is a stressful job, and if I had had a tough morning and then found a bag of someone else's chocolate in the staff fridge, I might have a little moral decision to make, one which would last about 0.3 seconds.

3. If I don't put it all in the fridge, and it's a hot day on Monday, that's going to be one very messy lesson, especially once they've all handled the wrapped chocolate several times to look at the words on the packets.  (I've had a recent experience which makes me extra-wary.  I was on a school trip on Friday and the staff contingent was sitting out in the warm sun while the kids were having their lunches.  I had bought a bar of chocolate from the cafe and was already regretting it because the others had all bought salads and fruit, damn them.  But as this whacking great brick of Cadburys was sitting on my tray, I had to go through with it. Anyway, I unwrapped it, and it was only once it was unwrapped that I realised it was virtually chocolate sauce.  But you know how it is ... you can't back down at those kinds of times.  I ate the whole thing, trying to pretend it was completely normal to have chocolate that you had to scoop out of the packet with your fingers as though it were soup.  

4.  All the chocolate cost me a lot of money.  Can I claim for this?  Can I really write '16 bars of chocolate' in the 'educational resources' column on the claim form?  It just doesn't sound the same as 'photocopiable worksheets on iambic pentameter' or 'software for Charles Dickens scheme of work'.

5. I WANT TO EAT THE CHOCOLATE MYSELF.  Forget all the other issues; this is my main and pressing problem, as may be deduced from my chosen font style.  And I'm not sure I'm up to the task of resisting the temptation.  So, my lesson plan may well have changed by Monday morning from 'Analysing the Linguistic Features of Chocolate Bars' to 'Analysing the Linguistic Features of Any Tin of Food I Happened to Have in the Cupboard'.

(And if there's anyone out there saying, 'Surely she couldn't eat 16 bars of chocolate over a weekend', all I can say is, 'Try me'.)