Another glorious morning and I am stuck in school. In many ways I feel this situation to be illegal and its essential wrongness never fails to taint my academic days – especially Mondays; and especially Mondays when I lose part of the first available free period!
Still, every day is a day nearer to freedom and there are precious few days left in this month and we have kidded ourselves that June is such a fiddly month with trips and classes cancelled and things going on that the 30 days will pass by like a mere nothing. By such self-deluding means do we struggle towards the end of term.
Although I do my best not to admit this as a fact (so that it comes as a delightful surprise) I do know that the very end of term will be without the kids. As far as I can work out the kids will be no more from the end of the 22nd of June which is one of those strange “fun” days which make you wish for easeful death. Then, a few kid-free and role-play filled days and we depart to sun loungers long and drinks equally so, for our two months well-deserved rest!
I seem to be the only person worrying on a personal level about what next year might hold.
I seem to have been the only person to enquire about wages for next year; I am the only one thinking about timetables for next year – not the detail but at least the classes and the number of lessons to be taught; I am the only one asking about holidays – as I do not intend to waste two weeks of vacation at Christmas again this year! And so on. All the things which seem so far in the distance at present but which have the capability of making or marring the terms ahead.
The final examination system starts with the start of the new month and teaching takes second place to the demands of finding out how much or how little has actually sunk into the little heads of our charges. This is the final misery before we are finally allowed to slink off into the distance – but it is an extended misery with one or two of the notorious “meetings” which are the nearest that we come to the great Spanish tradition of the auto-da-fe where the torture becomes one of mental force rather than physical – though god knows its becomes physically demanding as well as I restrain myself from emulating Munch’s famous vision of alienation in the middle of the interminable chatter!
The arrangements are largely in place for our Chocolate Week where, from the 6th of June each member of the English Department will take it in turn to produce a chocolate confection to delight the Department and set the rest of our colleagues gnashing their collective teeth in a frenzy of chocolateless jealousy!
The arrangements are largely in place for our Chocolate Week where, from the 6th of June each member of the English Department will take it in turn to produce a chocolate confection to delight the Department and set the rest of our colleagues gnashing their collective teeth in a frenzy of chocolateless jealousy!
As soon as I buy some greaseproof paper I am good to go on the production of my recipe from The Week – British Brownies.
The Unthinkable has happened and Swansea have beaten Reading and are therefore in the Premiership next season. And Cardiff are not. One can only sympathise with Mista Kurtz and echo his cry of "The horror! The horror!"
At least I have the safety of a foreign perspective!
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