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But getting fuller by the minute

PLEASE watch this silly trailer, film looks dodgy, but was not a good idea to watch it with a room full of students!

A cup half empty

Sometimes, not often, but every now and again I get the urge to tell my class that they are a useless bunch of lazy halfwits, I want to scream at them, they are so unbelievably obtuse. I then want to walk out, just walk and walk. I did that once, a couple of years after I began teaching (the walking bit not the screaming bit!) I was walking to Blackheath station to get the train to work and I walked right past and carried on walking for hours. Sometimes teaching can be very claustrophobic, especially when teaching the younger students. I could NEVER be a primary school teacher how do they do it?
As teachers we have no choices about what we do during the day, we HAVE to be in the same place at the same time, hamstrung by the demands of a timetable. YES we have the bloody holidays, the same ones every year, no flexibility what so ever. The whole education system stinks from top to bottom, why can't schools stay open all year round and rotate staff and students? Why do we all walk on the same treadmill?

Time for a day in town I think to refresh my batteries.
I am once again snowed under with marking and target setting, as well as having to stay at work late for various meetings. I should be looking forward to a life of wandering around Europe sleeping in swanky hotels, instead I am struggling to come up with what to take to live in a soulless concrete box in a village miles from civilization. The weather seems to be wet and with very cold nights. The house is unheated and has solar panels to provide hot water, which sans much sunshine means cold showers all round. We will be bunking up with his sister and niece too, oh what larks.

We were back in A&E on Monday night, I started to wonder if I had Munchhausens by proxy syndrome. In fact Leyla had had a severe allergic reaction to Penicillin, and so had to change her medication. It was so bad she even had spots on the palms of her hands! I swaddled her in calamine lotion soaked cotton wool and gave her porridge baths, she was back at school by Wednesday. She is over the moon that she can now tick a box on a medical form. 'Yes I am allergic to.... '

Normal service will resume next week...

Everything has it's beauty, but not everyone sees it

So says Confucius.
I confess I am a very judgmental person, I look, I asses, I inwardly evaluate. I will fill in the lives of others constructing a tower of stories to fill in the gaps of knowledge I lack.
In my late 20's I had a bit of an epiphany moment, I was on a school trip with a number of staff who I would ordinarily have dismissed within in a couple of seconds as not really worth giving the time of day. I was and can be quite clique, not an attractive habit but one difficult to shake.
During the trip we had to perform numerous outdoor and indoor activities and two incidents stick in my mind.
The first was a woman who was very intelligent but geeky with whom I held no common ground with, she almost ran up a rock face I could no more have successfully ascended if I had sprouted wings.
The second was one of those slightly pious teachers a bit frumpy and a little dull, one night during a sing song I realised she had the voice of an Angel. I grew up a little that week when I realised that we all have strengths, sometimes just not obvious ones, but I do try very hard to see some good in everyone.
Obviously there will always be exceptions to the rule, but not many.

This brings me to the story of Angel, she sat in a cot opposite Leyla, I had thought by the amount of stuff she was surrounded by that she had been their a while. Later when we asked it transpired she had arrived that morning, her mother went to fetch some things and then she went. from 3pm-middle of the night Angel was on her own*. At first I did what all sanctimonious mothers do, I tutted, judged the table of junk food next to her cot and made endless suppositions about her abandoned status.
Angel it should be said was stunning, she had the blackest, most beautiful skin I have ever seen, she sat the entire time and played in her cot, dancing to music, dressing herself and grabbing all the goodies from the table. Even Emin was mesmerised by her ability to occupy herself, something mine have always struggled to do.
I worked out she was not quite 2 years old. Angel's one anomaly was she hated being held. Really, really hated it, nor did she want to drink milk or eat food other than Pringles or Starburst. Leyla loved playing with her but I drew conclusion after conclusion. Then I thought, hang on, what if her mother had a genuine reason to leave her so long. She was clearly well cared for, beautifully dressed, maybe her mother too had to be admitted, maybe she did not have the support of any friends or family, who was I to judge?

I will leave you with something that made us all laugh. When I asked the nurse trying to feed her why Angel had been admitted she shrugged and said she did not know, Leyla piped up, "it's because she's nuts" We both did a double take. Then Leyla pointed to Angels bracelet, "look. see? It says it here on her braclet she's nuts" The nurse explained to Leyla that it meant she was allergic to nuts!

* Leyla woke me later after midnight to tell me Angel had gone, vanished, we did not even get to say goodbye.

Yet another 48 hours of my life I will never see again

I am beginning to ache for the dull normality of a normal weekend, the kind when you clean the toilet and go to the gym. This one started badly because the kitchen drain was blocked and guess who always gets to stick her hand down that to clear it? Oh yes, I get all the best jobs in this house. I was dressed for the gym which I would normally visit after frog marching the dog around the park.
After the gym comes shopping and cooking then somewhat reluctantly some cleaning as well as dealing with the Eiger sized pile of washing. Meanwhile Leyla goes to Turkish school. Only this morning a lump in Leyla's groin had swelled becoming so inflamed she had trouble walking. So we did what all good parents do..Yep we Googled it. We self diagnosed a hernia, we phoned the Dr who told us to go to A&E and we then debated the merits of going private or risking NHS. We plumped for the later using our old address to get into Lewisham, which lacks the glamour but has a brilliant children's A&E.
So of course we were wrong, it was not a hernia, but after several hours, one ultrasound scan and three consultants later it was diagnosed as swollen lymph glands caused by a severe viral infection. Even then I thought we would poddle off to pick up a prescription, but no, the shock at discovering that whilst she looked superficially chirpy, she was in fact very ill, and so she was admitted into hospital for some 'aggressive' medication.
I cried. She has dined out on that one all weekend. Plus, for a child deprived of TV most days this to Leyla was a holiday camp!

For me, the mother, it was purgatory. I luckily had a book with me, Emin went and got me a toothbrush and a takeaway and then I slept on a fold away bed, well dozed sporadically through a cacophony of bleeps and cries and wails of the various other patients. After a poor start she began to respond well to treatment and hallelujah we were out by Sunday afternoon.

Which is when I finally got to go shopping, cook, clean, walk the dog, pick the girls up from their dads, write a history essay for Kitty and finally have a bath.

Claudius Schulze

These images are so utterly evocative, I almost want to return.
They are by Claudius Schulze, he also has a very interesting blog
The images are so different to what I would do and see he has a much broader viewpoint but I do think it helps being a man though, I think it makes it easier to interact with the men, especially.

Bruce Wrighton

Every now and again I see some images that make my heart leap with delight, this series by Bruce Wrighton are just such images. I love the rich saturated colours, the tight compositions. Brilliant, yet tragic in that he dies so young, more from Laurence Miller Gallery