divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived!

i had a wonderful sunday in london visiting the TOWER OF LONDON and got to indulge the nerd historian within by inundating penny with Little Known Facts from british history.

we took a beefeater tour, climbed endless winding staircases, took the conveyor belt past the crown jewels and dreamed of growing up within the walls (people really live there you know!!) but the best part was recreating my favourite tower of london beheading (lady jane grey - i love the tragedy of it all...) with the aid of an obliging young man with a novelty sword:
(surely the best part of the picture is the adidas swordsman in the background with his threatening gaze.. think he was annoyed i didn't ask him to do the top job. he didn't have the matching novelty helmet though...)

what an excellent day.

meanwhile, all my foodie dreams came true when penny and aj took me to a place where you can eat yum cha at night-time while drinking vino in a very cool, dimly lit bar. and it was called the drunken monkey. too good to be true..

straight from the 'perplex them' school of classroom management

how to (finally) shut the kids up in 7 easy steps:

step 1: put on a film about nazi death camps for jews

step 2: start getting annoyed as the punk kids in the back row laugh at the scene of the nazi whipping a jew

step 3: start tearing up a the scene where the young goldsmith looks through a grimy window and sees the smoke rising from the pits where they are burning the gassed bodies.

step 4: silently fume as madeline and felicity start whispering and giggling together

step 5: tears begin to fall at the scene where a man realises his family has been killed (it's been a tough week...)

step 6: get raging mad when the students start laughing again when a jewish baby dies when its mother accidentally smothers it when trying to hide it from the nazis.

step 7: dramatically halt the video. turn on the lights. face the kids, wiping tears from your eyes and address them in a shaking voice..

oooh, i had them in deathly silence for at least ten minutes as i gave them an emotional lecture on how angry it makes me when ignorant fucks like themselves think they are in a position to laugh at human suffering. went on to elaborate on some specific instances of cruelty, torture and humiliation inflicted on the jewish people by the nazis. i likened the arrogance of the nazis to their own arrogance as students. realised i had perhaps taken it a little far at this point so i told them to get the hell out of my classroom and when they come back on tuesday they had better bring some goddamn respect. they shuffled out looking guilty as sin and didn't say a single word.

those little shits have signed themselves up for 2 weeks worth of empathy based lessons.

i'm sure they are all talking about what a nut job i am right now, but i don't care. that silence was lovely.. i would have danced on it if i wasn't wearing my impractical grown up shoes..

celebrating my aquarian superiority

i had a lovely birthday on saturday... i slept till noon, watched a documentary on the nazi youth and then went into london town to feast on delicious moroccan food with mes amigos penny, bonnie, al and zoe. we ate plenty, took ridiculous themed photographs and drank a little too much red wine. and then to keep with the general theme of GETTING OLD i took the last train home to essex. splendid.

thanks to everyone who sent cards, emails, parcels and birthday wishes..

and happy chinese new year to everyone as well.. am trying hard not to think about the bbq city and the chow..

the city is a sorceress you know daniel... it gets under your skin and steals your soul without you knowing it...

i approached this barcelona trip in a very out of character, haphazard fashion. i had only booked one night accommodation, i hadn't prepared a little homemade euro/pound/dollar currency conversion sheet, i hadn't planned my route from the airport to the hostel door on my little map and i didn't even have a list of what to pack written down when i started packing at 10pm the night before my flight! here is a list of what i forgot to bring:

• sunglasses
• toothbrush/toothpaste/facewash
• adaptor for my phone charger
• addresses for postcards
• my common sense (lack of which led to me getting vomit drunk on sangria on my first night in a strange country. luckily i'd befriended some responsible types who walked me home)

but after the hangover wore off (and i'd impressed myself with my firm grasp of spanish when i had to ask for paracetamol in a pharmacy - yup, forgot that too..) i got exploring and totally fell in love with barcelona. what an excellent city. it is a perfect balance of old school charm, imposing gothicness and sleek modernity all with a wicked appreciation for the bizarre (i composed that sentence onto a napkin while sitting at a bar drinking vino tinto and eating olives. what a wanker! audrey, i wish you were there..)

old school charm:
imposing gothicness:
sleek modernity:
wicked appreciation for the bizarre:
i did have a thoroughly excellent 6 days though, i met some kindred spirits and followed my usual travel routine of sleeping late, eating lots, trying to fit in at least one 'cultural' activity a day and just wandering the streets. barcelona is an excellent city for just wandering, especially around the gothic quarter where the streets are so close together that only chinks of light filter in from between the high buildings and you can feel like you are in the middle of a medieval maze.

highlights include:

• reading for hours on a beautiful sunshiney day in gaudi's park güell benches (i think the man is a genius)
• watching the 'vigilante de seguridad' dramatically halt the metro and run the full length of the carriages to evict a fare evader (i thought it was something much more serious given the determined looks on the faces of the vigilantes but was with a spanish speaker who assured me it was only a tussle over the fare)
• the hot chocolates. all of them. and there were many.
• feeling like a super-traveller woman because i wasn't robbed at some point like at least 40% of the people staying at my hostel.
• the miro museum. i didn't know much about him at all before but i'm impressed!
• being mistaken for a native speaker in a restaurant until i forgot my jacket and the waiter had to run after me and i stared at him blankly as he talked at me and then realised i had been bluffing the entire time (my rule of thumb was to keep saying 'yes' in restaurants and bars, the more food/drink that arrives on the table the better!)
• dipping my feet into the mediterranean for the first time..
  
• lining up for an hour to eat this: it is an octopus terrine and it was DELICIOUS.

• stumbling out of an alleyway into the middle of an insane parade full of grotesquely costumed men. apparently it was something to do with a festival for children? whack.
• hanging out in the hundreds of impossibly cool bars that are everywhere and full of impossibly cool and good looking people... i liked the dark, art deco ones the best..

put it on your lists people!

snow day!

last night it snowed so much that school today has been cancelled. there was a rumour going around yesterday that this might happen and there was much checking of the bbc weather website during the day. to be sure, i did a little snow dance around the living room before bed and was rewarded by waking up at 6:30 to at least 4 inches of snow and it was still falling!

joy! of course there was the anxious wait by the radio to confirm that great baddow would indeed be closing. apparently the headmaster is a notorious spoilsport when it comes to snow days and has only closed the school once in seventeen years! i am glad i could be here for the second time...

of course i rugged up and then roped the kids of stapleford close into a spot of snowman making. 14 year old ashley (who is also one of my excellent history students) and i produced this monstrosity:
later i enlisted 6 year old callum to help me with this one:
though more modest in stature i feel that callum better understood the shape required of snowmen than ashley. i also like his whimsical use of sticks as hair and berries as eyes.

snow is lovely!

dragon lady

today i sought revenge on my punky year 8 girls who aggravate me beyond belief with their constant make-up applications and unbelievable 'you're not the boss of me' attitudes. it was a pastoral day at school which means normal classes are cancelled and students engage in activities which 'nourish their bodies, minds and souls'. this meant that all the year 8's had to go out onto the ovals for a 5 hour long coaching session with trainers from westham football club.

today's maximum temperature was 3 degrees. i was wearing 4 layers under my big coat and scarf and two pairs of socks. they were in their PE kits with goosepimply blue legs. whenever paige or paisley or nikki would come up to me and complain of the cold and the mud splattering their trainers i would bark at them "start running around and you'll warm up quick enough. go on! it's good for you!"

ha ha ha.

i think i'm becoming the type of teacher i never wanted to be... sigh..