Tomorrow is not enough!

Tuesday is not a good day.

With six (count them, six) periods to teach it can never be a good day.  With the last two periods of the day a double session of Media Studies with Year 9 it starts sliding down the “insupportable” scale.  And when the day starts with an examination which demands marking, it has gone off the scale of awfulness.

On the other hand tomorrow is The Day of Spanishness about which I couldn’t give a damn except that we have a day off on which to not give a damn which makes it strangely different!

Unfortunately it now feels like a Friday evening and after a free day tomorrow it will only be Thursday when I have to go back to school; and Thursday and Friday are my early starts.  Ah well, one shouldn’t be greedy.

One afternoon I have to look forward to in school is going to be taken up by a performance of a pipe band from some Scottish Academy.  One really has to weigh up the positive of not teaching a class with the horror of the sick parallel universe cacophony which constitutes the playing of the bagpipes. 

 

If I remember rightly there is an apt quotation in The Merchant of Venice about the inability of urine retention when the “bagpipe sings i’the nose”.  I think in context it is seen as inexplicably positive, but for me the negative is much nearer to the fore.  Life is far too short for it to be tarnished by any folklorique abomination which uses contained wind to whine down reedy pipes to produce travesties of music.  On the other hand, it does mean not teaching for a period

My investigation of the problem of the so-called “extra” pay at the end of the autumn term has revealed that it is only the upper echelons of the civil service who are threatened with the withdrawal of this money, not mere teachers.

The “extra” payment, as I never tire of explaining to my colleagues and anyone else who will listen, is nothing of the sort.  The way that salaries are worked out in this inexplicable country is that you have a monthly salary and then a month extra in December and June: making 14 pays.

Now even a person of mean intelligence can work out that this 14 pay rubbish is merely a ploy on the part of the employers to retain one sixth of the annual salary and pay the salary late; four months late in December and an astonishing six months late in June!

In spite of the obvious indication that the two “extra” pays are completely spurious and that the total salary over the fourteen pay-outs should be divided by twelve and paid out in normal monthly instalments people here insist on looking at these payments as “useful” because they help pay for Christmas presents in December and help defray the cost of the summer holidays.  Such thinking makes me weep with frustration at the way that stupid workers redefine managerial meanness as paternalistic thoughtfulness!

I am now in the age group where an injection against flu is now regarded as a necessary formality.  I now have so many drugs coursing around my system that I am virtually a walking pharmacy.  My very perspiration should be bottled and distributed in vials for the benefit of mankind!

If I had my wits about me I would do some purely mechanical marking.  But I simply cannot be arsed.

I declare a holiday!