a homage to the last minute on dit editorial..

i have managed to survive a term at great baddow. quite a feat i think..

the term in review:

• 59 teaching days
• 1 totally hungover teaching day (never to be repeated)
• 96 history lessons taught
  
• 291 names of students learnt
• 9 OMR sheets completed
• 1 time the head has assumed i'm a 6th former (who can wear civvies)
• 35 incident report sheets filled in
• 4 physical fights broken up by inserting myself into the middle
• 2 secret grudges held against other teachers
• 7 times i've been told that i am hated and despised (by the same student)
• 1 student who i've inspired (for want of a better word) to become a history teacher (it's true! her mother told me at parents night.. it made my heart jump up and down and i couldn't stop grinning)
• 3 students who have cried in my presence
• 2 times students have made me cry in the toilets after last bell
• 12 friday night pints at the pub bitching with the other teachers
• 1 lovely letter from parents commending me on the job i'm doing
• 1 exceptionally critical letter from parents complaining about the job i'm doing
• 5 girls and 1 guy in office with extreme crushes on mike paradowski

but i got through it all and now i'm on school holidays! tomorrow i head off to berlin and krakow for two weeks. my plans include:

• sleeping late
• eating my way through a lengthy list of recommendations (thanks to matt, ali, zorg and kate)
• tracking down matiàs - the handsomest man in the world. japan friends will remember him from the a-bar, drunken doctors, kissing in the rain etc... all i have to go on is a fuzzy photograph and the fact that he works as a doctor in berlin. or did approximately 3 years ago. wish me luck!
• trying to make big life decisions involving what i should do after summer term

and i'm sure i'll find plenty of other activities to fill up my days. i'll try to update on my travels but it will depend i suppose on how long i spend in dark bars and cafes pondering life, love and trying to look mysterious...

the real excitement is playing the game

a new series of my very favourite television show the apprentice has started here. england however has its own version of the show so my favourite partThe Donis not part of this one. the big kahuna on the british version is sir alan sugar. he pulls of the straight-talking, no nonsense boss character well enough... but he just doesn't have the humour or the hair of donald. but despite sugar's lackings, the british know how to make good reality tv and the show as a whole is still classic. there is the usual mix of obnoxious and incompetent contestants and one who made a totally shameless attempt to name his team the name of his real life business! brilliant. AND there is an after show on bbc2 where a comedian and a panel of 'experts' analyse the episode and interview the person who was fired. and everyone knows that over-analysis of reality tv is the best part.

the sun is out, the tv is good, school holidays start tomorrow and i'm high onrhodiola- my new herbal mood enhancer of choice...

losing sleep

i'm not usually one to rejoice in the loss of an hour sleep around daylight savings time.. but i was very much looking forward to putting the clocks forward last weekend...

on sunday i celebrated this abundance of daytime with penny and bonnie by descending the stairs into a dark and cavernous (literally!) wine bar named gordon's. gordon's is the oldest wine bar in london and is wonderfully pretentious and grungy at the same time. it's situated below street level in old cellars hacked into the rocks where water drips down the sides of the walls.. there are candles shoved into old wine bottles and everyone is drinking red wine and gorging on baguettes and big hunks of cheese. it is right up my alley..

when we emerged again into the daylight we headed off to the hogarth exhibition at the tate britain. we were quite tipsy which actually worked quite well as hogarth liked to enthusiastically illustrate the less glamorous aspects of drunkenness, sex and human morality in his work..

my new favourite game to play with my workmates is to try and work out what historical figures would be doing had they been born in modern times. we decided today that hogarth would probably be hosting a jerry springer type show as interested as he was with the underbelly of society... what a bunch of history nerds...

zoe and i also discovered a delicious dumpling house in chinatown so that combined with coming home from work while it's still light means that life in england is looking up!
a weary looking woman wraps up the dumplings in the window. i've always stopped and watched her whenever i walked past.. she is even quicker at it that my mum!

comedy gold..

i can't stop laughing at a students work i read this morning. they were writing a diary entry as if they were living through the siege of leningrad where food was scarce and things were pretty grim for 3 years while the nazis surrounded and bombed the place non-stop.

anyway. thanks emma b for this gem:

"old boris died this morning. he was exiting his excrement and he fell into the pit. we covered him over with sewage even though we were very temped to eat him."

man, that kills me...

the most depressing office in the world..

today i am feeling glum as my handsome student teacher rob is finishing his placement. as all the other teachers have their own classrooms, he was the only person that kept me company in the MOST DEPRESSING OFFICE IN THE WORLD. here it is:
(the slightly perplexed look on my face is because i have just been told that the year 7's will have exams next week, which i didn't know and both of my year 7 classes are completely unprepared for. such is the nature of the communication lines at this school)

how awful is this office?!?! and yes, i am working at a student desk with a 14 year old size chair. it is here i plan my lessons, eat my school dinners, do most of my text messaging home and dispair over the state of british youth culture. those disorganised boxes of geography worksheets piled on the cabinets behind me torment me every morning as i come into work.. and the part that you can't see is even worse. steve the head of humanities is the most humongous hoarder you have ever met in your life. and you all know what i think of hoarding.. sometimes i go over to his desk, pick something up and throw it in the enormous bins downstairs just because i know he will never notice.. it makes me feel a little bit better..

anyway, i am sad to see rob go. he is being replaced by the impossibly smarmy liam who i will be 'mentoring' in 5 different classes. i am the biggest fraud in the world.

and are you impressed with the piles of weekend marking i have to do? i need to mark all those orange books, leaving grades and helpful comments that students will probably never read. jealous? this europe thing isn't all charming accents, stately homes and inter-continental travel....

keep on taking the first turning to the right

sunday was a gloriously sunshiney day which was the perfect antidote to the 'missing adelaide blues' i was suffering as a direct result of all the text messages i was getting from people enjoying themselves at womad.. so i took full advantage of the 'warm' weather and took 3 trains and 2 tubes to hampton court palace southwest of london.. hampton court was used as a royal residence by our favourite king, henry VIII and many others after him. it is a spectacular building with even more spectacular gardens with box hedges to die for dad.
unfortunately there is no photography allowed in the building which is why you are not now looking at a picture of me recreating the ghost of catherine howard (henry's 5th wife) running down the long gallery hallway screaming (which has apparently been seen a number of times).

unfortunately i spent a little too long exploring the massive tudor kitchens and talking to their 'experimental food historian' (DREAM JOB X 100!!) and didn't get to spend enough time in the garden and totally missed the hedge maze.. so it has only been half crossed off The List. i will return!
(check out that angkor wat-esque reflection in the pond. took me at least 5 minutes to work out what all the japanese tourists were setting up their tripods for and when i worked it out i thought i better snap one too)

turning the tables

saturday night and i'm home marking year 7 history essays on the battle of hastings (why did william win?). matt, the loudmouth in the back row, has finished his essay off with a flourish:

"i leave you now with a question, how do you feel about william becoming king? i want you to answer this and write an essay back saying your own thoughts".

ha ha ha. cheeky little punk. i sort of admire his style. i bet irwin would have approved (reference to what penny and i got up tolast saturday night)

nostalgia

when i was a little girl i had a picture book called new blue shoes. i loved that book. it was about a girl who had always had dreary black or brown shoes. one day her mother took her to the shoe shop and bought her a lovely pair of new blue shoes. such a nice story and whenever i think of it i am reminded of the time my mum finally agreed to buy me a pair of 'bubblegummers' at the stirling clarks shoe shop. anyway.

on the weekend i bought myself a pair of shoes that are the *exact* same shade of blue as the pair in new blue shoes. they make my heart feel good.
eighties stylin!

all grown up

things that make me feel grown up:

wearing pointy toed shoes
owning property
ordering *bottles* of wine in restaurants
not buying the cheapest shampoo in the supermarket
BEING A FULLY FLEDGED MEMBER OF AN ART GALLERY
thanks muchly to penny and bonnie who arranged this for my birthday. it arrived in the post this morning and i may or may not have squealed and danced around the lobby of my apartment block in a very un-grown up manner. let the art wankerism begin!!