Half way changes

I am over February big time.   A catalogue of uncontrollable events have made life too serious and grown up for my liking.  And to make matters worse I am have less than two weeks’ left on my contract, and not a hopeful job application in sight.  I am more than ready for Cas’s All The Small Things linky this week, giving me permission to ignore it all.

Changing my mind about teaching

The autumn term was a desert for me blogging-wise.  Ditto social life, reading novels, and keeping on top of basic cleaning (which might explain how goddamn ill everyone seemed to get!).  This was because I was teaching, something I hadn’t done for over a decade, and with a vision of undergraduates turning up keyed up on their reading lists plus an impressive range of online sources, I panicked and did the only thing I could.  I over-prepared.  

Pricing up Space Hardware

As I was brushing my teeth this morning, Harry came bouncing into the bathroom.  

“Did you know the Apollo mission cost £x million?” (It could have been billion.  It was early and the question involved the use of very specific figures).

Harry’s class are doing space as their topic this term, so we have a lot of facts of this ilk.

Puddles, rockets and bubbles in the New Forest

On Sunday there was a rare break in the rain, so we legged it outside amid the usual complaints of, “A walk?  But why? What are we doing to do??”  I blame the National Trust.  If it wasn’t for their efforts to make nature interesting with trails and so forth, maybe walking for walking’s sake wouldn’t seem such a bizarre prospect to my children.  So we compromised and packed few props. 

The writing of Simon Hoggart

This week the political sketch writer Simon Hoggart died suddenly and at his peak.  This might seem like a slightly odd thing to blog about, but as I read the obituaries, it was deeply moving in terms of reliving some of the great political moment of the last few decades.  

Christmas past

Down in our village at lunchtime they were taking down the strings of coloured lights.  There were Valentines cards in Budgens.  And shops with ‘closed until February for annual leave’ signs tacked to the window.   Christmas is done and dusted, apparently, and I haven’t even got around to blogging about it.

The Magic Circle

On Sunday we indulged our love of things magical in Wiltshire.  This involved an hour and a half drive, accompanied by not a little dissent from the children, particularly when we tried to describe why we were going. 

Unblocking

Laurie Penny posted a beautiful piece this morning in The New Statesman about her father dying and how it’s affected her relationship with the written word, and this struck such a chord.  When dad died, I was writing at the time in the form of a diary of my pregnancy with Katie, which kind of inadvertently became a chronicle about the process of dying. 

Poetry and Vine on Dylan's Birthday

I’m Welsh.  It’s something I forget about most of the time, but then something reminds you that it’s a part of your soul and no matter how long you live in another country is as natural as breathing.

Talking and Speech Therapy

One half-term in, and the blogging has been one of many casualties.  Teaching this term has turned out to be unexpected in all kinds of ways.  But that’s for another day.  The first half-term in a school year always brings changes and adjustments.  So, where to start with this one …?