Oy Vey!

It's Friday (hooray!) and we're off to see Fiddler on the Roof very shortly! I can't believe I'm actually doing something sociable and fun.

Last Saturday I bumped into Lucy from my Literature degree course who now works as a wool consultant (yes, that's "wool consultant") in John Lewis. I am therefore going to a knitting class tomorrow morning, which should be fun too.

I want to be able to knit cool robots and monsters like Jess Hutch can on that link over there. - - - - > I can do simple casting on, knitting and pearling, but find patterns pretty incomprehensible.

Almost finished my Christmas shopping too . . .

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 . . .

Fly Agaric

Ian's parents have these mushrooms in their garden:






















No gnomes though.

Philip French on Bennett's "The History Boys"

"But there's a moment when the assured Dakin is embarrassed and humiliated to discover he's been mispronouncing the name of Nietzsche that rings absolutely true. It brought back painful memories I've been trying to suppress all my life."

Brilliant.

Bad Dreams . . .

I had a very disturbing dream last night.

Kylie Minogue was performing on a TV show. She had ultra-short hair and was ineffably skinny. She suddenly stopped singing and put out a hand as if to steady herself against a wall, but she just crumpled onto the floor and someone stated, "She's dead!"

I'm not even a fan, but I felt so freaked out I wouldn't get out of bed to go to the toilet.

Actually, boring "General Professional Studies" lectures and seminars aside, I'm feeling remarkably cheerful and fulfilled. This is usually unheard of for me when Winter is fast approaching, and especially so now, when I have to get up at 6.45am while it's still as dark as midnight.

On a totally unrelated topic, I have to confess that I am already addicted to Strictly Come Dancing, again. My comic attempts at jiving are driving Ian round the bend . . . My money's on Mark Ramprakash, though that's subject to change.

On Boredom: a Dramatic Monologue

[Directly to audience.] Halfway through and I can feel the sensation spread across what I believe to be my frontal lobe. Instantaneously, all thought-processing abilities shut down and my consciousness retreats back into the now vacant space of my mind, confused, lonely, bewildered, with only the perpetual drone of the dullest lecturer I've had the misfortune to hear providing any external stimulus.
[More desperate, neurotic.] I begin to feel acutely aware of the fragility of mortality.
It occurs to me that my existence is slowly receding as I sit, voluntarily, in submission to a very pointless experience.
The very inevitability of time passing suddenly takes on a desperate and painful association, and I know, in a flash, what that association is:

unbearableness.

[Flops back, overcome by the ineffable nature and intensity of boredom.]

News Show Gimmicks

Oh dear. To illustrate the debate over Muslim women's veils, Newsnight put a "veil" on their camera so that most of the screen was black with a small gap in the middle. Ridiculous, especially given that anyone wearing a full veil would be able to see perfectly well.

Also on tonight was a celebrity talent show, but unfortunately I can't get Channel 5. Stephen Gately doing magic tricks, Oona King playing piano and Toby Anstis performing ballet: what a line up. Unfortunately the line up on Strictly Come Dancing (which starts tomorrow) is not nearly as good as last year, so I doubt I'll be watching (if I'll be watching at all) with the same eagerness.

(Disclaimer: Colin Jackson is one of my childhood heroes so I had to watch.)

I was stood in the garden on Saturday afternoon when I heard a wave of noise. My first thought was that it was a football cheer, but it went on for so long that I couldn't believe it could be. But then the singing started and I realised it must be the sound of supporters at Bramall Lane, at least two miles away.

It reminded me of being at home in Newcastle and running outside whenever the Magpies scored, just in case the wind was blowing in the right direction and I'd be able to hear the cheers.

I still resolve to go to a football match at some point in my life.

I love the idea of clubbing unsuccessfully. Last night was very unsuccessful as we'd left the venue by 10.30 to get the bus home.

Usually I can wake after a night out and think, "Yes, that was very successful: the music was good, I danced a lot, I talked to people I like and my face is hurting from smiling so much. Much fun was had."

Who writes these things?

I have just received a letter from my doctors' practice suggesting I go for a cervical smear. I have been ignoring similar letters from my health authority because they clearly state that the smear process should start when you're 25--I am 24 and I had a smear when I was 20. It was a very unpleasant experience.

This letter, however, says the system operates for women between 20 and 64 years of age. It goes on to tell me, "Our records show that you have not yet taken advantage of the invitation to attend for a smear." Taken advantage of the invitation? Is it a free gift? Have I been invited to a VIP event?

It's almost as badly put together as the hilarious letter from my car insurance provider offering me accidental death insurance:

"No matter what out aims, ambitions or dreams are, none of us really knows what the future holds. When we're young, we often feel that we can live for ever, but sadly it's a fact that fatal accidents happen every day to people just like me or you."

Apparently these fatal accidents occur most commonly to people between 16 and 24 (I'm almost safe!).

Does anyone read this without hearing a voice screaming from between the lines, "You could die! You might die tomorrow! Then your parents will have to pay off your student loan!"

Do people really respond to this kind of persuasive argument? I'm sure one million people already do have this cover, but I bet they weren't patronised with euhemisms and indirect references.

Who writes this shit? Their managers should be sacked.

Google Earth

I was browsing the Earth for ages just before, finding my house, finding places I'd been to across Europe, looking at places I'd like to visit, and then I zoomed out too far and I started feeling strange. It's weird, spinning the Earth around and zooming down on places.

Then I realised the weird sensation I felt was vertigo.

One of the girls on my PGCE course said she cured herself of a number of phobias in one day, one of them being vertigo. She went down a very high slide. I can make myself do those things, but it definitely doesn't cure me. In fact, I'm usually more frightened the second time (the terrifying Kamikaze water slide at Wet 'n' Wild in North Shields is an example of this).

I'm obviously the complete opposite of an adrenaline junky.

I'm very out of date as our Tiscali internet connection was down for two weeks. I felt strangely lost and out of touch with the world whilst internetless, rather like when you lose your mobile phone. Weird how quickly we make ourselves dependent on technology.

Weeks on from the Mercury Music Prize I still have an image from the ceremony imprinted on my brain. There was a priceless shot of Thom Yorke during the Arctic Monkey's acceptance speech, his hand over his mouth (his head was resting on it) and his eyes sort of screwed up in a combination of embarrassment, bewilderment and disbelief at the great arrogance and inarticulateness of Britain's greatest songwriter. Excellent.