Tea's the word!

A cold start, but it has brightened up considerably and the sun is now shining satisfactorily – if frustratingly - as I am inside and the sunshine is, at it were, outside.

There was a moment of pure horror at break time when I was informed, in an insultingly casual way, that I was “down” to work with a 2ESO class last period today.  A class, I might add, that I do not teach.  As this is a “short” day you can appreciate my concern!  Luckily, with a straightforwardness that is totally refreshing, the head of department told me to ignore it.  That is the sort of authoritative advice that I like to hear!

I did nothing about The Essay last night, but I did have a siesta before dinner and I think that was more beneficial.  However, I have decided that enough is enough and today is the day when The Essay is going to be sorted out and sent off - with any luck.  I can then concentrate on revision for the exam, which is now beginning to loom large in my imagination - and in the calendar!

There are now seven teaching days left until the end of term and just to make that ending a little more exciting, the school has arranged meetings after school for three of the five last days of term!  A 60% misery rating!  And as each meeting is going to be a minimum of two hours long, that is equivalent to an extra day’s teaching.  In the last week.  Such timing!  Such consideration! 

This is going to be a real test of my disengaged way of operating in the school, because my lack of presence will be thoroughly noted in these meetings.  Whatever happens, I am sure that I can get out of one meeting and of the other two I can fail to go to the first before anyone has time to work out what I should be doing!

My problem is one that is self-imposed.  Some of the meetings that I have cut have had, buried deep within the tedium and irrelevance of the greater part of their length, one or two reasonably interesting points.  One of these pieces of information was how to enter results on the new electronic platform.

I have just asked one of my colleagues how to do this and he started asking questions to which all the answers where in the negative from me and this caused him to shake his head in a way which brought the phrase “weary resignation” to mind, and his further statement that “it would take hours” has made me decide to submit a list and hope for the best.  I cannot be doing with a complex way of doing something which should be simple, especially as this is going to be one of the only two times that I will have to face The System!

I have now managed to penetrate the system (small letters) in an attempt to get to The System (large letters) but have failed miserably.  Well, I tried and now I am more than prepared to give up.  As I said previously, I am more than prepared to fabricate some sort of list but really, without some sort of password that I assuredly have not been sent – what can I do?

Now on to more important things. 

I have come to the end of my tether with the caffeine-free tea bags that I have been ostentatiously using.  They are, I have finally had to admit, relatively tasteless.  I am going back to full strength and buying some decent tea caddies for school as well to celebrate my return to the full-strength fold.

I have been trying and failing to get DIY tea bags.  The sort I want are the herbal ones – little muslin bags with a tie-string so that I can put my own mixture in each.  I think that would be the high point of pretention in my school, so it has to be done!

A quick visit to the most expensive tea shop in the world here in Castelldefels and I now have 100 self-fill, empty tea bags.  They are not the ones I really want, but these are the ones that are readily available so they will have to do.  I have put a pinch of each of my three loose teas in each one so that I now have custom made tea bags.  As I am ever prone to WASP denial and delayed gratification I am prepared to wait until tomorrow morning in school before I try them out.

Crac or Crack or whatever it is called (the Catalan equivalent of the ubiquitous Chinese shop) provided me with two hinged lid tins so with Ty-Phoo tea bags and my homemade variety I am now fully prepared to face my long and short days in school knowing that I can be fortified by conspicuous caffeine concoctions!

And it’s almost the weekend and the last week of term!