We have been told that the ideal length of time for an efficient siesta is something like 20 minutes. Not the five hours that I took.
I tell myself that if I slept for five hours then I needed five hours. Teaching takes it out of you, especially if you are teaching in a school which makes a god of examinations and all the misery associated with them. Marks have been obtained and distributed and noted. Meetings have started and will continue until we enter the period of blissful calm known as the holidays. For which thank god!
As an indication to the entity that controls the weather I have bought a replacement cushion for the sun bed (the clue is found in ‘sun’) so that the weather can catch up with my purchase. Today is another brightly dull day, the sort of day indeed which has been a feature of this disappointing winter.
I know I shouldn’t complain as the temperature in the car registered 16C even though it felt very much colder – but I want the sun, always the sun!
The slumbering siesta meant that the tasks which I had set myself to be completed this weekend have not yet been started. Some of them have been waiting for over two weeks to be completed and even I am shamed by the lack of progress. Today, as I keep telling myself, is the day.
And today it was!
The rotting carcass of the death trap of a desk has now been consigned to the street corner where it will magically disappear when the early morning pixies of disposal will do their enchantments and leave the corner grubbily empty.
In a manner whose operation has become common to me as I constantly try and fit a small town library and extensive junk shop into a very limited space, the removal of the two base units of the rejected desk has resulted in a relaxation of the other essential detritus of civilized living which has expanded to fill the area which should now be empty.
As usual also I am micro-tidying during which I find all sorts of interesting, nay, fascinating incunabula which demands my immediate and extended attention.
One practical result of this ‘tidying’ is that I have discovered a case for my camera. Not, of course, that I don’t already have a case (indeed cases) for my camera, including one specifically for the Canon camera I have which is made in leather and was purchased at an expense which I have almost managed to divert to the hidden reaches of my subconscious when I was last in Cardiff. But it’s too bulky to fit comfortably in my coat pocket.
The previous satisfactory case got lost during the photographing of the tinsel clad garden plant which was the centrepiece of my Christmas card e-mail last year. Extensive searching of our not very extensive garden has revealed no sign of the case and I have assumed, as I tend to in my darker moments, that it was purloined by a marauding feline who had come to use our garden as a toilet. Again.
So the discovery of a thinish, smallish binocular case (the binoculars having been comprehensively destroyed by small visiting relatives) which is an almost perfect fit for the camera (and does fit in my coat pocket) was an obvious bonus from the Household God of Tidying as an encouragement to Keep At It.
As you might surmise from my typing I have not Kept At It and, on the pretext of trying out the newfound case, I have come downstairs for a cup of tea. The cup of tea that makes all things well and allows, sip by sip the world to take its accustomed place in a manageable part of the universe in a system that makes sense. Or something!
I have resurrected another camera of mine which allows you to add “artistic effects” to pictures. It is great fun to use and though it gobbles up battery life the images you can get from it ‘in camera’ are encouraging. I have decided to get more of my images printed out and, if I could find a beginners course in English for Photoshop Elements I would take it. Pious resolutions one might say. And one would be most probably right. But I have always said that pious resolutions make imagination less painful, so I will comfort myself with fond anticipation right up until (at an unspecified time in the future) it doesn’t happen – and by that time I will be being pious about something else!
Meanwhile the here and the almost now is the last week of school before the holiday. This term seems to have been dragging its way along for most of my working life and, I think I express a sentiment which can be echoed by all of my colleagues, I can’t wait for it to end!
The summer term, which in absolute terms is almost as long as this interminable Alexandrine, seems in reality to be more like a jaunty iambic pentameter. Towards the end of the academic year classes become like Boojums and “softly and suddenly vanish away” and there are heavenly spaces where there used to be diabolical . . . well, you get the idea.
Five more days and then I can get book sorting and bring yet more order to what at the moment is very pleasurable chaos!
I tell myself that if I slept for five hours then I needed five hours. Teaching takes it out of you, especially if you are teaching in a school which makes a god of examinations and all the misery associated with them. Marks have been obtained and distributed and noted. Meetings have started and will continue until we enter the period of blissful calm known as the holidays. For which thank god!
As an indication to the entity that controls the weather I have bought a replacement cushion for the sun bed (the clue is found in ‘sun’) so that the weather can catch up with my purchase. Today is another brightly dull day, the sort of day indeed which has been a feature of this disappointing winter.
I know I shouldn’t complain as the temperature in the car registered 16C even though it felt very much colder – but I want the sun, always the sun!
The slumbering siesta meant that the tasks which I had set myself to be completed this weekend have not yet been started. Some of them have been waiting for over two weeks to be completed and even I am shamed by the lack of progress. Today, as I keep telling myself, is the day.
And today it was!
The rotting carcass of the death trap of a desk has now been consigned to the street corner where it will magically disappear when the early morning pixies of disposal will do their enchantments and leave the corner grubbily empty.
In a manner whose operation has become common to me as I constantly try and fit a small town library and extensive junk shop into a very limited space, the removal of the two base units of the rejected desk has resulted in a relaxation of the other essential detritus of civilized living which has expanded to fill the area which should now be empty.
As usual also I am micro-tidying during which I find all sorts of interesting, nay, fascinating incunabula which demands my immediate and extended attention.
One practical result of this ‘tidying’ is that I have discovered a case for my camera. Not, of course, that I don’t already have a case (indeed cases) for my camera, including one specifically for the Canon camera I have which is made in leather and was purchased at an expense which I have almost managed to divert to the hidden reaches of my subconscious when I was last in Cardiff. But it’s too bulky to fit comfortably in my coat pocket.
The previous satisfactory case got lost during the photographing of the tinsel clad garden plant which was the centrepiece of my Christmas card e-mail last year. Extensive searching of our not very extensive garden has revealed no sign of the case and I have assumed, as I tend to in my darker moments, that it was purloined by a marauding feline who had come to use our garden as a toilet. Again.
So the discovery of a thinish, smallish binocular case (the binoculars having been comprehensively destroyed by small visiting relatives) which is an almost perfect fit for the camera (and does fit in my coat pocket) was an obvious bonus from the Household God of Tidying as an encouragement to Keep At It.
As you might surmise from my typing I have not Kept At It and, on the pretext of trying out the newfound case, I have come downstairs for a cup of tea. The cup of tea that makes all things well and allows, sip by sip the world to take its accustomed place in a manageable part of the universe in a system that makes sense. Or something!
I have resurrected another camera of mine which allows you to add “artistic effects” to pictures. It is great fun to use and though it gobbles up battery life the images you can get from it ‘in camera’ are encouraging. I have decided to get more of my images printed out and, if I could find a beginners course in English for Photoshop Elements I would take it. Pious resolutions one might say. And one would be most probably right. But I have always said that pious resolutions make imagination less painful, so I will comfort myself with fond anticipation right up until (at an unspecified time in the future) it doesn’t happen – and by that time I will be being pious about something else!
Meanwhile the here and the almost now is the last week of school before the holiday. This term seems to have been dragging its way along for most of my working life and, I think I express a sentiment which can be echoed by all of my colleagues, I can’t wait for it to end!
The summer term, which in absolute terms is almost as long as this interminable Alexandrine, seems in reality to be more like a jaunty iambic pentameter. Towards the end of the academic year classes become like Boojums and “softly and suddenly vanish away” and there are heavenly spaces where there used to be diabolical . . . well, you get the idea.
Five more days and then I can get book sorting and bring yet more order to what at the moment is very pleasurable chaos!
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