Horror of horrors! I appear to have left my power lead for my small computer in school. In my defence I have to say that the day has been filled with hectic marking to fit into the timetable of deadlines which have to be met.
When I mentioned that the hysteria seems to have been fairly artificially manufactured by arbitrary dates for examinations placed unnaturally near to deadlines my head of department said, “Welcome to Spanish marking!” And that seemed to end the discussion!
In the way of these things, all of my finished marks are on the small computer which now has less than 13% of its power supply left in the battery. My attempts to use a selection of leads that I have acquired over the years to act as a substitute have been in vain. This may be unsurprising in a normal household, but in mine with a jealously horded selection of leads stretching back into the early history of the popular computer, it would be reasonable to assume that at least one of the bloody things would fit.
Reasonable, but wrong.
Not only do I have all the leads salvaged from myriads of electrical items which have succumbed to planned obsolescence and gone to the great silent pits of the city landfill, but I also have a selection of multi-headed gadgets which I bought believing the advertising claims that they would eliminate the need for individual power units.
These claims were of course lies so that I now have these mouldering among the serpentine mass of leads which look too useful to throw away.
Essentially, I will have to pray that I have left the lead on a staff room table and I will be able to pick it up first thing tomorrow morning and get my electrical supplies directed to my hungry gadget.
Meanwhile I have returned to my laptop and the luxury of an almost normal keyboard and the expansiveness of full sized keys.
I stayed in school until six o’clock this evening because I had all my final marking spread about me and I knew that if I moved from where I was sitting the impulse to finish would disappear with every step towards the car.
My sense of martyrdom was increased by the high powered discussion in Catalan which was conducted within painful earshot of my solitary marking purdah. I think that the suppressed desire to scream “Shut up and go you harridans!” actually gave an adrenaline boost to my marking which became ever more hysterical as the discussion pushed the volume ever higher.
The sheer bliss of their departure made the continuation of the marking almost appear to be a pleasure. The pitying glances of the cleaning ladies added to my sense of heroic martyrdom and allowed the final pages to be marked with an almost saintly detachment!
Tomorrow the final arrangements which mark the termination of the examination season will be enacted and next week we should have a rather more sane five days.
The pupils go around the 23rd of June and, if the marking had allowed me to have any other coherent thoughts, I might have speculated about what is going to fill up the time until the kids leave.
Some time ago I drafted out a series of ideas based on a school decided theme which was supposed to fill up some of the dead time at the end of the exams. This has been used today and was (as far as I was aware) supposed to fill in the academic action for the next week. I think that tomorrow I might well discover that the ‘ideas’ are exhausted and the ‘little pitchers’ of the pupils will be gaping waiting to be filled up!
As I type, boxes are waiting to be filled. One and a half bookcases have been emptied: three and a half others are waiting to have their contents packed.
There is always something!
When I mentioned that the hysteria seems to have been fairly artificially manufactured by arbitrary dates for examinations placed unnaturally near to deadlines my head of department said, “Welcome to Spanish marking!” And that seemed to end the discussion!
In the way of these things, all of my finished marks are on the small computer which now has less than 13% of its power supply left in the battery. My attempts to use a selection of leads that I have acquired over the years to act as a substitute have been in vain. This may be unsurprising in a normal household, but in mine with a jealously horded selection of leads stretching back into the early history of the popular computer, it would be reasonable to assume that at least one of the bloody things would fit.
Reasonable, but wrong.
Not only do I have all the leads salvaged from myriads of electrical items which have succumbed to planned obsolescence and gone to the great silent pits of the city landfill, but I also have a selection of multi-headed gadgets which I bought believing the advertising claims that they would eliminate the need for individual power units.
These claims were of course lies so that I now have these mouldering among the serpentine mass of leads which look too useful to throw away.
Essentially, I will have to pray that I have left the lead on a staff room table and I will be able to pick it up first thing tomorrow morning and get my electrical supplies directed to my hungry gadget.
Meanwhile I have returned to my laptop and the luxury of an almost normal keyboard and the expansiveness of full sized keys.
I stayed in school until six o’clock this evening because I had all my final marking spread about me and I knew that if I moved from where I was sitting the impulse to finish would disappear with every step towards the car.
My sense of martyrdom was increased by the high powered discussion in Catalan which was conducted within painful earshot of my solitary marking purdah. I think that the suppressed desire to scream “Shut up and go you harridans!” actually gave an adrenaline boost to my marking which became ever more hysterical as the discussion pushed the volume ever higher.
The sheer bliss of their departure made the continuation of the marking almost appear to be a pleasure. The pitying glances of the cleaning ladies added to my sense of heroic martyrdom and allowed the final pages to be marked with an almost saintly detachment!
Tomorrow the final arrangements which mark the termination of the examination season will be enacted and next week we should have a rather more sane five days.
The pupils go around the 23rd of June and, if the marking had allowed me to have any other coherent thoughts, I might have speculated about what is going to fill up the time until the kids leave.
Some time ago I drafted out a series of ideas based on a school decided theme which was supposed to fill up some of the dead time at the end of the exams. This has been used today and was (as far as I was aware) supposed to fill in the academic action for the next week. I think that tomorrow I might well discover that the ‘ideas’ are exhausted and the ‘little pitchers’ of the pupils will be gaping waiting to be filled up!
As I type, boxes are waiting to be filled. One and a half bookcases have been emptied: three and a half others are waiting to have their contents packed.
There is always something!
No comments:
Post a Comment