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A refugee from basketball, I have ascended two floors to escape the inane jumping of freaks and taken refuge in the more soothing exertions of intellectual exercise, reading through my OU materials on nineteenth century Manchester in the company of Engels, Faucher and the notable Irish Chartist, Ross.  I have availed myself of the full range of methods the OU uses including text book, CD, DVD and website and am just about to start on a re-reading of Hard Times, which is our set book for this part of the course.

As I failed to find the prescribed edition of Hard Times when I was in Britain, I have decided to buy a copy for the Kindle.  There are two problems associated with this purchase.  The first is that I will not be able to make page references when I quote – and that is something that the OU is very strict about.  I only hope that they will accept a location because that is the only thing that I can see which identifies the actual page.  I am sure that there is a way of finding the page for the paper edition but I don’t know how to get it.  The second problem is that I cannot find a way to get the computer to print out all the highlighted passages that I have identified.  It gives me a list but only of the first few words.  This is something that I will have to work on with the able help of YouTube.

Tomorrow is the first day of Chocolate Week.  So far it has been fairly subdued – mainly because I am laying low on a fairly constant basis when I am in school and flitting between buildings in a way that can only be described as fundamentally deceptive.  That means that my dynamic character is not there to egg on the participants to more and more chocolaty excesses.  But, I remain confident that we will have a truly calorie filled week ahead.

My reading of Game of Thrones by George R R Martin has now taken me through four hefty volumes and the saga looks nowhere near complete.  In his oeuvre the baddies are by far the most interesting characters and when they are not being manipulative and duplicitous the narrative slows to a shuddering halt.  He shares with his other R R counterpart the delight in creating generations of characters with (for him) fascinating back stories and never stops himself from filling pages with lengthy descriptions of genealogy, giving loving space to the detailing of heraldic devices and always giving characters their full knightly names.

When there is action Martin is worth reading, but his longueurs can be mind numbingly self-indulgent.

All that having been said, I have bought the next volume in the series because too many of the baddies are still alive and they did not play too significant a part in the concluding part of the last volume.  And he has written the next too, but I think I might well have reached saturation point by the end of this one.  And anyway they are all on the Kindle so they do not take up any further shelf space.  And that is something!

Toni is now well into his course and is constantly “doing things” on his computer which are all counting towards his first assessment.  Mine is next month when the long essay on Hard Times will have to be handed in and then the month after is the exam and the month after that the next course starts which will take me up to October when the next is due to kick off.  It’s a full life in the OU, you never have a problem about what to do with any spare time that comes to hand.

All this self, self, self stuff is partially mitigated by the fact that we have made an executive decision to become more ecological.  At least as far as rubbish is concerned.

Having seen a rather fine multi-compartment bin in one of the supermarkets and purchased it our throwing away of stuff has become fraught with discussion and debate.  Toni has printed out, and I have plasticised, a whole series of mini-posters which should give us definitive information about what to put where.  Unfortunately it is no exhaustive and we are constantly wandering about with a woeful expression and a small piece of detritus trying to find a suitably coloured receptacle to receive it.  Some of our “discussions” have reached 3.7 on the IKEA Furniture Building Scale of Argument but they have calmed down now that we have instituted another bin simply for “rubbish” – which is where we place all the questionable items now.  Harmony is restored.

In my bones I feel that the school is planning one of their infamous “Meetings” – I put the word in inverted commas because it bears no relationship to any even with that designation to which I have been previously subjected.  And they last such a ridiculously long time too that I sometimes find myself thinking back with a certain degree of longing to the Curriculum Meetings of yore when the only thing that kept some of my colleagues going was watching me to see if this was going to be the meeting in which I finally broke down and wept with sheer horror at what man could inflict on man!

I have to keep reminding myself that I am in the School on the Hill by mine own choice (you can see the effect that Game of Thrones is having on my writing style) and I can walk away at any moment.  Though I also have to admit that would be a positively caddish thing to do.  Think of the children as that character in The Simpsons keeps calling.

The most important new thing that I have discovered today has been how to print out highlights from Kindle eBooks.  As usual, YouTube was invaluable in pointing me in what appears to be the right direction.  It turns out that there is a web site called Kindle.Amazon.com where all your highlights are stored in the Cloud and from which it appears possible to copy and paste and have printed out all the hard work that goes into reading and annotating a book.  Disconcertingly, I have already done this on another edition of Hard Times, but that one does not seem to make it into the airy reaches of stored material.  I will have to investigate further to see if those highlights and notes can be rescued somehow.

In some sort of magical way all of my computing devices should be linked up so that I can get to anything on one by using another.  This is not quite working yet, but I am sure that it will eventually yield even to my inept keystrokes!

So much is technical and things happen at an electrical rate which is both exciting and totally disconcerting.

But I am attempting to ride the wave and I do, after all, have grandiose and expensive gear with which to do it!

Chocolate Week Approaches!

I am not sure that my first attempt at so-called “home-made” chocolates has been a total success.  But I am sure that my colleagues will devour them during next week’s Third Annual Chocolate Week.

My first use of the chocolate moulds did produce professional looking delicacies – even down to the white chocolate drizzling; though I am yet to eat one of them.  The chocolates looked good, they fulfilled my contribution to Chocolate Week, they were fine.  I should have left it there, with my work done – but that is not in my nature.

With all the arrogance that comes with an almost complete lack of experience and having something of a success under my belt, I of course, decided to do more.

YouTube is an evil organization.  It gives you an easy incentive to click on some video or other and then take inspiration from the seductive advice offered there to parachute yourself into situations where you need the maker of the video on hand to help you through the inevitable difficult moments.

The first video I watched was of some implacable German matron urging her viewers to attempt liqueur chocolates.  From the very first instruction, which was to make your own wooden tray to fit in the oven, I felt that this form of chocolate delight was not going to be for me.  The fact that you also had to construct your own moulds and wait for days for the bloody things to work also made me disinclined to follow this particular teacher.

The next video seemed much more to my taste and much more immediate.  I therefore decided to follow the advice of a more homely American lady and make chocolate creams.

Finding the ingredients in the supermarket was not as easy as the advice from the video but, with Toni resentfully following at my heels, the raw materials were eventually purchased.

The amounts of each ingredient were given in American with cups and ounces but were deliberately (I can only assume) vague.  I used the same free approach when it came to making the filling for my chocolates and found myself adding an inordinate amount of sugar to try and get the dough-like consistency that was effortlessly achieved by the lady in the video.  This did not happen.

You can imagine the scene with me scooping out a wodge of gooey condensed sweetened milk, icing sugar and melted butter and trying to wrap it round a disconcertingly green cherry.  The mixture stuck to anything it touched and my final “sweets” were craggy, shapeless chunks of pure calories.  Dipping them in dark chocolate softened some of the sharp edges but they remain intimidatingly massive and solid.  There are, however some of the smaller chocolates with only a nut pressed into the mould which look far less intimidating to eat.  I think that I should make more of the smaller ones as they look much more professional and indeed edible!

I have been very remiss with my writing, but I shall leave my thoughts on Les Contes de Hoffmann – my last opera, to another day.

So it goes!

I know that you will not be surprised to read that I am typing this while a dozen hapless pupils worry their way through yet another examination.  Not surprised, certainly – but shocked beyond measure at the sheer unprofessionalism of my typing while an exam is taking place – even if I can touch type. 

After a Herculean effort over the weekend I am at least examination script free to start the week and even more fortunately I have a “free” period after this class so that I can start the process of working my way through the paper I will have to mark.  Before the next set looms ahead of me.  As it will in a few days time.  Again.

However, I am determined to use the examinations to force me to work on the next tutor marked assignment and at least get a rough draft completed by the end of the week.

I am going to choose the Creative Writing option and have decided to write some form of sonnet as my finished piece of work and I will have to rely on my persuasiveness to make whatever I produce sound convincing in the reflective piece which follows it!

I vividly remember an economics essay that I wrote in school during the A Level course, which was so badly done, that the teacher took the step of going through the essay with each of us individually.  When it came to my turn, my glib justifications for what I had and hadn’t written were so convincing that he actually changed the grade!  A rare success in that benighted subject!  Thank god we also did an economic history paper – my salvation in the drear world of graphs and eventually diminishing returns in the other!

It had obviously rained earlier this morning or last night, but the day has turned into one of sunshine though with a blustery element which, as it is not raining is fine by me.

The Pauls, fired by my descriptions of days without rain, have suggested appearing some time over the Easter holidays.  Paul 1 will have had his Inspection by then and will be looking for some way to relieve the tension.  Again.  As I am quite sure that the memory will be washed away in copious amounts of alcohol immediately after the event!  But here we might even have that most precious of experiences so lacking in my native land, sunshine.  And that, as all know, is the true balm for troubled minds!

Days have passed again and sheer exhaustion has triumphed over intellectual effort.  But at least I have an annotated draft of the “sonnet” that I propose to submit as part of my next tutor marked assignment.  I have asked a couple of colleagues to read through and I have adopted one or two changes that they suggested!

I have now read through the details of the assignment and have to look through the course book that we are using and find justifications for the process that I went through to produce this piece!  Possibly the wrong way round, but it works for me!

This is one of my “long” days when I actually have to be here when the morass of parentage splurges towards their offspring and grasps them warmly to the parental bosom.  To do this they obviously need to double and triple park so that at the end of the day I am hemmed in by many cars in many configurations.  I am told that trying to get away from the School on the Hill at the time we chuck out the kids is good for the soul – I have yet to reach this state of Zen bliss!

I did managed to drag my weary body to the pool for a swim and almost slept my way through my mandatory twenty minutes.  The theory is that one sort of tiredness cancels out the other; so schoolwork depredations are ameliorated by physical exertion.  The theory is good, but the practical application in my case is not always foolproof.

The pseudo-sonnet is now written and I have to find explanations for the process by which it was created.  As I analyse the “poem” more, using my critic-type hat rather than my creative one, I am truly amazed by the complexity of my thought!  To be absolutely fair I think that this has more to do with the way my critical mind works, sniffing about for all sorts of unlikely links and profundities rather than for the purity of intellectual endeavour that produced the “poem” in the first place.

The next few days will see me delving into the course books to find the OU justification for what I have done – such is the world of academia!

My next course, starting in May, is now sorted out and I have bowed to the inevitable and decided to do the Foundation course in the Arts so that my future degree can be entitled “Humanities with Art History” – this means that next year I will be doing the 60 credit AA100 and that will take me to the next stage when I will be doing courses which are designed to stretch me more and which are more clearly directed towards Art.  So that is the next six years sorted!  I imagine that after a while the OU becomes a way of life!

Toni’s course has now “started” with a series of orientation exercises using the Internet.  So, from the middle of next month we will both be studying.  I should imagine that the desk on The Third Floor is going to be the scene of some fraught exchanges as our endeavours intermingle!

But now a new day.  A short period of reflection for my first class and then planning the rest of my time to ensure that I manage to get the extra out-of-school tasks done!

And it’s one of my “short days” so not everything is bad with the world!

What else is there but marking?

A paraphrase of Henry Reed’s most famous line came back to me today when the pile of marking seemed to threaten to overwhelm, “Today, today we have marking of scripts”.

I have just looked it up to re-read “Naming of Parts” and as an added bonus for my interest discovered a recording of Dylan Thomas reciting the poem.  His attempted common accent for the gun demonstrator emphasised the fragility of his own and his wayward emphasis added to the comedy of the piece.  It is surely one of the best poems to come out of World War II and, while I can stumble my way through many poems from World War I, “Naming of Parts” is the only one of the later war that sticks in my memory with complete lines resounding there.

At least the marking is done; only the irritation of transferring the marks to the computer is left to do and then probably putting those marks somewhere else as a stage in the pointlessly endless pilgrimage of assessment leaving behind a litter of numerical offerings like votive candles at various electronic shrines (and having just about the same effectiveness) that the School on the Hill regards as

course, while I am preparing for my second tutor marked assignment.  As this one is creative writing it should play to my strength while my two efforts as a result of the Internet tutorial are now receiving comments from the rest of the tutor group

Ah well, count the months; this all must have a stop – and the week before the end of June is when I bow to my final juvenile audience!

At the end of this month Toni starts his “orientation” for his IT and I will have sent off my next assignment.

And tomorrow the rest of my classes sit yet more examinations.

And it’s a full day!  Just one damn thing after another!