So far June has been a woefully inadequate month in terms of the weather.
Today, for example is muggy, brightly sullen and depressing. And I have lost a free period. On the bright side (so far) I have gained two (2) periods this afternoon when I should be taking the 3ESO through the long slog of a double period of Media Studies. It won’t last of course, but I will enjoy the thought of a free afternoon even if the reality is ever-so-slightly different.
As we inch our way to a double figure date in June a kind of febrile excitement has taken over the staff and people are eager to share their calculations about how much longer we have to serve - I like the double meaning of “serve” standing for duty and a prison sentence!
Unadjusted figures would seem to suggest that we have 23 more days – but that does not allow for weekends, so in fact we have 17 days left. But wait, we also have a holiday on the 13th of June so that brings it down to 16 teaching days left.
We can massage those figures further. The end of the course for the kids is on the 22nd of June so actual teaching days go down to 10! And, as the 22nd is a day of fiesta we can bring it down to 9. I love statistics!
The days without the kids are usually half days so the 7 days that I have got rid of to get the 9 teaching days can be further reduced to 3.5, so adding the 9 to 3.5 we get a total of 12.5 days left in school. Much more manageable than 23!
I have no intention of counting the days of the holiday because I do not wish to limit the idea of freedom that they give.
Day Two of Chocolate Week was almost a disaster as the colleague whose duty it was to bring in the confectionary delights today almost left them at home. She actually got outside the door without them before some primordial jolt of self-preservation prompted her to return and get the goodies! I can see that future Chocolate Weeks will have to incorporate a fail-safe Plan C (for Chocolate of course) to ensure that if all else collapses there is enough of the Dark Stuff hidden away to satisfy anticipatory demands!
The first of the “Meetings” in our school is next Tuesday. It will start at 3.00 pm and the scheduled end is 6.15 pm. No-one apart from myself howls to the moon in horror at this meaningless squandering of time and resources.
Even the Good Friday service is only 3 hours long and, well, fill in your own explanation of the time The Son of God took to die and say his Words from the Cross and compare it with our particularly pointless form of administrative crucifixion.
Perhaps it would be more interesting if the proceedings in our particular hell were spoken in Aramaic; they would be just as comprehensible to me.
Let’s face it in EVERY meeting I have attended in this school I have felt like echoing the words “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani,” and just as for Him, no one answers and nothing happens and we just plough on to the bitter, bitter end!
Writing the former paragraph has obviously angered the gods, so I have now lost one of the frees this afternoon. I am typing this invigilating a maths and Latin examination. For one delirious moment it crossed my mind that the kids would have to work out problems using Roman numerals but, as is so often the case, it is nothing like as interesting as that.
The Latin text concerns Scipio (famous in Rome for his exploits) and the Senate debating the peace with the Carthaginians. In case you think that this is a credit to the single year of Latin that I did in school, that description was translated from the Spanish, and even then I had to look up “hazañas” (exploits – that was my choice rather than the given “hazards” or “feats”). And talking of precision, I am not sure that I like that full stop lurking in front of a bracket. But, so it goes!
As if to make my misery complete, it has started raining!
June indeed!
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