Two young children: yes. Two young children with their young friends: no! I grace fully bowed out of a barbecue with enticing food but over-the-quota children.
Children can only communicate by shouting. In Spain they can only communicate by shouting at the same time. I am prepared to put up with this in my professional life, but not in my free time.
I spent an intellectually demanding day lounging about on the Third Floor raiding the fridge and listening to Radio 4 on my wireless headphones. I also used my time to debate whether I had the energy to go for a swim. I did change into my new bathing costume, but that was as far as my exercise went. There is always tomorrow after a day at school whose format is something which I am dreading.
Time with the students is running out. One and a half days to be precise. The half day is largely given over to a fiesta where the pupils staff a series stalls. Last year I managed to avoid all of this by supporting a colleague who was showing a series of plays to parents who felt that they had the right to barge in to a performance irrespective of the stated starting times. Trying to keep the door closed to allow the pupils to perform to the best of their ability on the stage without interruptions was a losing battle.
But first the empty waste of a day without notion of what it should be doing. We are one colleague down and in a school that refuses to bring in supply this has a very real consequence. Another colleague is getting married and who knows somebody might be ill. That is a recipe for absolute chaos.
At the moment I have very little idea of what my timetable is going to be next year. Timetables will not be issued until the first day of term next year if we are lucky. Still, this is how it has always been so there is no point in worrying about what might be when there is no possibility of it happening.
I am adding to my list of Tasks for the summer (which is growing exponentially) the monumental one of sorting out the power leads. This is not so much a task as an aspiration. I don’t see why I should succeed at this when everyone else in the world (with the possible exception of Andrew) has a box or some sort of container which houses a writhing mass of electrical power sources. My particular box is made of transparent plastic and its appearance is like one of those displays in museums which show you cross sections through a particularly eventful geological stratum containing twisting fossils. I think that I will need the patience of a geologist just to separate each individual entity as I try and remove it from its compressed surroundings. I have already prepared a series of labels which I hope to attach to each lead and then match it to its raison d’être (camera, iPod, eBook, headphones, printer, computer, Nintendo, handheld, etc) in a IKEA CD tower to contain the bits and pieces. In theory it is a workable solution which will lessen tension when the power on something runs out. Who knows how it will work in practice.
Meanwhile bed beckons.
Children can only communicate by shouting. In Spain they can only communicate by shouting at the same time. I am prepared to put up with this in my professional life, but not in my free time.
I spent an intellectually demanding day lounging about on the Third Floor raiding the fridge and listening to Radio 4 on my wireless headphones. I also used my time to debate whether I had the energy to go for a swim. I did change into my new bathing costume, but that was as far as my exercise went. There is always tomorrow after a day at school whose format is something which I am dreading.
Time with the students is running out. One and a half days to be precise. The half day is largely given over to a fiesta where the pupils staff a series stalls. Last year I managed to avoid all of this by supporting a colleague who was showing a series of plays to parents who felt that they had the right to barge in to a performance irrespective of the stated starting times. Trying to keep the door closed to allow the pupils to perform to the best of their ability on the stage without interruptions was a losing battle.
But first the empty waste of a day without notion of what it should be doing. We are one colleague down and in a school that refuses to bring in supply this has a very real consequence. Another colleague is getting married and who knows somebody might be ill. That is a recipe for absolute chaos.
At the moment I have very little idea of what my timetable is going to be next year. Timetables will not be issued until the first day of term next year if we are lucky. Still, this is how it has always been so there is no point in worrying about what might be when there is no possibility of it happening.
I am adding to my list of Tasks for the summer (which is growing exponentially) the monumental one of sorting out the power leads. This is not so much a task as an aspiration. I don’t see why I should succeed at this when everyone else in the world (with the possible exception of Andrew) has a box or some sort of container which houses a writhing mass of electrical power sources. My particular box is made of transparent plastic and its appearance is like one of those displays in museums which show you cross sections through a particularly eventful geological stratum containing twisting fossils. I think that I will need the patience of a geologist just to separate each individual entity as I try and remove it from its compressed surroundings. I have already prepared a series of labels which I hope to attach to each lead and then match it to its raison d’être (camera, iPod, eBook, headphones, printer, computer, Nintendo, handheld, etc) in a IKEA CD tower to contain the bits and pieces. In theory it is a workable solution which will lessen tension when the power on something runs out. Who knows how it will work in practice.
Meanwhile bed beckons.
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