A Representation of the Cold War using Toys

Day off, kinda

Thankfully, we had a day back at university today.

I got up at 8.45am , which meant two extra hours of sleep, and yet somehow I haven't felt the benefit.

Walking down Taptonville Road, through Broomhill and down the leafy environs of Collegiate Crescent was a very welcome change from the awful car journey to Meden. I love walking in Autumn, especially since, worringly, it isn't massively cold yet.

Despite this, I've been feeling quite low, and I got quite emotional at university when we were asked to discuss our experiences and catch up.

A girl called Jannine Buxton in Year 10 (aged 14/15) was killed on Friday night when two cars crashed on the busy A60, a mile or so from the school. She sat right at the front of the Media class I'm taking, and I spent quite a lot of time coaxing answers and work out of her during those lessons. She was a kid with the potential to be quite difficult (she was on "red report"), but she was lovely in that lesson. Her usual Media teacher (and my mentor) called her a "media monkey", just because she seemed to take to it. Because of that I gave her a credit on Thursday and handed in a postcard to be sent to her house. I know now that the postcard wouldn't have been received until after she was dead, so I have mixed feelings about the impact it might have had on her parent(s)/guardian.

I'm thinking about this because I have that Media class first thing tomorrow, and there'll be a big physical gap. I don't think she was particularly good friends with anyone else in that class, but I don't think that matters. They'll still feel, like I felt, that school's pretty stupid and pointless in the grand scheme of things. And you should feel invincible at 15 years old, not shocked into being horribly aware of your own fragile mortality.

A few hours of planning lessons and I'm bored beyond belief. I'm not sure if I ever found lesson planning fun, but it certainly wasn't deadening my brain to this extent.

Fortunately Ghostbusters has just come on C4 to alleviate my condition slightly. Hooray for 80s sci-fi/action blockbusters.

It's only f**king Tuesday

You know when you're so tired you feel sick?

Autumn into Winter

I love it when it's cold, windy, wet and horrible outside when I'm warm, dry and inside.

Even if I am at my computer instead of relaxing.

For some reason my mentor at school has told her Year 10 (14/15-year-olds) Media class that the reason I'm taking over is because I'm "an expert". When it comes to Media, nothing could be further from the truth. I have no idea what all the different bits of a film poster are called past the title and the tagline. Teachers and their lies, eh?

Earlier in the week I got myself completely confused about what is and isn't a metaphor: is it just a replacement noun (something is something else), or can using a verb figuratively be a metaphor too? When I expressed my concerns to the head of department, she just told me, "They're Year 9, they aren't going to know any different."

For some reason, that really disturbed me. I hate the idea that one of those kids will remember my poor definition and will think back and say, "that student knew nothing."

But I can't be expected to know everything.

Certainly not media terminology.

Tired, not creative.

Man, I'm tired. And this week seems to have gone on forever, while the weekend flashed by.

I was so tired yesterday that I completely forgot important things I was going to say in my introductory lesson on ballads with Year 8 yesterday. I feel like I've let them down. But I will attempt to make tomorrow's lesson with them extremely fun and interactive to make up for my lack of energy yesterday.

So, my initial buzz of excitement has faded away, and hopefully it will come back once I don't feel quite so tired, but I'm not sure. I was looking at people's myspaces just before and felt a sad twinge that I've done nothing creative for a long while. Will I ever have the time again?

In a way I feel like I've let myself down by following this teaching and tradition career progression path. But then, what else was going to happen? I wasn't making it happen, that's for sure.

To cheer myself up I will soon start photographing all my creative endeavours and cataloguing them right here, on my blog ("see, I am a bit of an artist!").

Japanese-style (s)leeves

In the Summer, on a bright and hot day, Ian and I went to Weston Park so I could take pictures of trees for the sleeve of his new CD, entitled 229, 294, 306, 337. Catchy name there! Anyway, I sort of bleached them out and we printed them on handmade paper. Unfortunately, the design Ian preferred is the busier of the two, which clearly isn't the most striking or elegant. What is a designer to do?

Tiredness

This has been my first week teaching. There have been ultra high points and many many irritating-as-fuck, "those little shits!" points too. It's all par for the course, I suppose, and I knew what I was getting myself in for. That won't, however, stop me from complaining.

Right now though, I need my bed. I got significantly less than my requisite eight hours last night because Ian woke me up at around 5am with his sneezing. From then on I was awake until I had to get up at 6.45am. He's allergic to something in the bedroom, but we can't quite figure out what, and my suggestions that he go to the doc's for some allergy tests have been met with typical male affirmative grunts.

Anyway, I felt like a zombie all day and the drive home from school was scary purely because I was so exhausted.

A slightly rejuvenating nap, a couple of bottles of beer, a Chinese takeaway and some topical comedy courtesy of the BBC have done me the world of good.

Maybe tonight I can sleep without going over lessons in my head . . .