A good holiday day

I've been reflecting, over the past few weeks (or maybe months) how much I miss the internet of old. I'm aware that this is me properly showing my age but I really am a bit sad about what it was and what it therefore no longer is. There was definitely a golden internet age for me and that was probably 2005-2012ish. It was after Google and YouTube were launched but before social media was super widespread. A bit of Facebook, maybe, but not a lot of people were using it and all the updates had to follow an is. 'Sally is...' Most phones did not have cameras and, if they did, there was nowhere really to share the pictures anyway. Tiktok was a twinkle in Vine's eye. 

For some of that time I was hopelessly stuck into a particular forum which my life verily revolved around but, to be fair to that forum, I made some friends out of it that are still my friends over two decades later and it taught me quite a lot, about people and having a wide network of acquaintances that can advise you and how to avoid arguing with people and how to win, if you're going to. 

My main reason for internet nostalgia, though, is the blogging. I really miss reading the blogs. Those little windows into the lives of people you were never likely to meet, I loved them. Those blogging prompts I used to do, the monthly crafty scavenger hunt and the weekwords, where you'd post your link to someone else's blog to help drive traffic. I was never that interested in traffic, I'm quite happy with my 7 regular readers (I refuse to believe you are all bots); it was just nice to read what people were sharing. Now that traffic has mostly moved to social media and people don't want to write longform anymore, or maybe people don't want to read it. All those livejournals and bloggers and wordpresses. I fear for the longevity of Blogger, I really do. Perhaps I'm going to need to go back to writing my blog in html and FTPing it onto the domain, like back in the old days (when this was all fields).

Naturally, the way to resist this crumbling of what I loved is to be the change, so I'm not going to say that I'm going to blog more but, here I am. 

I had a good holiday day today. Lots of nice things coincided in one day so that I found myself eating a cottage cheese sandwich I'd made myself as I drove from one thing to another, because I hadn't actually built in any time to eat or even go to the toilet.

I started with a paddle on the Avon. We put in down by the Chequers, the place that I went to back in February when I was trying to use my kayak once per month, only to find the jetty was raised higher than the bank and it was a fair old torrent that quite evidently spelled my death if I were to have put my kayak into it. Happily it was much lower at this time of year, so much so that I had trouble getting in; I was kayaking with two people from work that I don't know terribly well, certainly not well enough to ask them to assist me into my kayak from the bank. Happily I managed to find a slightly lower bit of the jetty to get in and then hauled myself out by stepping on the bank, which was naturally not as firm as it looked but held up OK.

We saw geese, a sleepy and suspicious heron and a few kingfishers. Plus a little lad who proudly announced he was eat breakfast on a boat. 

I went from there to get my back pulled back into some semblance of normal by Jenny. My back has hurt since the start of June, when I was very enthusiastic with the hip thruster machine at the gym. I managed to get it to a point where I could stand up straight, thanks to a combo of a foam roller, a massage gun and a hockey ball, but it has been grumbling on for weeks. I don't love being this age you know, everything takes for bloody ever to heal - that hamstring I tweaked in February didn't feel normal until the end of May, for example. 

Jenny did lots of good sports massaging. I winced into the face hole. It does feel better but alas, the best thing I can do is stay active.

From there I rushed off to the swim lake at Henleaze, at the invitation of my friend Paula. This is a swim in a quarry, but it's far more exclusive than the one I usually go to - it's so exclusive that even the waiting list is closed for now. I idly consider trying to get on it from time to time but it's not close enough to home, really. That said - how gorgeous. I think I prefer the water at my usual quarry but this one definitely wins on surroundings. Grass and shrubs, little windy paths that you can wander down for a more private sunbathe, an ice cream stand, deck chairs, three heights of diving board and even a sauna. The well-heeled of Bristol know how to swim in a quarry, that's for sure. I stayed as long as I could.

Then I came home and did some work because all good things must come to an end.

No pictures. Too much fun was being had. If you want pictures, there's always Instagram. 

2024 Weeknote 29

Another fortnight's leap. Term has ended and a week off has been had and I'd like to say that I feel a bit more human and it's sort of true but...well, the work never really stops, does it?

Work things:

I went to Birmingham for another meeting, my 9th trip to Birmingham so far this year. Me and that 6.44am train are getting very well-acquainted. Gutted there's only a Costa concession open at that time, I do not like Costa. I've made a friend among the group but I fear I won't be seeing much of her next year, as we both have different roles. Slightly jealous that hers is less responsibility. 

I spent the rest of the last week of term supervising the odd student who hadn't gone on a trip, packing my copious possessions and walking them downstairs to my new office (we're gonna need a bigger bookshelf) and fiddling around with bits of work that I thought were complete. This must be a leadership thing, where you have a job list, you do it, and then a bunch of people come out of the woodwork to tell you, actually, we want you to do this instead, or do it this way instead, or could you possibly repeat this work only on a different system? I have discovered that this irritates me to the extreme. I sort of hope I get leadership coaching again next year because, having been in the role for a year, I have a lot more to discuss than I did when I had a coach at the start of the year. I wonder how many initiatives I'm having to initiate come as a result of some man (it's almost always, you know) having his head turned by a talk or even just a winsome smile from a stall at an education conference. 'Why yes, let me impress you with how powerful and influential I am, by forcing a bunch of people I've never met to pay for your service and roll it out to their school, regardless of whether it is actually a good fit for them.'

The rage, eh? It simmers.

I waved goodbye to my long-term colleague and friend Marianne, who is leaving teaching for a bit. Isn't everyone. It was very sad. We've worked together for five years and affectionately refer to ourselves as Hivemind. I'm sort of glad I won't be heading the department now that she won't be in it. It truly is the end of an era. We went out for the boat party and I wore all my sequins again and had many compliments through the night, though the PE teachers looked at me as if I was a gorgon. Nevermind. A girl in the toilets told me the outfit 'really eats' which is a good thing in young person parlance. Another girl came up to tell me how much she loved it and it turned out she was an ex-student. She was on a date. I bought the three of us tequila shots and then decided that was my cue to leave, having never done a shot with an ex-student before. 

Exam marking finally finished today, when I woke at 6.30am in a pool of my own sweat and was too grossed out to be able to fall back to sleep. Now it's just the reports and the endless process of script-reading to do. Hopefully it will be done by the end of this week.

I went on a first aid course for two days. The last time I did this course was in 2021; I'd been out the night before at the not-a-boat party (the skipper 'got covid' the morning of said party, which coincidentally coincided with the England semi-final in the Euros), returning home at 4am, so I thought that was the reason I kept almost nodding off. Turns out, no. It's the course itself. The trainer tried really hard to make it engaging and a lot of it was outside in a field, which did help, but....sort of hoping that, by the next time I need to renew, I'll no longer need the qualification. It is just so dull. 

Any non-work things? There must have been. Hmm hmm. 

I started knitting a new linen top, the one I wanted to finish for my holiday, which is in two weeks. Oh well. At least I made a start on it. I've been swimming in the quarry a couple of times. I've re-read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which has just made me want to go hiking through California even more than the first time I read it. I've been to lots of the places she mentions in the memoir and the idea of being that remote is very appealing. I've started the Big House Clean of 2024, determined this time to throw out a bunch of things and then hopefully make it easier to clean in the future. In contradiction to this, I've been impulse-buying online, as is my habit during exam season, so I need to have a clothes clear out.

A little shout out for an excellent jewellery business. If you see much of me IRL you have probably seen me wearing a large pair of silver hoop earrings or a smaller pair of gold. The latter were a gift from Mr Z a few years back and the former I bought for myself more recently. The catch snapped on one of the silver hoops and I contacted the company, Catch Rhys, for a repair. I couldn't remember when I'd bought them, couldn't find an order number or details of it in any of my banking. I couldn't even remember which email address I'd used for the order (I have five in regular use, don't ask why, it makes sense to me). I offered to pay. The helpful Rosie wrote back to tell me she had been able to find my order and they were actually within the two-year guarantee. When she couldn't fix them, she sent me a shiny new pair for free. Such amazing customer service! All their jewellery is recycled so I guess my old pair will become something new for them to sell, but still. Such impressive ethics. I can recommend them if you're in the market for something timeless and long-lasting. 

This week coming has lots of nice plans in it. And this time next week I'll be snoring in a tent in Devon.

2024 Weeknote 27

My computer and I have been far too well-acquainted for me to think about using it for personal reasons over the past couple of weeks. Happily, marking deadline is today and even though it will drag on for another fortnight or so, the end is nigh. The end of term is also nigh. I did my three working Saturdays in a row and celebrated by having a three-hour nap yesterday and then going out to a friend's 40th birthday party wearing a playsuit that teen me could only have dreamt of. 

Making inadvisable internet purchases is one of those things I do every exam season (you should see the shopping carts I've got lined up in other tabs at this precise moment) but, when I saw that Rosa Bloom had extended her sizing since last summer, I hesitated for only a moment. I have no idea what else I'm going to wear it for but, love. 

No knitting. No reading. Watching reruns of Friends and, lately, the Princess Charlotte Bridgerton spin-off. 

Roll on summer. Four weeks until I go on holiday!

2024 Weeknote 25

Just in case you're wondering as to the state of my brain at the moment, here's an insight: I have been wondering, for the past two weeknotes, why I'm not closer to or yet at weeknote 26, when solstice was last week and the nights are once again going to start drawing in. I started to think I must have miscounted. Only this morning did it click that the end of June marks halfway through the year, not solstice. It's not like I've lived with this calendar for my entire life or anything. 

Work reaches its crescendo this week. Thankfully the side hustle is (currently) going very smoothly this year so is not needing too much of my attention, which is just as well because I have no more capacity. I'm not sleeping particularly well, having been haunted all last week with very vivid dreams that were not particularly nice - not the sort you wake screaming from, but the sort that create an uneasy feeling on waking that persists into the morning. Several of these dreams were about having to move. I'm not going to Google to find out what that might mean. 

I quite often come back to that adage that you can't have more than 10 productive hours in a day. I can't remember where I read it now and I don't know how it's evidenced, but it's something I use to make myself feel better when I realise I've been staring at the wall for an unknown amount of time, in a paralysis of indecision about how to move forward with my work. This week has been OK in terms of work rate but I have had to resort to finding a quiet classroom to work in, rather than staying in the shared office, because either they distract me or I distract them and then nothing gets done. I would have liked to have got more done whilst in my empty classroom, but enough was achieved and, when I'm doing 3+ hours of the side hustle before and after work, it's not unreasonable to expect my productivity in my main job to suffer a little. Most of the time, at this time of year, it's not too important as there's not much to do. This is most certainly not the case this year, though. Somehow I've got three working Saturdays in a row, amongst other things. I started listing my tasks but then remembered that this is not a work space...though I do write a lot about work, don't I. Sometimes there wouldn't be much to say if I didn't. 

Let's try. 

This week I wound the yarn to make a Tolsta Tank by Rebecca Clow. I am going to make the square neck version and stripe some linen I bought at Wonderwool. 

That fancypants little thing twinkling across the top doesn't match too well in terms of colour but it is extremely fine and I plan to carry it along on random stripes here and there for a bit of interest. I'm hoping that more of the twinkle shows up than the orange. I do like the orange tbf. 

Anyway, it would be nice to cast this on as I wanted to wear it this summer, but I am realistic about my chances of achieving that now. I am, it has to be said, powering through season 3 of Bridgerton and if I just had the mental capacity to lift a pair of needles then I might be able to get started. As it is, I have spent much of my free time doing quick crosswords on the Guardian app and fastidiously playing my three favourite NYT games (Wordle, Connections, Tiles), and this includes while Bridgerton is on. I do like Birdgerton but it's not something that takes a lot of concentration. I also find myself really wanting to look up spoilers online because I can't wait to find out what happens at the end of the series, but I have decided I would be happy with either of the possible outcomes and so I am holding off. 

Has anything else happened this week? I gave blood on Wednesday, donation number 23 in 7 mins and 41 seconds (I hadn't drunk enough on Wednesday, really). On Friday night we went out to celebrate Father Z's birthday. I don't see enough of the Zs, I hadn't seen them since Christmas which is embarrassing as they live very close, but I remain perennially bad at families, how does one do them? Sometimes I think I might just pop in but would that be weird? What if they're busy? 

My favourite thing about this week has been the honeysuckle. We have a ramshackle garage next to the house, which isn't fit for much at all, but has proved to be a very supportive space for some honeysuckle, that grows wildly across both the front and back of it and is currently in full bloom. It's nice when I brush against it in the morning and it releases a bit of scent, but it's best in the evening when it's been under the sun all day - the smell is incredible. It doesn't last too long, so I've spent more time than usual sitting outside, appreciating it. 

And now I'm off for a swim in a quarry. 

2024 Weeknote 24

A busy week of exam board meeting this week. I headed up to Birmingham on Monday and didn't come home until Thursday. On arriving at the hotel, the desk clerk offered me an upgrade to a family room. 'It's just got an extra bed in it,' he said, when I looked doubtful. 'OK,' I replied, 'as long as it has a desk - I need a desk.'

The desk:

I went back downstairs to ask them to put the extra bed away but he transferred me to another extra-bed room where the sofa bed was merely blocking the hairdryer/mirror, so I concluded that this was a hotel where a number of rooms had sofa beds that could not be folded away (I did try) and just got on with it. I did my usual ritual of eating takeaway in bed on the second night. I had nice, sociable dinners out on the other nights. The meetings went very smoothly (I'm almost suspicious) and I was able to spend time reading and napping - in fact, the desk was not used at all. I can only hope that the rest of the marking period passes as smoothly, though I have already had to fire someone and it's only the second day. Sigh.

Work has been predictably busy as a result of my absence; on Monday, the inspectors were in to observe the trainee as part of their inspection of the university (therefore this was not about me at all, but still felt sort of like it was) and then, in my only lesson of the day, two years 7s had a physical fight. I think that is the first time that has ever happened, in over 20 years. One of them was moved out of the class the very next day. Friday was spent catching up on all the things I should have done while I was in Birmingham and then feeling sad about the student now moved to a different class, because teaching them is not the same without her. But it is clearly in everyone's best interests. 

I've got well into a new book, Connor Iggulden's Stormbirds which was given to me by a tutee 9 years ago and which has resided in the plastic box of books that time forgot in the garage since I changed jobs in 2016. It is extremely readable and I like it a lot. I have also flounced my way through season 2 of Bridgerton, having been shamed by the release of the third season ... I am very behind on all the popular shows.

This morning I went for my first swim in the harbour of 2024. They reckoned it was 16 degrees but I think it was a little warmer. Still quite murky. There were hardly any people there but it was ludicrously difficult to find out how to book a ticket and I wonder if they're deliberately not advertising it too widely. I dropped in at the best bakery on the way home and picked up one of their apricot soft-serves. Ice cream for breakfast is required during marking season. 

2024 Weeknote 23

Very brief today, because I have spent all weekend sunning myself on the beach in Portsmouth: Mother Hand rented a beach hut for the week so the fam have been down there enjoying it. I visited my uncle and aunt on the way home and met my cousin's son for the first time. He's 7. So it's been a very peopley weekend and, around all of this, I have been juggling the start of the exam board tasks - possibly the busiest part of the schedule for me. 

Ergo, not much else has been happening, although I did finish my Topolino. One day there might even be pictures. For now, though, the sea - nothing makes me pine for my home town more than a sunny day on the seafront.

Pebble beaches are the best and I won't hear otherwise. As Sib said this weekend (without a hint of irony), Portsmouth girls are rough, so don't challenge me on this. 

I did also want to commemorate this because it was quite a nice moment - when Mother Hand was last in hospital, I went to Portsmouth every other weekend and survived exclusively on takeaway and breakfast at a nice nearby cafe. I got to know the lady serving quite well and introduced her to Mother Hand when she was feeling better. We went in for breakfast this week and I was sad to see she wasn't there, although to owner was, and remembered me. Towards the end of the meal, the lady herself showed up and came over. There was a great moment where we both thought we might hug each other, and then realised we didn't know each other that well. So she just sat by me instead and we had a little catch up. Nice to have those connections in life. 

2024 Weeknote 22

Yeah, I skipped a week. I was away last Sunday and I meant to catch up but then, who wants to read another entry where I whine about not enjoying my job? It's a bit entitled, isn't it. And boring. Happily things picked up a bit last week and on Thursday - one day before the half term holiday - I finally found my stride and made big headway on the projects I had been procrastinating all term. This makes me feel quite hopeful for the coming term, busy though it will be. 

I did have a trust meeting on Tuesday that enraged me. Lots of disagreeing, which I had to try to manage professionally, with not much success, leading to the comment of the day to me: 'I find your point uncomfortable, but I think you're probably right'. More patronising. I had to come clean about my experience with assessment at the start of the day because, when you're disagreeing with people, it helps that they know you do actually know what you're talking about. It helped a bit, anyway. However, it just highlighted to me again what a lovely bubble I live and work in and how different the status quo is out there. It's a bit depressing, as I move away from working exclusively in my subject community, but I expect I will still find ways of interfering. I love a bit of interfering.

Onto nice half term things. On Saturday there was a quarry swim and lunch. On Sunday, I drove down to see Sib, Sib-in-law and the niblings. We went to Horrible Histories at Hampton Court and then, on Monday, a walk around Richmond Park. All very lovely as long as you take out the long and uncomfortable argument Sib and SIL had for much of the time I was there. I'm always at a bit of a loss when this happens - should I wade in? (Undoubtedly no, this is not the interfering I like). Should I just pretend it's not happening? (This is what I do but it's really awkward). 

Anyway. The small ones are very cute and fun, so that's good, and we saw lots of cool things - ducklings and beetles and lots of deer. 

Sort of understanding why people have children now, if they can make them do amusing things like this. 

On Tuesday, I'd arranged to go for a walk in the Mendips with ex-colleagues and so of course, the weather was abysmal. At one point I put my foot on what looked like a solid piece of ground and sunk into it up to my knee. Thankfully my walking boots are, it turns out, really waterproof. We squelched around for about 3 hours and then ate our sandwiches under an oak tree, sheltering from the rain. The dog companions loved it and we saw lots of wild horses.I came home and fell asleep in the bath, then napped most of Wednesday as I fought off a cold, which thankfully has failed to materialise. 

On Thursday I went into work for a bit, which meant I could visit the good bakery, and then went to a book talk at Toppings in Bath in the evening. It was Marlon James, on the anniversary of him winning the Booker for A Brief History of Seven Killings, which I have not yet read and so of course bought. Marlon James wrote The Book of Night Women which I read a few years ago, while I was studying teaching about slavery. What a book. It really has stayed with me. The interviewer naturally asked about Miss Isabelle and I really wanted to ask James, Do white interviewers always ask you about Miss Isabelle? But of course that's not really a question. The book deals incredibly well with the multiple layers of racism that slavery created in the Caribbean and Miss Isabelle, white but born in the Caribbean, is a victim of this system - not to the extent that the enslaved characters are, but occupying an uncomfortable place in society. I've a theory that people who read this book latch onto her character because it's not often that you read something that indicates that some white people were also scorned for not being the right kind of white, and that many people won't have really known this before. There is a really notorious scene in the book that she is at the centre of, I suppose, so that might also be why. 

That book! Not for the faint-hearted but I can recommend it highly. 

My favourite thing about Marlon James is that he is a massive book nerd. He kept going off at a tangent to talk about the dozens of books he loves and reads. It made me feel quite underaccomplished with my 20-30 books a year, I get the impression he'd manage that in a week, but then he does sort of read for a living, as a literature professor. I wrote down some favourite quotes but I think this one was the best: 'If I have to read one more story about some mediocre white man who has a wife and two mistresses and can somehow still get it up...I mean, come on dude.' 

Indeed. 

On Friday I did many errands. I went to Landrace bakery in Bath, finally, and bought All The Things. I took some clothes in to be altered and finally went to the dentist - our old dentist ditched us in January (this being partly our fault as we didn't read his letter carefully and missed the narrow window provided to avoid such a ditching) and I've had to wait eight weeks to get an initial appointment with another dentist, and I had to prepay over the phone when I made it, and that's as a private patient. NHS places are like hen's teeth, if you'll pardon the pun. Luckily the new dentist seemed nice. I've got to go in for a filling and a filling replacement (I am not lucky with my teeth, in spite of all my careful cleaning and flossing) so I guess we will see then how good she is. 

I finished Still Life - very glad I stuck with it. I haven't managed to pick up anything else yet. I read a bit of The Dice Man, after referring to it in conversation and remembering that, although I knew the premise well, I had never actually thumbed through it, thanks to Father Hand banning me from it as a child. I have read about a fifth of it but that's enough. It seems to be a 500-page wank. I'm sure plenty of people in their 30s have found themselves a bit bored and not resorted to handing all agency over to chance, with disastrous consequences for seemingly everyone except the narrator. I tried it, I understand why I wasn't allowed to read it aged 11 (I was a precocious reader as a child and he actually had to hide it from me but, on this one, I have to say I agree with Father Hand), I'm sorry I bothered to waste an hour on it. 

I've tried the start The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and of course I've got A Brief History of Seven Killings ready to go, but I did also pick up the new Thursday Night Murder Club yesterday and I think that seems the most realistic read for the month when marking begins. 

On The TV front, I have managed a lot. I finally finished The Crown. I finished Mary and George - enjoyable, I love Julianne Moore, but the swearing was so anachronistic I found it quite jarring. I binged the whole of season 4 of True Detective which had a deeply satisfying ending. I love Jodie Foster. I have made a start on season 2 of Bridgerton. 

So all this TV has supported the almost-finishing of Toplino, which is about two inches of sleeves away from being ready to wear. I still fear it's going to be a bit short so it needs a good blocking. Hopefully I can get those sleeves finished today.