My Quilt

I've achieved two things today: 1) I've learned how to use the timer on my digital camera; 2) I've finally got some pictures of my quilt, which I finished edging last weekend. So I've been having a bit of a camera day and have been enjoying setting up my tripod and mucking around. Here's the roll:The quilt's in the background, but notice I'm getting horrible laughter lines . . . or maybe it's just creases from sleeping . . . Perhaps I went very foetal in my pictures to compensate for this aging. Actually, it's because I wanted as much quilt as possible in the picture whilst I was still in the frame.


I'm really pleased with the edges, and particularly my mitred corners, which I hand-stitched because I couldn't be arsed with the sewing machine. I had to pin the edging in place onto the quilt to check the fabric strips I'd made were exactly the right length. But my sewing machine isn't really big enough to cope with the weight of a whole quilt tugging on it, so it was easier to just sit on the floor and do it by hand.



Annoyingly, you have to reset the timer each picture, which isn't the most intuitive of processes and I therefore kept forgetting. There probably is a better way, but I haven't found it yet.


It's not exactly the most intricate of designs, but it's so big that it took me an age to make . . . and I like it.

Where is my Easter holiday?

Sometimes I think, by doing what I do, that I'm slowly killing off sections of my personality. Other times, I get to say things in school that make me feel me.

E.g. A Year 10 or 11 kid was trying to barge past some of my Year 7 form today and shouted at them, behind me, "Let me through, I'm more superior to you." I turned around, vaguely amused, and he looked really smug. So I said, "It's just 'superior' - it doesn't need 'more'." And continued walking.

I got to "own" other kids on several occasions today. But there are too many times when you feel your personality disintegrating as you wait for time to pass.

On a nice note though, I got to hold a wee baby today. And don't tell me I'm getting all broody just for mentioning it, because my male colleague in the English department was much more excited than me at getting to cuddle a very small child.

Babies' perfect, tiny hands are the best things in the world.

Oblique Strategy of the day

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten

Plus

Ryan Adams as an internet presence is back! You can find him at a new blog called "TOTALLY BORED the musical", which he seems to update constantly. There's already a new little video-ditty by him up there, plus a DJ Reggie tune you can listen to, amongst the usual poems and general ephemera - it's great!



Writing the Hits with Stupid from Ryan Adams on Vimeo.

Awful, awful weeks

How funny that the last thing I wrote on the blog was, "Trust in the you of now." This is amusing because I've been hugely paranoid, insecure, tired and generally feeling shit all this week and last.

I've had TWO complaints from parents in TWO weeks. The parents involved were fucking crazy weirdos and awful mothers, plus their complaints were ridiculous (setting up an extra SATS booster session and rearranging it for the girl in question to attend; telling another girl to be quiet as she entered the classroom), and yet I felt so victimised and on the defensive that I really believed I was terrible with kids and everything was pointless. On Monday, having to explain myself AGAIN to the deputy head after another stupid phone-call from the mother, I cried. I was so ill and tired and felt like packing the whole job in.

Having five days off now puts everything into perspective (plus my last lesson today was observed by the acting head and went extremely well), and makes me feel a lot calmer about actually having a personality and sometimes putting it to use in the classroom. For a start, despite the complaints from the wet-blanket kids, using sarcasm or just being quick actually helps bad children pay attention and focus. Plus, if the kids are scared that you'll "own" them (i.e. verbally and quick-wittedly beat them to a pulp in front of their friends in an amusing manner) they tend to make fewer ridiculous marks and ask fewer imbecilic questions.

Anyway, though I'm feeling better mentally, I'm still physically shitty, so I'm spending the night in to recuperate.

On the plus side of being down about school, I fucked off school-work on Tuesday night to write an article about the tyranny of the so-called BRIT School which has unleashed the "talents" of Adele, Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Kate Nash etc upon us. You can read it at a new music blog called Shovelled Up Like Muck, which I'll hopefully be regularly contributing too. I've put it in my Links list too, so check it out. My Foals CD is on its way to me, so I expect I'll write up a review of that imminently.

Oblique Strategy of the day

Trust in the you of now.

This, that and everything else

Some days you just think you've totally lost all capability. You're sitting there, perching, feeling shit with a sore throat and sounding very hoarse, and the excellent task you've put effort into preparing just falls flat. You can't shout anyway, and they know it (sense it, perhaps), so you're there, sighing, completely impotent.

Little bastards. One of them even put up a hand to high-five me (something to do with Marilyn Manson - don't ask), the cretin. I gave him a very stern look. I think they genuinely believe I should be flattered by their approval or whatever - they're only just 15!

Anyway, I went to the school gym afterwards which definitely helped to de-stress. My physical fitness is absolutely crap, however. I managed to row over 1000 metres, however, and ran (sometimes walked quickly) over 1500 metres. In total, I burned about 200 calories or so. That might be my future serving of apple crumble and custard this week.

So - Friday was the first "Party Lounge" (that is, the monthly night to be hosted by The Yell). The support band, AGASKODO TELIVEREK, were excellent, though their set went on a bit. They consisted of an English (I think) drummer, who drummed to a click-track throughout, two very eccentric-looking Hungarian guitarists (dressed in 118-esque short and T-shirt outfits) and a Japanese singer, who half screamed and half posed throughout the set. It was extremely entertaining.

The Yell are going to have to work on an after-party though. The night at the Pomona was fairly empty and after having an ultra-shit attempt at pool, we went home after a pretty short period of time. Pool's one of those things that really matters when you're drunk and rubbish at it, but seems ludicrous the next day.

Anyway, actually socialising has made me feel enormously trapped by the restricting mass of marking I have to do, and - full circle - makes me extremely resentful of ungrateful kids.

I'm terrified, at the moment, of that feeling that will inevitably surface, after which I'll hate every single moment of my job. I've been suppressing it all through the winter with almost total success. Ironically, I can feel it bubbling away more now that it's getting lighter and warmer - this is the time I should be using for myself, not for some children's half-arsed attempts at homework.

Ding Dong The Witch is at the Beginning of the End?

So I woke up getting excited about Maggie Thatcher being in hospital, but it's just for fainting, and she's probably getting discharged later today anyway.

It's made me think about what the public reaction will be when she does bow out. Loads of people I know say they'll be involved in the country-wide street party (I think I'm a member of the "Street Party when Thatcher Dies" Facebook group), but will anything like that actually happen? I doubt it. When it comes down to it, people like resenting her, but I think on the whole we're too restrained and nice a bunch of people to actually celebrate someone's death.

I was imagining doing a mammoth bake and giving away free cupcakes to celebrate, and how I'd get horrible looks and comments from various people saying what I was doing was in very poor taste and inappropriate.

More likely, as Ian says, there'll be this mammoth rewriting of history, and various political figures creeping out of the woodwork to tell us she was the greatest prime minister we've ever had. Rephrasing "crippling the North" as "pioneering economic reform". Whatever.

Probably that will inspire me to make more cakes with an image of her face with a big X through it.

Ed sent me a link to this though, which is more than cool

Tired. Bored. Stressed.

And all Eno can say is, "Lowest Common Denominator".

I'm going to watch ER and go to bed.