bored

40th Birthdays

2005-09-21T22:13:12+02:00

You know you're getting old when you start to get invited to 40th birthdays all the time. Off to Leamington at the weekend for the next one, all the chances of us staying at the hotel do not look too promising. I've booked a room but the receptionist did not inspire confidence. Normal present, but will not be able to use that idea for much longer.

School is going well, I think. Some of the new lessons seem to be going well and tutor time is certainly more worthwhile than under the old system. I suppose that I should be doing something for my uni project rather than just sitting here but... About to run out of Y9 lessons so should start planning some more, most of the ones from last year seem crap and will need redoing. Y8 lessons have gone well so far and there are some very bright kids. Loads to do on Friday but should be able to crack on if I keep those free periods.

The house sale is going smoothly, fingers crossed. No news from the survery yet, the estate agent says they are going to chase them up on Friday.

Wednesday nights are pretty poor on TV. Emmerdale, obviously, which was really good last night - "Miss Bitch, to you" - apart from having to suffer Scott on the screen. Surely he will get his comeuppance, after all he did try and rape Zoe. Lost is on later, still no clue as to what is going on.

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4 Days In

2005-09-08T19:09:32+02:00

Four days back and finally our laptops are available, for some reason, heads of depts have all got new ones that go faster which seeing as we have more free time than others seems a bit stupid. However, I'm not one to complain (much) and its a lot ligher than the last one and holds its charge for longer than 10 minutes. Of course, school being school (sorry college), there are lots of things that don't work. I'm not doing too much on it tonight because God knows whether I'll be able to access the stuff at school (college) tomorrow.

Challenge Lawro still not working - the only good thing is that it would be a bit disappointing filling in a result for the lads on Saturday seeing as they are away to Chelsea. There is always hope, there was the year when we beat them and went to see Kylie at the Hammersmith Apollo.

Y8s seem really good and there seem to be some very bright kids guessing by some of the answers they came out with when looking at pictures from the renaissance. Y9 is another story and there are a couple of kids who are going to be real trouble. R had big problems with 2 of V's old form plus the ADHD kid. (Is that anonymous enough or do I need to give people aliases).

Duty day today and even though I hadn't been put on the list I still went out and did my stint (ever the hero). It's been sunny all week and then the first day it rains its bus duty! It seems that nobody has bothered to tell the school bus that out finishing time has been put back by 10 mins - the bus was leaving just as I got down there.

Colin was back Tuesday and Wednesday for a conference at Magna, so it's been like old times this week. Over to Chester tomorrow to go to the races (my second hen-do) and I hope that I have much more luck than the last couple of times. Apart from that Darren Williams mistake bet I don't think I've ever won at Chester.

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Sold House

2005-08-31T15:50:20+02:00

Yesterday we accepted an offer on the the house and got the money we had hoped for. It is a pain having to go through all the offer and counter-offer nonsense, why can't people just pay the price that is advertised? I'd be no good in one of those countries where you have to barter for everything - I'd be known as the easy touch guy.

I've been to see the doctor today and am told that the rash in my armpits is very common and given a prescription. It must have been the quickest visit to the doctor ever, I waited about a minute and was in and out of the doctor's room in about a minute. Only problem was then having to wait for ages in Boots to get the cream and £6.50!!!

Popped into school and managed to sort a few things out in the classroom. However, it seems that all the printers are not working, so much for my plan to get all the photocopying done in advance.

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Results

2005-08-26T13:26:07+02:00

Went into school yesterday and managed to avoid talking to any kids. I was a bit disappointed by some of the results, some of the kids I expected to get A*s only got As, but the results for my class were pretty good (3A*s and 7 As) with only one kid getting a D and then there was the pregnant girl who never kept any notes who managed to get an E. As a department the results were OK but down on last year, even though the number of entries was up, and there were far too many Es (21 out of 76). In some ways this is better than Ds but we need to think long and hard about this and what we can do to make sure that results improve next year.

A week of the holidays left but I still seem to have loads to do. All the stuff I was going to do for my uni project hasn't happened and I've got to start thinking about the lessons I'm going to teach when I go back.

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Wednesday

2005-08-24T19:10:57+02:00

Tomorrow is results day and so its into school to see how people have got on. I'm hoping that there should be some A*s but also worried that some pupils will not get the results they are capable of - this should have been a whole class where everybody was capable of getting a C.

Another house viewing tonight, never has the dyson been used so often and the garden vac has seen the light of day more in the last 3 weeks than in the previous 3 years. A second viewing tomorrow and they seemed interested the first time around.

Went away to Montenegro last week, a 4 star hotel outside of Kotor. We had gone B&B but there was not a huge choice of restauarants and so on a couple of nights we walked the 2-3 miles into and out of the old town, taking care to not fall into the sea and avoid the traffic on the single file road. We also went to Albania for a day, the town we visited was very run down, almost like a shanty town but the castle we visited was good and the restaurant where we ate lunch (eventually) was great.

I haven't got the hang of this blogging yet - life seems pretty uninteresting. I wonder what you need to put in to get other people to read it and what you do about confidentiality? I could write about what happens at school but do I have to change the names to protect the innocent? Should I write about last night's TV, film reviews, reactions to the news etc. Actually whilst on holiday my news diet reduces dramatically - I can never seem to get round to watching the news and am not driving around anywhere to have 5 Live on in the car.

Quick TV review: Get Stuffed - all about taxidermy was a very odd documentary on Monday night on BBC2. It was like Best In Show but real! There was one young Amercain woman who had decided that she did not want children and so had herself "fixed" - hadn't she heard of contraception? There was also a man who was pleased to win the best in category for a recreation and seemed to see no irony when he explained that he was pleased to have won even though he was the only entry in that category. The bloke from York was just unpleasant, bad teeth and a very unbritish attitude towards competition. I was pleased when he didn't win but felt a bit sorry for his Dutch friend. Then there was the Swiss bloke, the last winner, who had given up taxidemy because he had found God. A very interesting film which I'm surprised did not have a cinema release.

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First Entry Ever

2005-07-27T17:52:22+02:00

This could be highly embarassing - nobody could read it, somebody could read it and recognise who I am, I could re-read it and think 'Oh my God' what was I thinking.

I never written a blog before and the only reason I am writing one now is that I am bored.

Let me explain, I am a teacher and so am now 3 days into a 6 week holiday (I know I shouldn't complain) and my partner is living on the other side of the country so I am at a loose end. I've tried a puzzle, sudoku puzzles, watching TV, the commentaries on the Lord of the Rings DVDs but nothing can keep my attention. I've even resorted to writing schemes of work.

I've decided which CDs I am going to try and sell on Amazon and have copied (ripped?) the tracks that I like on to my PC. Most of them are ones brought from Brittania CD club - where you end up buying albums purely because you did not mind listening to a song on the radio. I wonder if Brittania still exists or if it has been replaced by the internet?

Tomorrow, its off to Chester and on Friday to the races - so somethings to look forward to.

What happens next?

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