So I got accidentally distracted by the joy of getting my glasses back. I made the impulsive move to drive home and take my contacts out, and then I started sorting the laundry and reading my mail, and before I knew it it was an hour gone and so I decided I best come back to school.
It's so good knowing I don't have to teach until period 5, excellent :) It means I can usefully spend some time beginning my Book of Knowledge - I've done the entry for Mongolian Tents :)
Before I begin the ramble on our WWOOF weekend, I thought I'd mention that I had an excellent observation with my "special" Y7s yesterday, which was just so good to hear because my teaching has been a bit up and down this year compared to last year, but it's great to hear I'm back to being ranked a 1 for "outstanding" as opposed to a "3" for satisfactory. It's so strange how we have the mentality that satisfactory means not good enough. On a downer though, lesson one today was a write-off since one of my top set Y7 kids threw a penny at another one and so the whole lesson was spent trying to sort out who had done what etc.
Anyway, on to more exciting things, my first WWOOF.
We (me, X, one of my maths colleagues, and one of her friends) spent the weekend working on a farm in Polstead, a small village on the Suffolk/Essex border. It was simply lovely. They were an old French and Australian couple, and they lived in a beautiful thatched cottage that is heaped in mystery and intrigue as there was a murder there many years ago. You can read more about all of that here. They had 18 acres and worked the land, which was what the area is historically famous for, but sadly has experienced a real decline in local agriculture. Two of the couple's children live locally still and all three are creative souls, suggesting that country life brings out the more interesting sides of people. P and D themselves were terribly interesting and knowledgeable - full of stories and experience and life.
The work itself was wonderfully satisfying manual labour, enough to make you feel a pleasant ache, but not so much that you grew fed up. We preserved the water around young trees using straw; we scythed down thistles using scary Grim Reaper style scythes; we cleared a meadow of logs; we worked hard in the vegetable garden (my favourite - planting, weeding, making compost, picking fruit, pruning roses, learning all about living off the land, ace); we learnt about the sheep and the animals and the day to day workings. They were such lovely and generous hosts and I really enjoyed working in the morning and having the late afternoon and evening free for fun. We played football with their grandkids and ate glorious feasts full of home-grown ingredients, yum, so tasty. If anything I have a new found inspiration to grow a herb garden too.
On Saturday night we had a cheeky ale and played some darts in the village pub, and then got scared in the dark on the way home by "ghosts" (really a drunk old man), which to me seems like proper country life. The only thing I would change would be the "guard geese" as they were scary and mean and kept chasing me around. I realised I was being a wimp when I saw a 6-year-old just kick at them and then walk past, but by then it was too late, they could sense my fear. Heehee, apart from that though it was excellent, I can't wait to go again!
The whole concept of WWOOF is so clever and useful - workers trade their physical labour for shelter and food, alongside the joys of good company and conversation. We weren't quite back to basics, but far freer than we are in the city, and it was really pleasing and comforting to know that life like that is possible. I urge you to go, just to try it, just to see what life could be like.
