Pink Vision

I have been intending to have a shower for about 30 minutes. But I have Shine on my stereo, and I keep meaning to get upstairs, but then end up staying for just one more track. I love Estelle, this is such an awesome banging album full of proper soaring vocals and beats and stuff, I love it.

I had a super busy but good weekend. My legs are achey achey from an epic squash session on Saturday morning, two days of achey, but it feels good. Totally burned off all the indian food from our maths department social on Friday night (if not all the booze). Last night I had an amazing night's sleep. I swear the world is just that bit brighter after a good kip. In true me style I don't think I slept much on Thurs or Fri or Sat night (I guess maybe about 7 hours over the three nights), plus on Saturday I had lunch at 1pm and then didn't eat again until 2pm on Sunday, which is treating my body quite harshly. So I think it is feeling good today after food and rest to remind me that if I treat it well it will be well.

My vision is entirely rose-tinted at the moment. I mean, forget just the spectacles, it feels like my actual eyes themselves have pinked up (not in a gross infection type way). Things feel good, like my soul is singing. It's lovely. School-based dramas rolled off me today. I want the feeling to last. And I think I now how to do that. I will just keep the source; keep you.

I'm going back to Oxford in the autumn, I can't wait, I'm really looking forward to getting back into education and figuring out a way to make a difference to our disadvantaged kids. If I couldn't do it enough in the classroom, maybe I can do it from the outside. I like it when I have plans.

Man, I can't get over this album. Oh, but also the Juno album, beautiful beautiful stuff. My absolute favourite lines are from the closing song: #I kiss you all starry-eyed, my body's swinging from side to side#. I just googled that for laughs and there's about a million sites quoting it. The first blog quoting it is just full of lyrics. It's weird to read lyrics without hearing the songs, I guess then it's just poetry rather than song. I dunno, maybe everyone's souls are singing too.

One day down

Inspection day 1. I escaped, hurrah!

Turns out planning and being prepared and creating exciting lessons and putting some effort in actually leads to better teaching. Who knew eh? If only I had the time to do this kinda work all year, well, my kids would surely benefit. This patently explains why I was such a better teacher last year - I just had more time to do it in.

Figured I will get seen tomorrow, am already a bit scared. One of the inspectors is a maths specialist, and I am the most junior in the department, and the only NQT, hence it's guaranteed. Really hope it's not with my Y10s. Also am teaching lessons 1 to 4 back-to-back, so it's a STRESS anyway. Hmm. Don't forget Y9 parents' evening tomorrow night too, and then it's Friday week A all over again, great!

What else? It's my mother's birthday today, we're having a dinner party, guests have just got here (or so it sounds) so will pop a look in, but then scramble off to bed, my throat is still sore.

Looked up some words from Atonement:

garrulous - full of chatter
equanimity - composure; steadiness of mind under stress
lariat - a cord tied as a necklace that ends like a necktie

Also love this bit from p90, it got to me:

"The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation - it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him".

Bertie, high fives :)

Lots of Stuff

I am in love with the short-stories at www.meandmygoldfish.com. I have only read them, I've not even listened to or watched them yet, but they are amazing. Enough to make me proud to be a Goldfish card owner, albeit in the disguise of a Morgan Stanley Platinum.

I have just been reading the one about the sleep-deprived people. I am liking hyphens today by the way. Entirely sleep deprived. Think I got about two hours, plus woke up in a cold sweat. Not good.

Have had 5 hot drinks today. School was good actually. Despite yawning in the car on the way to school, I was in the zone by 8am and worked through solidly till after 5pm. Literally. Ran some errands and got home by 6pm. Took an hour off to read the papers, play my piano and have some dinner. Then did two hours of marking. And I'm still not properly tired. So essentially I am going to have to trick myself into sleeping because I have the loooongest day ever tomorrow - an 8am knee scan in Romford all the way to the staff meeting/training that will end at 7pm. Then marking. Whoop.

New homework strategy working a treat i.e. set less homework, and stuff they can actually do. Thus far more ticks and far fewer corrections. Did two sets of books today :) Wish I'd thought of the strategy before setting Y10 work, especially since one of the things they had to do was calculate "the shaded area" except my dodgy photocopying meant the shading didn't come through.

Speaking of Y10, we did some group work today, was really good. Room was noisy, but lots was done by most kids. Had one altercation with a girl, but I won, and she will conform, I am not compromising.

And on the line of altercations, crazy H is up to know good, and I am very worried about S. We tried to have a talk at the end of the day, and she just shut down. H, on the other hand, didn't turn up for his detention even though I had his bag hostage. Weirdo. And poor J is getting picked on - there are rumours flying around about her, poor girl, the silly kids don't even understand what they are saying or how offensive it is.

In other news, my favourite word today is JUMBLE, it has a great sound to it, JUMBLE JUMBLE JUMBLE. And also the name Khalil, although it's a Muslim name so not sure it's appropriate for my unborn sons. And on the subject of kids, my Y12s asked me how many I wanted today, and we had a nice chat. They say they can tell I am around 23/24. Smart kids. Not sure whether I should keep revealing personal details to them, where's the boundary?

If Spurs buy Downing we will go down the pan. Hope we beat Reading tomorrow.

Ramble done.

Reading and Writing

I finished my statement of purpose in the end. But I don't like it yet, it's not quite right.

Then I made a mistake. I started reading this and then I couldn't sleep, it was all a bit too real. Now I am out of bed and ready to plan lessons. But first I must write my own (poem, not lesson, although maybe they could be the same thing?) else I will be distracted all day.

I think I may have judged the Amber Spyglass too early, it's already very good and mysterious, please erase all my negative comments from your minds.

Update 10:49
Hohoho, it is complete, and I like it. It's a bit filthy though. You, please don't read too much into it, I am feeling a bit dramatic today.

The Perfect Bed

It used to be the case
That in the instant before I landed
The delicate closing of my eyes
Would open my mind up
Wide like a gracious host to sleepy dreams.

The perfect bed
In the corner by the window
Made it oh so easy.
Lumbering and confidently Victorian
In its dominance of the room.

Slipping in and under the ideal weight
Originally wrapped in tessellations of footballs
But now alternating mocha and beige
Just like us.
In the mornings I struggle to shed this second skin.

I wonder if the perfect bed
Would change in your presence?
My certainty is that it would sincerely succeed in
Warming you and cooling me
Until we were mathematically satisfied.

So I toss and turn and flip the pillow over
Hoping the fresh side will distract me
From lucid dreams of tongue tracing
Maple syrup ABCs along your spine.
Even though food isn’t allowed in the perfect bed.

The varnish fails to hide the mottles in the wood
Swirls that he used to graze with hot fingertips
Melting me.
Now it’s you that keeps me awake
Pondering whether your dearth is its first flaw.

A first attempt at working

I am back and in and wanting to work (wanting is used loosely here). I have trapped myself at my desk, Word is open and the cursor's blinking, waiting for me to type. Aaargh but I can't. If I am struggling just to write my statement of purpose, perhaps applying to read for a Masters with lots of essay writing is an error?

I noticed on my blog that you can't search by label. This is annoying. I meticulously label each post, but what's the point if you subsequently can't search by label? Clearly this should be a priority, far more worthy of immediate address than my empty document.

I found the labeling issue out because I was searching for some words I remember looking up from On Beauty. I have forgotten the words, and their meanings. This too is annoying. I remember how good my memory used to be, but that's about it. And I can't find the post.

Thus I have decided that in future good words will be recorded on here, where I can't lose them. My word of the day: poltroon. An abject coward. I like the sound. But more so I like the statistic that this word is only used twice for every 100 million words said. Poltroon. Poltroon. I think I've doubled its use. I like it that I can change a statistic like that. What use are statistics anyway?

Come on words, write this statement of purpose. Gosh I hope the applications office doesn't read my blog...

Scrabble + Trash Palace

The sun was absent this afternoon so CK and I relocated to The Court near UCL for our scrabbling. Mouche joined us for a bit of a threesome and entertained us all with her fake word of the evening laming - supposedly the present participle of the verb to lame. In theory it sounds like a word, and MT has said that it is, as has dictionary.com, but I can't think of any occassion on which it could be used. Controversial. Also got thoroughly confused when trying to spell that word that means the coloured bit around nipples (areola - but I spelt it aeriole), which, along with CK's imam (turns out this IS a word for Muslim priests, rather than iman as I thought it was) ultimately cost me the game. Sigh. A very colourful board nonetheless including such beauties as: foodie, coy, fart, virile, bricked, mews, vertex, quo, fez and keystone.

After the game and a guzzled 3 pints (my beer baby is growing) we trotted along to Trash Palace (another gay bar I can add to my list courtesy of CK & co.) to see Gid and Josh. Josh told us the sad news that Noor has broken her arm snowboarding, oh dear. Gid is still amazing, even after partying hard for two weeks in New York. I decided that he is very personable, in an Ish kinda way, and that it could be cool if they met, I'm sure they'd get on. Although I'm not sure what she'd say about his gay jokes:

What did the lesbian do on her second date? Hire a U-Haul truck.
What did the gay man do on his second date? Second date, what second date?

I now feel vaguely hungover, which is a bad sign for the work I "intend" to do tomorrow. But a good evening indeed.