Weeknote 8

I'm amazed I forgot to weeknote last weekend. I had so many witty things to say, after school got cancelled on Friday because of Storm Eunice and our senior team told us to set only distance work involving revision; I only had exam classes to teach that day anyway, so it was a speedy process. I spent Friday tying up loose ends and finishing my paper setting, so I had the whole weekend free. But here we are, a week later. I was pretty fixated on the intricacies of the ski holiday, to be fair. It was weirdly stressful going away for the first time in such a long, long time. Two years since the last skiing and the last time out of the country! Unbelievable. 

I won't go back and recreate, because the last week of term was a predictable whirlwind, even with one day fewer. I did catch a second wind, happily, so it wasn't as grim as the previous week, and I managed to get quite a lot done, in terms of work. I had my mid-year appraisal and my LM was very lovely to me. Winner. 

This week..

Working:

Barely a dot of it. I came into half term with my lowest marking load ever, thanks to the 20 minutes resolution. I had intended to get it all finished in my Friday frees but, since Friday was all free, naturally I did not. So, this weekend I have finished off some Y12 essays and done some revisions on my papers, ready for round 2. A bit of non-school admin work; check the school emails for anything important; do some planning for the biggish jobs that are coming up this term. In the past week I have done a little A-level reading, though not really enough. It's been very lazy. Bliss.

Exercising:

Three solid days of skiing counts as pretty good exercise to me!

Hobbying:

I finished Cloud Atlas which very quickly went from being a bit of a slog to something I couldn't stop reading. It wasn't an easy read: I couldn't speed through much before bedtime and some of it gave me nightmares, but I loved it. I watched the film version last night, because I was interested to see how they managed to wrap it into a film-length chunk. The answer - not well, but they shifted the main focus of the book to be about love and relationships. Everything ends up the same way, just with different routes there. Still, I am very glad I read the book before seeing the film, as it would have ruined it. 

I took hexagons away to knit, but did not knit any. Very little crafting happened this week. 

Holidaying:

We spent Monday-Friday in Les Carroz. It's the same place I went skiing with Rachael and a few others from school in December 2019. This time there was a lot more snow and so everything was open. The other two were complete beginner and very inexperienced, respectively, so I spent the week bombing around the trails on the Villages lift pass rather than venture over to Flaine. It was lovely. I love a trail and it was so pretty and relaxing to ski about, taking pictures, listening to the snow melt out of the trees, enjoying the sunshine and not feel pressure to cover x amount of pistes or go as fast as possible. I attempted to relax a bit about timings: I'm so used to getting out for the first lift that it felt weird to hang back, but had to keep reminding myself that it was a holiday and not a time to force myself to do anything I didn't want to. I extended that to the final day, when I didn't ski but instead, had a nice breakfast and sat in the sun with my book. Blissful. 

We also went to the Aquacime for a much-needed spa and swim halfway through the week, coincidentally on the day of the ski show, so we were treated to a firework display through the steam of the outdoor pool, which we had entirely to ourselves. Just amazing. What a week. 

Six weeks until the next one...

Feeling:

Very relaxed and looking forward to the next term. I've got a few interesting things happening and the term ends a day early, thanks to the extra day for the Jubilee, so it is likely to feel very short after the 7-week whopper we've just dragged ourselves through.