Being Me

I hear there's a book going around called 'The Lazy Outstanding Teacher'. Yeah, right. I am sensing a trend, though, and am now busy writing.  Please look out for my forthcoming titles. 'How to Teach Iambic Pentameter to Thirty Students While Reading Thomas Hardy Under the Desk' 'Being an Incredible Teacher While Contracting Out your Marking Load to a Keen Undergraduate' 'How to Communicate the Art of Effective Paragraphing While Dozing' 'Terrific Teaching While Texting: The Ultimate Guide' 'How to Make Chaucer Fascinating While Ordering Tonight's Pizza on the Desk Computer' 'Eat Chocolate and Teach: The Expert Guide to Get them Concentrating on the Worksheet and not on What You're Doing' 'The Long-Haired Music Lover Teacher and Other Ways to Conceal your Ipod Headphones While Communicating the Finer Points of Apostrophes' 'I'll just get them writing this down, then I can spear a...

Here are some items I can see from where I'm sitting in my living room (oh yes, oh yes, I know how to build up the tension with my first sentence ...) Item 1. An upside down cushion on the sofa with a cheesy picture of a cat, surrounded by flowers, on it.  The cat therefore looks as though it's standing on its head.  From where I am, it's looking at me gloomily as if to say, 'Will you put me the right way up, woman?  This is undignified.'  But, as I have said to it many times, there's no point me putting it the right way up and fluffing it up and making it look all nice when THERE'S A MAN IN THE HOUSE WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND CUSHIONS.  After all, what man does understand cushions, and putting them the right way up, and fluffing them, and making them look like a decorative item rather than a misshapen lump?  What man realises that cushions are meant to sit nicely in the small of one's back and not under one's thighs, being pulped to perdition?  (...

Bringing home The New Baby is like bringing home that lovely chair you fell in love with in the traditional pine shop.  It's very nice and all that, but in the average-sized family home, where the hell do you put it so it can be used and admired but not be In Everybody's Way?  Good luck with finding a chapter on that in your spanking new How-To baby book that cost you thirty-five quid. And it's even more awkward with babies than it is with chairs.  At least a chair doesn't realise  that it's been stuck in a dark corner and ignored just because once you got it home you found there really was no place for it.  Babies somehow sense that they've been put in a dark corner and left for weeks to gather dust.  I don't know what it is about them, but you have to admire them for it. Anyway, even though, as you know, it is a zillion years since I could call myself a Young Mother, and Henry the Eighth was still on the throne when I was suckling my offspring while t...

You know life is frantic when .... 1. Checking out other people's blogs and leaving inane comments seems like something you did on a school trip many years ago, or like an ancient country craft such as dry stone walling or making horseshoes.* 2. You don't have time to secure your zips and buttons up properly after a visit to the loo and find yourself doing up the fastenings while walking down busy corridors towards important visitors to your workplace. 3. You haven't caught up with the recent news and are thus humiliated when you say to someone, 'Isn't it terrible news about President Kennedy?' 4. The concept of 'meals' containing vitamins and minerals seems a distant memory, your diet now consisting as it does of chocolate chip chewy bars, tins of peaches and throat lozenges. 5. When you look in the mirror, your stressed shoulders are so near to your earlobes and your face bears such a greenish, no-sleep, no-nutrition tinge that you realise th...

I have been walking the long way to work (like, the fifteen minute route rather than the eleven minutes and thirty seconds route yah boo to all you poor commuters stuck in traffic).  The short way is the murderer-inhabited dark and lonely passage I have told you about.  The long way is down the main road and past the shops and there are lights. Why have I been going the long way, I don't hear you ask, but you're going to be told anyway.  Because it's been raining persistently for a week and the short way is now a mire into which I could sink and no one would ever know (and I wouldn't be able to hear the cheers from those who diss my song list posts, mentioning no names but she rhymes with Cheek! Oh!). During my walks round the long way, I have learned some stuff. Lesson 1 . Temptation from the fish and chip shop is remarkably easy to resist at 7.45 in the morning when it's shut anyway and you've just had a little bit of  bowl of porridge the size of the Pa...

I have sound!  Not volume.  But sound! I have been miraculously healed by a flock of birds.  And I know you'll think 'oh, come off it', but think again.  Do not doubt, brothers and sisters.  Amen.  Let us sing Hymn No 439. I walked to school this morning without a voice, intending to just set all the work for the people covering my lessons, and then come home.  I was ready for another day of enforced silence and steaming my head in bowls and eating forty-nine slices of toast and honey.  (Shuddup.  I'm meant to be eating honey.) Just as I reached the bit of the country lane where I turn right down a pathway (that's right, the one that's unlit and has murderers waiting down it), this flippin' massive flock of birds (can't be more specific - you know me and nature ) SANG to me. Don't ask me what they were singing.  I didn't recognise the tune.  It could've been Twinkle Twinkle Little Starling or Wren Will I See you Ag...

I've been looking at lists of classic songs again ( yes, again ) and thinking, if I were a famous singer, and I suddenly developed acute laryngitis mid-song during a concert, what would be the song lyric I WOULDN'T want to be singing at the time for fear of being laughed off stage? I just called to say I love you But I have to say I love you in a song Have I told you lately that I love you? More than Words Careless Whisper The Sound of Silence Listen, do you want to know a secret? Let's call the whole thing off Say a little prayer for you Poetry in Motion Hard to Say I'm Sorry I Apologize I could not Ask for More Shout No Woman No Cry Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word This I Swear You say it Best When You Say Nothing at All Words Get in the Way Tell Laura I Love Her Help! Got to Get a Message to You Okay, okay, there's no sound coming out.  But if I hear one TITTER from any of you, you'll be SKEWERED.

I have laryngitis and am off sick, having got into school this morning only to find that when someone said hello I couldn't answer back.  I had to set cover work for my lessons then come home. That's why I'm whispering. But even whispering hurts.   *Sighs resignedly and goes off to hang head over a bowl of steamy water*  Evidence that Fran is not the only Big Lady to have had this problem

Sorry to disappoint.  Nothing happened while I was walking to/from my new job today, although I guess it could have done on the way home because it was dark and the quickest route takes me through a deserted park, under a bridge and down an isolated country path.  *Owl screeching and wind howling and general ghosty noises*  None of it is lit  (apart from by my radiant personality, but funnily enough, despite that I still couldn't see a damn thing.) But if anything HAD happened, I don't think I'd have posting about it under a facetious title like 'Reasons not to take the shortcut, ho ho ho, I'm so hilarious!'  You would have seen the headlines elsewhere. I will need to consider whether or not I should walk the extra five minutes to go the lighted way.  But that's past the fish and chip shop.  Both are extremely dangerous routes, therefore. So, no walking stories ............. BUT .... what DID happen, while I was just  sitting still in a...

I'm starting a new teaching job in a different school on Tuesday.  It's a 10 minute walk from my house. You know what this means, don't you?.........  (Cue sad and woeful rendition of funeral dirge.) No, silly.  It doesn't mean I will die if I have to walk for more than 9 minutes at a time!  Did I ever give you that impression? Okay, granted. Yes, I have.  Many times.  And if I never said it explicitly, you've gathered it from my continual references to eating my body weight in Lindt products/buns the size of continents/leftovers scraped from the back of the fridge in desperate moments. No, what I mean is, if I'm walking, there'll be less opportunity for stories about  ... Yes, you guessed it.  Wave bye-bye to the bus, everybody ..... RIP Bus Stories I know!  I know!  How am I going to manage?  What am I going to write about?  Does this mean that by tomorrow a hundred followers will have un-followed me, thinkin...