Monday was not a good day for me. I have a succession of difficult classes which drain all reserves of energy that have been built up over the weekend.
My classes on each day are relentlessly the same: I have five classes to teach and, apart from a Thursday, I see them all every day. The only thing that differs is the configuration that the sequence of lessons takes.
Monday is not good.
I arrived home and after a little light, domestic shopping I thought I would have a little lie down.
Tuesday came as something of a shock as I had not set my mobile phone to get me up as Monday evening had blended into Tuesday as my recumbent form snored its way into to coma that I call sleep.
I was ‘late’ getting up; though that actually means that I was five minutes earlier getting up than the usual time that I rose at the same time last year. If you see what I mean.
Also, in spite of my tardy joining of the band of the damned, or morning workers as we are known, I seemed to be ready to leave the house at the same time as I normally do. There is something about the flexibility of time on a dark morning which I do not feel that Einstein covered adequately in either of his explanations of Relativity.
Marking and further examinations have now reached a sort of orgiastic frenzy with teachers meandering around the buildings like superannuated corybantic acolytes to the Dark God of the Multi-Choice Answser!
Tomorrow and tomorrow bring yet more marking as further examination papers are relentlessly issued to punch-drunk students.
The only bright spot is that we are approaching White Week. This is not some form of Roman religious mumbo-jumbo where those rather disturbing KKK-like figures wander round wreathed in incense and holding flaming black candles, but rather Ski Week.
Many of the families of our kids actually own places in the mountains near the ski runs so that they can pack the car and disappear for a jaunt to the slopes whenever they like. The tradition is, however, that the school organizes a week for the kids to go en mass to the hills.
Having inherited my grandmother’s fear of sliding, I regard skiing as little short of cold lunacy. I am however delighted that so many of our charges seem determined to court death and injury in the glistening slopes of enticing ice.
With an eagerness that is purely professional I am wondering about the composition of some of my classes. The equation is simple: students on the slopes = students not in classes.
I know that some teachers will accompany our students and that means that classes will be bereft of their normal staff. Our school does not consider that an extended absence known in advance means that they should consider getting a supply teacher to do the work of those colleagues who are not there. Why indeed should they when they can look around and see colleagues still in school?
I am putting my trust in those kids who are not going skiing (and there are some) berating their parents to take them on holiday somewhere else as their classmates will be having the time of their lives in hospitals around the skiing area.
I was not in this school at this time last year so this particular period of upheaval is terra incognita to me. But I foresee much of the “this is the time to Get Things Done” jolliness which will eat away at any spare time that we might reasonably expect.
I put my perennial (or should that be habitual) moroseness down to the unsettled weather we are having at the moment. We have had much more rain than we should have had and we have even had mosquitoes flying around in the house.
That, at least, is according to Toni who has a quite reasonable paranoia about the things as they make a bee-line (that can’t be the right word) for him and drink his Catalan blood while generally spurning my pure bred British vintage. This, as they say, is fine by me. But I do question the justice of having the bloody (accurate use of adjective) things flying around in January. Surely they all ought to be dead of the cold, or at least flying with a vitiated languor which should make them easy targets for the mammals on which they feed.
This weekend I shall start looking to replenish my stocks of electronic wizardry and chemical poison to deter these foreign females (only the females sting) from our humble abode.
Begone! I say.
My classes on each day are relentlessly the same: I have five classes to teach and, apart from a Thursday, I see them all every day. The only thing that differs is the configuration that the sequence of lessons takes.
Monday is not good.
I arrived home and after a little light, domestic shopping I thought I would have a little lie down.
Tuesday came as something of a shock as I had not set my mobile phone to get me up as Monday evening had blended into Tuesday as my recumbent form snored its way into to coma that I call sleep.
I was ‘late’ getting up; though that actually means that I was five minutes earlier getting up than the usual time that I rose at the same time last year. If you see what I mean.
Also, in spite of my tardy joining of the band of the damned, or morning workers as we are known, I seemed to be ready to leave the house at the same time as I normally do. There is something about the flexibility of time on a dark morning which I do not feel that Einstein covered adequately in either of his explanations of Relativity.
Marking and further examinations have now reached a sort of orgiastic frenzy with teachers meandering around the buildings like superannuated corybantic acolytes to the Dark God of the Multi-Choice Answser!
Tomorrow and tomorrow bring yet more marking as further examination papers are relentlessly issued to punch-drunk students.
The only bright spot is that we are approaching White Week. This is not some form of Roman religious mumbo-jumbo where those rather disturbing KKK-like figures wander round wreathed in incense and holding flaming black candles, but rather Ski Week.
Many of the families of our kids actually own places in the mountains near the ski runs so that they can pack the car and disappear for a jaunt to the slopes whenever they like. The tradition is, however, that the school organizes a week for the kids to go en mass to the hills.
Having inherited my grandmother’s fear of sliding, I regard skiing as little short of cold lunacy. I am however delighted that so many of our charges seem determined to court death and injury in the glistening slopes of enticing ice.
With an eagerness that is purely professional I am wondering about the composition of some of my classes. The equation is simple: students on the slopes = students not in classes.
I know that some teachers will accompany our students and that means that classes will be bereft of their normal staff. Our school does not consider that an extended absence known in advance means that they should consider getting a supply teacher to do the work of those colleagues who are not there. Why indeed should they when they can look around and see colleagues still in school?
I am putting my trust in those kids who are not going skiing (and there are some) berating their parents to take them on holiday somewhere else as their classmates will be having the time of their lives in hospitals around the skiing area.
I was not in this school at this time last year so this particular period of upheaval is terra incognita to me. But I foresee much of the “this is the time to Get Things Done” jolliness which will eat away at any spare time that we might reasonably expect.
I put my perennial (or should that be habitual) moroseness down to the unsettled weather we are having at the moment. We have had much more rain than we should have had and we have even had mosquitoes flying around in the house.
That, at least, is according to Toni who has a quite reasonable paranoia about the things as they make a bee-line (that can’t be the right word) for him and drink his Catalan blood while generally spurning my pure bred British vintage. This, as they say, is fine by me. But I do question the justice of having the bloody (accurate use of adjective) things flying around in January. Surely they all ought to be dead of the cold, or at least flying with a vitiated languor which should make them easy targets for the mammals on which they feed.
This weekend I shall start looking to replenish my stocks of electronic wizardry and chemical poison to deter these foreign females (only the females sting) from our humble abode.
Begone! I say.
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