Now I'm REALLY in a mood

As if it isn't bad enough having to prepare an extremely boring presentation for a college day tomorrow, two terrible things have happened: -

1) They killed off Stingray! How could they?

2) Scrubs no longer has the 6pm slot on E4 thanks to Big Brother.

It's enough to make me scream . . .

And another thing

I was shocked by the ending of Desperate Housewives last night. I can't believe that Edie Britt would kill herself. I know they were working on developing her vulnerability and that, but suicide? Please. I hate it when shows don't obey their own internal laws . . .

RIP Edie.

Birds

Yes, birds. I could watch them from the "study" window for hours. They're just sparrows and blue-tits, but I like them. It's nice to have some wildlife for a change: it was depressing having to throw out bird feeders last year because the seed inside had gone mouldy - so many cats made for a trepidatious (is that a word?) bird population. It's good for us too: they pick off the snails and slugs. Speaking of which, while repotting an honesty plant I found a slug egg, squished it between my fingers and it squirted into my eye. Nice. Karma, perhaps, for taking pleasure in killing so many of its brethren . . .

Script Frenzy

I'm very excited about this. I keep having lots of script ideas and, I have to confess, I've already started on a couple of things despite the fact that you're only allowed to work on the project during the month of June.

I described the project to my younger sister (aged 19), and she was completely bemused by the idea that you'd want to write a script for no reason at all.

If you're creatively minded in any way at all, I urge you to sign up: www.scriptfrenzy.org. I've already written more (and of a higher quality) than I have in the past god-knows-how-many-months put together. Creative writing, that is. Not the snore-worthy stuff of PGCE-styled academia . . .

On which subject: how come the half term is almost over? Life is soooooooo unfair. After this brief holiday I don't know how I'll be able to stand the tedium of two weeks' of school . . . the abject misery ahead . . .

And the Big Brother gimic for this year is . . . .

An all-female starting line-up.

I just channel-hopped past E4 and was surprised by the number of girly-girls in their early twenties. Not that I watched it last year, or the year before for that matter, but it looks like Channel 4 have managed to cook up a recipe even more dull than anyone could ever have anticipated.

Snore.

In the GCSE Anthology there's a poem called Vultures, in which there's a description of the commandant at Belsen with "the smell of human roast clinging rebelliously to his hairy nostrils."

This came into my head because wherever I go, the odour of rotting rat permeates the air, very much like the smell is stuck in my nose. It's really revolting.

On top of that I don't feel well. I've had two lessons this morning thus far, and in each I almost cried and almost fainted. (Actually, at one point I felt like pretending to faint, just to get the little bastards to pay attention.) I'm not sure whether it's just tiredness or actually something wrong with me. Either way, I don't feel up to yelling at a class.

I can't believe it's only Thursday.

10.5 days to go.

For those who are interested . . .

. . . dead rats smell like rotting cabbage. I gained this knowledge when I came home from school, immediately noticed the stench, then noticed an unusually large gathering of bluebottles. I was scared to move the plinths to look under the kitchen units, but when Ian came home we did, but thre was no rat to be found. There are, however, holes in the flooring so we assume the body(ies) are below.

Ian's dad has informed us that it'll take ten days for the carcass to dry out, but the smell is already vomit-inducing, and I seriously won't be eating anything at home if it gets any worse. Ugh.

Busyness

Yesterday I got a job - hooray! It's at a very high achieving school, but no one appeared to be snotty and the head of English described herself as a heathen, which I liked. I felt very strange once I was offered the job, possibly because the day was so informal and I hadn't even taught a sample lesson. I mainly feel relieved with a mix of trepidation and anxiety . . .

The Weekend

On Saturday I got shouted at by a woman with an autistic child at Chester Zoo. She obviously assumed that my squinting face was a screwed up expression of disgust at her ugly, whining offspring, but it wasn't. The zoo was good though. We could have watched the baby chimps playing for hours, and the bat cave is amazing too.

Also on Saturday I had to partner with the very drunken singer from HCdeP at his dad's 60th birthday ceilidh. Quite hilarious. Ian's dad almost danced for the second time in his life, but he chose the most complicated dance of the night and got fed up with the ridiculously ill-explained instructions and gave up. Almost history in the making.

Update over.

12 working days left.

Get in.

Unwelcome House Guests

This is a week late as I've only just imported the pictures off my camera.

I was drying my hair on Sunday morning, and heard Ian yell out. I thought he was cleaning the bathroom and had probably knocked something over, so I carried on. Then he came into the room looking pale and shaken.

This is who he'd encountered in the cupboard under the sink whilst looking for cleaning sponge:


It was dead, of course, and, as you will have noticed, it's a full-grown rat and not a mouse at all! Poor thing. I was surprised by how soft it's fur looked and how squirrel-like it's head was. Pet rats are completely different creatures and are more like large mice (RIP Snoopy).

Anyway, thought I'd share that delightful picture with you.

Morons

I'm referring to my next door neighbours. No, it's not because they're PE teachers: I'm not quite as prejudiced as that. Nor is it because they randomly roar out like they're playing Smackdown or some such console game. No, it's because they have to constantly bombard us with their crap taste in music at random periods: Hard-Fi, Stereophonics, Bon Jovi, Oasis, Jamiroquai, music to make your stomach heave. What does one do when aurally assualted in this way?

History

I'm no sentimental, but Blair's resignation really does feel like the end of some epoch. And not just because all the TV stations have already put together montages and obituary-esque "This is Blair's legacy" pieces (which, in obituary fashion, they'll have had together for the past two years). I think people do have short memories, and though many things today need improvement (dentists, public transport, education, house prices, the slide towards the semi-privatisation of everything . . .), things are better than under Major (ha! remember him!) and much much better than under Thatcher (when is she gonna die so we can start street partying?): Northern Ireland, NHS waiting times, minimum wage, general spread of affluence, green issues (at least they're on the agenda, though sickeningly, Cameron's probably responsible for that) . . .

Anyway, it just feels weird. I suppose it's because TB has been prime minister throughout my proper mental development and struggle with maturity (granted, I'm not there yet) and blah blah blah: from the age of 15 to 25. Bizarre.

I wonder what people will think of *now* in ten years. I doubt it'll be what the BBC's pouring out on News 24 at the moment. Speaking of which, I probably scared the people in the shop downstairs earlier. I was watching News 24 to catch up on what had actually been said in the speech, but instead I got an interview with George Galloway. It was so melodramatic and irritating that I suddenly and involuntarily shouted, "Oh, fuck off!" and switched channels. I surprised myself with my outburst.

So.

Only 20 days to go. Sssssssssssss. (You know, as in the end of "Yessssss")

music on adverts

Sometimes the people choosing music get it spot on. You find the whole tune on the internet, and that short section used is the only decent bit of the whole song. You wonder, how the hell did they find that amazing bit amongst this crap. I'm speaking of "Release Me" by Oh Laura (some car advert I think--sounds a bit like Regina Spektor) and "Away From Here" by The Enemy, currently used on the ER advert. So disappointing.

Like, OH MY GOD, that, like, AMAZING 90s TV show My So-called Life is gonna be released on DVD in, like TWO WEEKS!!!

I'm debating whether to pre-order it from Amazon or not. It's only £26.70, but will it spoil all my fond memories of how fresh, different and gripping it was? I want to see it, but at the same time I don't. What a dilemma . . .

My mood is along the lines of, "I really fucking can't be arsed." I just can't be bothered with all the grief of trying to teach children. I'm knackered and I have no life, and for what? There's no reward as far as I can see. As I drive to and from school, instead of making last minute mental adjustments to lesson plans, I get distracted by the flowers and foliage on the way. I was admiring a roadside pyracantha just before and thinking how lovely it would be to work with plants rather than young people. Or perhaps people at all for that matter, because I'm not sure anyone actually changes all that much. To see that, you just have to sit in a room of PGCE students and see how everyone messes around in different ways while the tutor tries to speak.

Roll on the summer. Except I haven't got any plans for summer yet because I haven't had time to investigate or organise anything . . . still, at the moment just lazing around and having some sleep sounds perfect.

After today, twenty-four days left

What a relief that is. It's still five weeks, I suppose, but I'm almost there: just one final assignment to go, then a length of time to be spent collecting evidence for the damned 'standards', and I'll be done. If only I had a job lined up . . . I recently emailed in an application for yet another Catholic school, and hilariously I have heard nothing. There seem to be a myriad positions going though, so sooner or later someone has to give me a job, I just hope that it's in a relatively okay school.

Anyway, I had a visit from my tutor on Monday: he had to observe me, then observe my mentor feeding back her observations to me. They told me my language was too complex: I'd used "stereotype" and "2D" with Year 9s. They're 14 for God's sake!

Oh well.