Being Me

I actually went into a field this weekend. What, outdoors?  I hear you say.  Do you even venture onto the doormat outside your house without hyperventilating and needing to breathe into a paper bag? I hear you say.  Don't you feel panicky merely standing near an open window? I hear you say. Well, here's the proof that I braved the elements.  I took this photo myself, honest. These are tractor prints, not my footprints.   I may be a size 7 but even my trainers don't make tracks like that. And here's a picture of the whole field, although I did send this to my sister and she said, 'You could have taken that while leaning out of a cafe window.'  This kind of cynicism cuts one to the quick. This looks as though I was leaning over when taking this.  I may well have been, through tiredness.  We had walked for 30 whole minutes. What got me into the field, then? No, I was NOT lost. It was because my friend, with whom I ...

Storms I don’t know what Venice is like.  Once, I was as near as damn it, on a ship, with the chance to disembark and laze on a gondola trailing my hand in water, or sip coffee from a tiny white cup outside a café.  But I was fourteen, and David was seventeen, and we didn’t need what Venice had to offer.  We’d made our own romance.             At least, that’s the way I prefer to remember it. It was 1976.  We were on the SS Uganda as part of a school cruise around the Mediterranean .  The night before, there’d been a disorderly evening of storms, of portholes that showed no water, then all water, then no water.  Everyone screeched with delight in the ship’s common room as glasses slewed off tables and anxious teachers hovered, urging us back to cabins.  We pressed coins into the jukebox and played ‘Rock the Boat’ by the Hues Corporation, dancing without balance like badly-operated pupp...

Two Fridays ago, I  made up a poem to teach some GCSE students not to use a comma to join two whole sentences together as in 'I love punctuation , I hate the way 16 year olds abuse it.' A comma splice is not that nice and should be used by no one. Two sentences? Then use full stops, or have a semi-colon. Or why not use connectives like but, because or and? Then say with me, 'The comma splice? It really should be banned!' (Yes, I know.  It's not exactly 'The Prelude'.  But I only had five minutes to throw it together.) I gave them fifteen minutes to learn it, testing each other until they were word-perfect, and then challenged them to recite it.  If they could do it, I promised them chocolate.  I only see them once a fortnight, so I wrote down a reminder to buy the prizes. Four of them took up the challenge.  I was very pleased with them.  They're not all confident students. So, I went to the shop last Thursday morning for some chocol...

I cannot wear scarves as part of an outfit.  It's a shame, as they appear to be in fashion, and as regular readers will know, I am always one for a trend.  Just call me the Zeitgeist Blogger, and watch out for next week's post on purple corduroy flares, cheesecloth blouses and Bay City Roller tartan tank tops. I have tried the scarf thing and have a selection of them.  But, whatever I do, and however I wrap them or arrange them, I end up looking as though I've been attacked by a patterned carpet and forcibly smothered. For illustrative purposes, and to show you what I look like in a scarf, I am going to Google 'attacked by a carpet' and see what I find.  I cannot resist.  Back in a moment. Hm.  Not many actual images of people being attacked by carpets at that very moment.  Life is so unfair.  But I did find this.  Seems a little harsh on the lady with the hair. And then there's this one, which is a kind of 'prequel' ...

I went to prison last year.  Some of you may remember my mentioning it.  Don't worry - no one had found the millions under my mattress.  (Phew!)  No, I was actually there to run a poetry workshop.  All the prisoners were male and sentenced to at least four years in jail, so their crimes must have been pretty serious.  But I had a fabulous day and their responses to the workshop were very moving and often skilful. I thought I'd post one of the poetry exercises I did with the prisoners.  It worked really well and you're welcome to use it if you're a teacher, or have a go if you're a writer.  If you're neither of these, the pictures are quite nice ... First, I showed them a picture of a market.    I'd written a plain description of what was happening. Plain description People are looking at the produce. Traders try to advertise their wares. Then I showed them my attempt to turn the plain description into somethin...

I said to my sixth formers on Friday,  'Chances are I'm going to be a Grandma for the second time this week.' 'The second time this week?' one of them said.  'That's very impressive.' 'Er - let me rephrase that,' I said.  'Chances are that, this week, I'm going to be a Grandma for the second time.' And I was!  Galling, though, to have someone in your English Language A level class point out your faulty syntax. Anyway, here's the baby.  Phoebe Esther Hill, born very early on Saturday morning.  A sister for Elijah, who's now 20 months. Here are some other things I have done twice. 1. Given birth to girls .  I had one baby girl in 1983, a sandwich filling of a little boy in 1986, and then another baby girl in 1990.  The sandwich filling is the one who's the father of my grandchildren, so he's done pretty well, despite starting out as a lunch ingredient.   Here's the younger...

I think Mr Gove has a special servant who looks at a clock all day and says: 'Mr Gove.  Another five minutes has passed, sir.  Time for an announcement about what you are going to change in education.' It's not that I disagree with all Gove's ideas; I like his apparent wish to drive up standards and instil higher expectations.  But he just throws out ideas randomly, like confetti, without properly consulting anyone and it's so destabilising for the profession. I was browsing through some of my Times Educational Supplement columns; I wrote for the newspaper over a period of several years.  This column was from 2007 and examines the way new teachers are like teenagers ... You know when you're about to become a parent, and someone feels it their duty to tell you what it’s really like?  You smile indulgently, because you know your kids will be different.              Someone informed me when I was pregnant that her...