2024 Weeknote 36

I'm in mark review purgatory. There isn't much time to say more.

Back to work. I've been to the gym every day. No knitting. Only television I've seen before. Falling into bed and immediately to sleep. I have read almost nothing but I have started taking the Conn Igulden book I started in May to my lunch duty in the toilets every day, because obvs I'm not eating lunch in the toilets. 

I did have my hair cut in the last week of the holidays and got to hang out with the niece. This was approximately 476 years ago. 

This week I'm off to Oxford for the day on Friday to start my masters!

2024 Weeknote 34

It has been a month that has included many swims, the seeing of sights, the catching of planes and trains and buses, the eating of gelato, the application of sun screen and the celebrating of my birthday - just a standard August. 

I returned from holiday towards the end of last week and have since spent my time mooching and doing, hmm, not sure what. I did all my washing, does that count? We packed up a load of rubbish and took it to the tip. I've been to the gym several times, completely obsessed with Brat (I'm so late to this party) as a workout album (I'm so old) to the point where I actually looked forward to it. Thursday was results day so I got to see everyone at work. Then I had to go to the doctor to be told I am now diabetic - news that they thoughtfully texted to me as I lay by a fancy hotel pool, on my actual birthday. I've therefore had quite a long time to process the news and it wasn't a surprise, given my genetics and size. Hopefully my new gym habit will help me in tackling it. 

On Thursday evening I drove to Portsmouth so that I could go to Victorious with Mother Hand yesterday. It was my first visit to the festival, though I'm still a bit sad I didn't make the effort to go last year, when Jamiroquai played. This year I swiped a ticket because the Friday acts included Snow Patrol and Fatboy Slim. We had a Friday brunch at our favourite cafe (this time the cafe lady did actually give me a hug and we friended each other on Facebook which was nice) and then headed down to the common. I wore a new Rosa Bloom acquisition and felt very festival-ready. 

We had a good wander around, had some tea at a stall, then Mother Hand went home for a nap and to feed to cat, while I sat in the sun at a picnic bench with a cider and read my book, periodically stopping for a musical interlude. Louis Tomlinson came on and complained that it was windy; I was sitting almost exactly where we used to have to play lacrosse all through the winter when I was at school and I thought, Louis, until you've been here in a PE kilt in January, you don't have anything to say. Idles were very good, as might be expected for a Bristol band. I teamed up with another woman on her own and we watched each other's stuff so we could go off to the loo or to buy food or more cider. Mother Hand returned for Snow Patrol and then I went and joined the crowds for Fatboy Slim. He is indeed getting on, but it was a great set and I was very pleased to see him live, 90s teen that I was. 

Yesterday I went to brunch with Mother Hand and her church friends and then for a quick dip before coming home. I always leave Portsmouth feeling a bit sad to leave, but must keep reminding myself that I am never having to go to work while I'm down there, so life can really be cafes and beaches and lie ins, and that I almost certainly wouldn't swim every day if I actually lived there full time. 

One more week of holidays and then it's back to school. 

2024 Weeknote 30

 A good holiday week indeed!

Two swims, as documented in Tuesday's post. Then a third swim in Bristol harbour, which I hadn't meant to book. I was quite grumpy. They were late starting again and wouldn't let me in without scanning the QR code, when I'd left my phone in my car. The lady at the desk held onto my phone when I asked if there was anywhere to securely store it. When I got out, she was trying to convince a passerby to come back and swim the next day - 'Use it or lose it!' she said. I'd love to use it. I'd be there every week. But you need to start on time, ideally have somewhere I can change (hats off to the old lady who went full frontal facing outwards along the path getting her nethers dry yesterday morning, cannot WAIT to be that age of not giving a damn) and also somewhere I can put my bag where I don't think someone will just lean over and nick it on their way past. It's £7.50 a swim and these are basics. I could also do without the loudspeaker pumping questionable musical choices but that's probably just me.

I am convinced All Aboard Watersports is secretly totally opposed to people swimming in the harbour. They just keep the whole thing really quiet and seem to be making it as hostile as they can.  

One paddle, aforementioned. 

Two trips to the library to collect one reserved book. A few months back my library card cracked in half, so the library replaced it. The new one had a new number but this didn't occur to me when I reserved a book I wanted online, using my old saved card details. I went to fetch it during their open access hours (no librarian on duty) and the computer said no. Bless that computer, it didn't realise that the person trying to check the book out was the same person who reserved it. It was trying to protect my reservation. 

I went back the next day and reached for my library card, which lives on the dash of my car...no card. I racked my brains. Eventually I realised I must have left it in the pocket of my dungarees, which were at that moment swirling in the washing machine. I (Mr Z) had to switch it off and pump it out to get the card back. 

I returned to the library, the librarian scratched her head a bit and looked uncomfortable when I told her not to delete my old account, but I've had a book on reservation for two months now and don't want to lose my place in the queue. I appreciate librarians and their commitment to good book service but I stood my ground. So I'm probably the only person in the southwest currently using two library accounts simultaneously. 

One coffee meet up with my friend Vanessa in Bradford on Avon, followed by lunch in the same spot with my friend Caroline. 'I've changed friends so she needs a menu,' I told the waiter, who looked completely confused momentarily and then burst out laughing. This is a ritual for Caroline and me, every time my old place of work breaks up. It feels like summer is really happening after this. 

One coffee meet up with my friend Charlotte, in a fantastic new cafe that has opened in the 'wood. Gentrification is in effect. It's still mercifully cheap, though. 

One yoga class, one PT session and one trip to the gym. I do enjoy the extra movement. My sore back enjoys it too.

One online shopping spree that I had been holding off for weeks: I got paid on Friday so I bought everything on the list, apart from the rug that has had its own tab in my browser window for easily a year now. I just need to bite the bullet and buy. 

Mother Hand is up and visiting because Mr Z and I are off to Devon for some camping today. It's our 18th wedding anniversary. We're currently sitting at our computers, he's playing online golf and I'm doing this. Pretty much sums up the past 18 years tbh. 

And the work is pretty much done! It was a long week of script inspection and report writing. I was full of the do-not-wants. But now it is over for another year and I feel like I blinked and missed it all. Rumours abound of big changes to our systems for next year...oh yey, more change...so perhaps I should be pleased for a nice smooth series this year.

I didn't really take any pictures this week. Most of them are screenshots. But here's Lenin asleep with Cecil (or Cyril, I forget), supervising my morning's work. 

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. 

2024 Weeknote 20

I had a very lovely weekend doing mainly middle-aged things, so much so that I didn't make it to my blog on time. I revelled in the activities of the old:

• Went to knitting group
• Went to two garden centres
• Planted seeds and bedding plants in pots (has to be pots because the rabbit does not have a healthy sense of his own mortality)
• Got up early to go and do old-lady breast stroke around the quarry
• Sat in the garden with a glass of wine and a book
• Baked a cake
• And the piece de resistance - I went into Holland and Barrett and used my loyalty points to buy a new herbal tea I'd never tried before

Can't wait for my free bus pass. 

I did manage ice cream for breakfast on Saturday though, so perhaps that is one in the other direction. My joint-favourite bakery in town has reawoken its soft-serve machine for the summer and I couldn't pass up the chance to try this month's flavour. 

I continued to read Still Life and my goodness, that is a good book. I was reading it on the train today and it made me cry. I need to stop reading books that make me cry on trains. 

I finished watching the Tattooist of Auschwitz but didn't really watch anything else. I did a bit more sleeve knitting, but half-heartedly. 

On Thursday, I went out to dinner with the faculty as one of us, Sophie, is leaving - has now left, actually. We went to a vegan mezze place we've been to before and I was delighted to bump into one of my ex-students, who shyly informed me that she has a place at Cambridge next year, to read history with French. What amazing news! I'm so pleased for her. I always get a bit sad about students who've moved on and I never get to hear what they do next. I suppose they can't all stay in touch but I love these stories. One of my year 13s gave me a card saying I was an inspirational woman, as well, which got me right in the feels.

Work was a bit better, still on my high from the conference at the weekend. I had a trust meeting with someone on Tuesday, though, who told me that if I worked hard on the course he's running, I might one day be a senior at an exam board. Oh, the dizzy heights of a job I've been doing for eight years! What an incentive! It was hard to arrange my face, but I think I managed it (I don't know if he would have clocked it anyway, my call froze three times during our meeting and he didn't even notice). But yeah, nice bit of patronising, just to keep me humble. 

It's another middle-aged thing, isn't it, being less willing to put up with other people spouting rubbish? So yeah, add that to the list above. 

2024 Weeknote 19

I have no excuse for not writing this yesterday, other than, yesterday, I agreed with myself that I could do as little as I liked. Consequently, there was some tidying and putting away of things that had been languishing in the wrong place since Christmas; there was a successful attempt as dismantling the floordrobe; there was a nap; and there was plenty of book-reading in the sun. Having said I would give up on Still Life, I decided to give it one last go and it suddenly got really good so now I can't put it down. I am rushing to get this finished so I can get through a bit more before bed. I do have a sneaking suspicion I should have read A Room With A View first, though. 

There was some TV watching last week - more Tattooist of Auschwitz - but not very much as I was busy trying to get a few little projects finished before the conference I went to over the weekend. One of those projects was the presentation I made on Friday so it was good that I managed to prioritise that. I might have finished my quiz round in the bar as we waited for the quiz to begin. However, it was all as successful as I wanted it to be. It's such a lovely event to hang out at: everyone is friendly and kind, people just start chatting to me out of nowhere and there's a good deal of very wholesome learning to be done as well. 

This year's historian was William Dalrymple who almost never speaks in the UK as he spends a large proportion of his time living in India. His talk was fascinating, even though I find he is a bit repetitive now I've read the books and listened to the podcasts. I suppose we can't expect everyone to come up with fresh material all the time, particularly when his was already a pretty fresh take on the history of the British in India. 

Naturally I made him take a picture with me for my wall of historians.

Other notable sessions included a scheme of work about why women are constantly accused of being mad when actually they're just being human beings, and an overview of student perceptions of the British Empire. Empire is my bag at the moment, I can't look away from it. I was quite stern with a very well-known history author and all-round legend during that session but this is the sort of thing that presses my buttons these days.

So, it was a very worky week, really. I didn't mind it. I feel like I'm emerging from my grouchy chrysalis. 

Rachael and I booked flights to Kazakhstan this week as well, which helped my motivation somewhat. The chance to ski outside of Europe, finally! Too exciting. 

The book is calling me. 

2024 Weeknote 18

My work motivation picked up a bit this week. I listened to a teaching podcast and that reminded me of some revision strategies I used to use with exam groups but had forgotten, so I spent all week doing those and they went down well. Yey me, I can teach after all. I've also been reflecting on what my role is going to be next year and how different parts of it fit together, so I can really make the most of the scant downtime I have when the exam classes leave and get lots of things planned.

Subconscious me is laughing heartily right now. The final term is always a school write-off because of the exam work, I can't think why conscious me can't quite grasp this. What does help is that, thanks to exam classes going, internal assessments and the PGCE student, I think I have around 20 lessons in total for the whole term...surely this bodes well for productivity. 

Lol.

I went to a cracking history lecture this week from the venerated Ron Hutton, who was speaking about the Tudors again. This lecture is a regular at this time of year as we approach the A-level exams and the audience was predictably full of students, including some of mine, which was pleasing as the topic is nothing to do with what we teach them, but as a lecturer he is exceptional. There were also lots of my ex-students in the crowd, who traitorously went off to study history elsewhere, but it was nice to see them anyway. Plus tonnes of colleagues and friends from the surrounding area. I haven't seen much of people this year but I didn't really notice until I was there and people were asking me where I'd been. Where have I been? Hard to say. Perhaps this is part of the transition from subject leader to senior leader. 

The lecture was, naturally, extremely entertaining and educational. There's something good about seeing lectures on topics that you know loads about: I find myself not scribbling down facts as if they were gospel but instead considering what facts have been left out and how well the historian makes his case. Hutton did refer to Boulogne as a third-rate port for the second year in a row, I wonder what they did to offend him. He also made an interesting point about Henry VIII conducting 330 political executions in 8 years - 'a possible record for peacetime England'. 

It was a very historical week as I also went to see Hamilton on Saturday, with a couple of knitting group friends and a couple of school friends, tied to a lunch at Pieminister. I had a bit of trouble getting in as I hadn't managed to get all the tickets to scan (a long story) but thankfully it was OK in the end and I missed barely any of it. The show was spectacular, as you might imagine. Seeing it live was much better than watching it on Disney+. I have to dissent from popular opinion here and say I didn't think it was a great musical: the songs are very fast so I struggled to follow some of it (maybe this is how it's meant to be though, like opera) and I am never a big fan of musicals that have no dialogues (Les Mis, I mean you). It's also the nichest bit of history to focus on, but then I guess that was kind of the point. 

I made basically no progress on Still Life and have decided I need to give it up for now and move onto a book I am actually interested in, or all of May will have passed with no reading. I have also moved onto a friendlier audiobook, Restless Republic by Anna Keay - an interesting listen so far. 

We watched all of Baby Reindeer and it was as excruciating as I'd expected; I'm left wondering where Richard Gadd as to go from here, and my colleagues have joined the 'real Martha' carnival and are reading all her posts online. We tried to watch Oppenheimer yesterday but in the end had to admit that neither of us were into it...it felt like a series of trailers, one after another. In general if a movie has music playing in the background almost all the time, I can tell it's not going to suit me. We started watching the Tattooist of Auschwitz and I was reminded to look up the second series of World on Fire because it's the same actor...I loved the first series but I assume the later ones have gone onto a streaming service. I also watched the first episode of Mary and George, on a recommendation from a student. I love Julianne Moore so this was a treat. 

I'm onto the sleeves of the Topolino I'm knitting. I'm not loving it - worries about it being too big, not long enough, the lace falling in the wrong place, the neckline being too baggy, not wanting to wear it and therefore wasting what it turning out to be some of the nicest yarn I've ever knitted with....all conspire to prevent me from finishing. But finish I will. I can always rip it out if I don't wear it, after all. 

And today I went for a swim. It was just over 13 degrees but felt colder. I managed two short laps before telling myself it was ok to stop; by that point I was acclimatised but it seemed sensible to get out as, naturally, I started to tell myself that if it no longer felt cold, I might be hypothermic. Hypochondria really is an age thing. 

It would have been nicer if it was sunny but I arrived just before the swim session started and the whole quarry was like a sheet of glass. It is definitely good for me, in many ways. 

2024 Weeknote 17

I'd like to say that work malaise has lifted this week but it hasn't, really. My motivation is so low that that it's able to limbo right underneath my work pile, which is going to become a problem if I can't find some this week. The crushing crescendo was Friday when I gave some students detention for being late to a cover lesson being taught next door to my own and they went to a colleague to complain about me all breaktime; 'I just don't want her to talk to me' was the main mood. Hey kid! I'd rather not talk to you either but this is in your power yknow - be on time! Wear the right uniform! Do what people are asking you to do!

Happily, the colleague that they chose to complain to is one of my work besties so that is always good. 

I need to stop fixating on the fact that I still have time to resign. 

It was a pretty quiet week socially, as I was away for the weekend. I went to yoga, because my leg is getting better, phew. But then I overstretched my hip and that hurt. Eyeroll. I watched the rest of True Detective 3 and I really liked it. I liked the fact it was mostly about human relationships but I didn't really notice that until the final episodes, because I was so fixated on the murder mystery. I liked the relationship between Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff. I thought Stephen Dorff's bald cap in the later scenes was a bit suspect (it didn't move when his forehead did) but it was a small thing. Mostly I like seeing the relationship unfold between Ali and Carmen Ejogo: it felt immensely human. 

Now I've started Baby Reindeer which feels like it's going to be excruciating to watch. 

I haven't made much progress on my books. I finished the Bourdain and started The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, but it was a bit heavy-going for me this week so I switched to music for my commutes instead. 

I had a lovely, lovely weekend away with knitting group at the end of this nothingy week. We went back to the bunkhouse and spent the weekend pottering, knitting, crocheting, spinning, basking in front of the fire, eating cake and chatting. I was looking back through old Wonderwool posts and divined that this was the tenth annual weekend trip we have made, our first being in 2013 but with two years lost to covid. I should maybe look back through my stash and work out how much yarn I have left from all these trips but, nah. 

The group helped me with my blanket construction. I have finished my 130 hexagons and was at a loss about how to connect them. So we laid them all out and they helped me divide into first three, then two piles and did the maths for me about how large it might be. I bought a blocking device today so now I just have to work out how to crochet them together. 

Full WW post to follow, with the new stash. Here I am, glorying in the layout for one of the planned blankets.

With thanks to Claire for the picture :D

2024 Weeknote 16

What a grind this week has been, going back to work. My leg has been sore and getting sorer (nine weeks, now, since that ill-advised bit of off-piste, ugh), the nasty throat thing I had while I was skiing this month has become the most irritating tiny persistent cough with accompanying gravel voice, I have just wanted to eat everything in sight and I've been so weary that every waddling movement has felt like an effort. I've been down to the cafe near school to get a coffee or a snack on more than one occasion, when I usually reserve this for just Tuesday breaktime when I teach sixth form. I keep forgetting to bring marking home (genuinely forgetting, too), so I cancelled my attendance at a history lecture I really wanted to see on Wednesday only to then realise I could have gone because I hadn't brought the work home to do anyway, and on Thursday after parents' evening, I lay on the bed for nearly an hour looking at my phone before finally giving up and going to bed. 

Once again I thought I must be ill but once again I must remind myself - it's the first week of a new term. 

Thankfully, Thursday's early night did me some good and Friday was better. I watched some interviewees teach. I've dealt with increasing levels of panic from my exam classes who all would prefer me to run extra sessions with them to revise - sorry kids, revision also has to happen at home you know. I've had a good idea to tackle a problem I've been wrestling with for most of the time I've been doing my current role. The sun has been out and I've been able to sit in the garden a bit. The front-garden camelia is looking glorious. 

I am making great progress on Topolino and think I might be done with the body of it, bar the lower edge. I think the pattern is going to suggest finishing it with four rounds of st-st but I am not about the roll so will need to adjust that. I am toying with adding another lace repeat but don't want it to be too long; I suppose it's a question of whether I'd rather rip back or add on. Definitely rip back, I think, so maybe another lace repeat is good. The reflection from the picture frame caught the knitting just perfectly yesterday to illuminate the colour, I love it. 

I made slow reading progress on Still Life but fast progress through Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential on audiobook, which is very entertaining. We finished Game of Thrones and started season 3 of True Detective; Mr Z does not remember watching the first two but I remember that we liked the first one by not the second. We had knitting group yesterday so I got some cheese (there is a great nearby cheese shop) and then went to a makers' market in Staple Hill on the way home, where I bought a stupidly frivolous gold sequinned cap with orange fringing. I have no use for such a garment but it was so lovely. I suppose I have got a festival ticket booked for Victorious, I can wear it for Fatboy Slim. 

And this morning I went cold swimming for the first time this year.

I don't think I've ever seen the water level this high; they were flooded earlier this year, apparently. It was 11.9 degrees. Rachael did not bring her wetsuit and I managed not to be horrified about this because I knew that, if I was, she wouldn't get in. Hats off to her, she got in and also convinced me to do a second (small) lap. She had a place for the marathon today and deferred it, so her mantra was 'it's not a marathon'. Funnily enough I did actually get used to the cold this time, which is a good indication that it is about warm enough to swim in, so I guess this marks the beginning of swim season. 

Lopes

Sometimes, a name hangs around in your brain.

When I started teaching, the school I was at had a unit on slavery that focused on the local town hall, which by then housed a law firm and a takeaway, if I recall correctly. My HoD had done some research into the area and discovered that the town hall had been built by some Devon landowner in order to ingratiate himself to the locals after he had purchased the right to name both MPs in the district. His name was Manasseh Masseh Lopes and the name stuck in my head because I was never sure if the pronunciation was lopes as in 'He lopes across his family plantation, surveying the extent of their sugar holdings' or lopes as in 'Senor Lopes'. The unit students studied considered whether the area should acknowledge the slave trade connection of this building. He'd been born in Jamaica in 1755 so it was pretty clear where their family wealth had come from. 

Some years later I saw, probably during a particularly in-depth wiki rabbit hole on an evening when I should have been marking, that (now Queen) Camilla's daughter's surname was Lopes. How interesting! That name isn't very common. I ran down the next rabbit hole and found her new husband was also from the southwest. How interesting! Not much more digging needed to be done to find he was indeed descended from the Lopes of the town hall fame. I texted my HoD and he was flabbergasted that I'd even remembered the name, let alone made the connection. So the knowledge got filed somewhere in my brain.

But when one of the influencers I follow on Insta did an interview on her business podcast with Katie Lopes, one of the founders of a popular knicker brand, the name rang that bell in my head again.

Interestingly, this was a lot harder to bloodhound my way through. But I was motivated. Katie Lopes has done quite a lot of interviews now where she talks about the difficulties of being a female entrepreneur, that she has to do it as a single mum, that her vile-sounding ex-husband saddled her with £1.5m of debt that she didn't even know about because he was so toxic, how she was able to raise sponsorship for Stripe & Stare against the odds, and so on. This is all admirable. As the daughter of a single parent and one supportive of and interested in female entrepreneurs, I take my hat off to her, really. It is really impressive that she's managed to achieve this. 

But.

That name. Hasn't that name helped?

I'm not really about the aristocracy talking about how success in business is '90% grit'. I think back to my single mother when I was a teenager and how the conversation might have gone if I'd told her, hey Mum, if you were just a bit tougher and had a bit more drive, you too could win millions in investment and start up a very successful knicker company. What an excessively cruel and crushing message that would have been for her to hear. Even with Mother Hand's endless patience, I fear homelessness would have been my next move. 

So, I started to try to find out more about Katie, to see if she was indeed connected to the Lopes family of which I was already aware. I think she's quite careful. There's not much about her online that you'd stumble across unless you were specifically trying to find a connection. The fact she was raised in Devon was a pretty big clue and thankfully The Peerage did not let me down: the Honourable Katie, to use the full title she was born with, is indeed the daughter of the Third Baron Roborough, making her the sister of the current one and the cousin-in-law of the king's stepdaughter. There are no pictures, so I couldn't be certain it was the same Katie Lopes, but then I found a Telegraph announcement of her marriage (this connection also listed on The Peerage and also that man's name, mate, did you not guess he was a wrongun from the start?) and then an interview with her in her married name, which does have pictures of her, looking like a younger version of the Katie Lopes doing the rounds of female-business-owner-friendly media. 

(Why yes, I do have marking to do, why do you ask?)

I'm just quite disappointed that I haven't found this background acknowledged in anything I've read or heard about her, if I'm honest. I'm not naive enough to think that every scion of a peerage is sitting on huge inherited wealth. I'm sure the family didn't just reach down the back of its sofas to pay her ex-husband's debts and fund her new business - sarcastic as that sounds, I mean it. I bet she has worked really hard and she should be really proud. 

But when people who move in circles of very privileged people then spend quite a lot of time chatting about how they've had to 'build everything back from scratch' and anyone can do it if they just 'fuck everything they've ever been told', it properly grates. It's disingenuous and not supportive of other women trying to make it in business that don't have the privilege of knowing people who know people, or knowing people who can vouch for them. If you're not acknowledging the privilege granted by your background in conversations like this, you're not doing it right. It doesn't undermine your success. Privilege does not equate to business success. But when it's unacknowledged, that does undermine it, in my opinion - what are you trying to hide? 

I read a story this week about a woman having to give up her beloved pet dog because she's being made homeless, through no fault of her own. It made me a bit tearful. Try telling her she just needs grit to build back from nothing, when what she really needs is a relative or close friend with a property big enough to have an empty summer house or a second home somewhere, or enough money in their own property to go guarantor for her. I bet Katie had a few of those. 

I wonder when the next Lopes will pop up in my life?

2024 Weeknote 15

I had a hermit's dream of a few days away in London this week. 

I stayed at a fabulous little historic pub in Greenwich, called the Prince of Greenwich, which provided a huge squashy bed with lots of pillows, lots of peace and quiet, a kitchenette for preparing one's own meals (I did not use it but it was a good space), a small black kitten boss and superb Italian food for dinner one night. I was a bit nervous about it being noisy because, yknow, pub, but it seems to no longer be a pub but more of a restaurant, so it was closed by 10pm every night. It was one of those classic British pubs which was stuffed full of every curio you can imagine and the sign for the ladies' toilet said, 'Women are always right' which I loved. 

I went to three exhibitions/museums while I was there, starting with the Entangled Pasts exhibition at the Royal Academy, which looks at how art played a part in shaping our perceptions of empire, enslavement and colonialism. It was full of historic art and contemporary pieces and it was very much up my alley. I am full of examples of how the British Empire has shaped pretty much every institution and aspect of British culture, so hearing from the RA about how their own existence owes much to this period was music to my ears. 

Then on Wednesday, I went to the National Maritime Museum and the Museum of London, Docklands, both places which have been on my list to visit for a very long time and both places which added a huge amount of context to the story of the British Empire that I've been teaching. I think the NMM just pipped the MoL to the favourite spot but I could easily have spent a whole day in either place. Woe that they are so far east, it makes it a tricky place to go to on a day trip. However, I am going to need to go back to NMM because there is a lot I didn't see and at least one other museum that I didn't go into, as part of the complex, so plenty more learning to do.

I think my favourite anecdote from across the museum exhibits was probably this -

The mind boggles at how a man might be so 'ill-used' in a brothel as to occasion his death. I can only assume they meant he caught syphilis. 

On Tuesday night I went to the National Theatre to see Underdog: The Other Other Bronte, which popped up in my Facebook ads while I was in Austria. It was a fantastic piece of theatre. Firstly, the stage/theatre itself was small and I was sat quite near the stage so it felt like I was almost a part of it; secondly, I think the three main actors must have put an incredible amount of time into rehearsing and getting comfortable with each other, because they played sisters really well. Charlotte was played by Gemma Whelan who is fresh in my mind from my rewatch of Game of Thrones and she began the play in the audience, asking people what their favourite of her books was. 'Harry Potter, what?!' she quipped at one point. 

Other notable points of the trip included catching the Uberboat from Greenwich to Embankment, feeling like Elizabeth I; a visit to Liberty for a scarf and some new Jones Road make up (their counter girls were so rude last time, I almost didn't go, but I really wanted to try a face pencil and needed matching. A much better experience this time, thankfully); a haircut; a lunch with Mother Hand and Sib to mark Father Hand's passing; and hanging out with the niblings. I also read two books, finishing Lone Women (creepy and wonderful) and Copper Sun by Sharon M Draper, which offered an interesting perspective on where runaway enslaved people might have journeyed in 18th century America. I've started The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla and Still Life by Sarah Winman. I caught up on lots of recorded TV - how is it already interviews week on The Apprentice and how did I miss a whole series of Sort Your Life Out? - and slept a lot too. 

Family snap.

Now, I suppose, I'm ready to go back to work. 

2024 Weeknote 14

So, as it turned out, writing a personal blog post was not something I had time to do last weekend and it has been a busy week indeed. Ski trip number 14 was not beset with the same extreme delays as number 13 - far from it, we got an earlier crossing in both directions - but it had its own issues. We were one staff member down as one of us fell really sick the day before we were due to leave. On Monday, it rained heavily for the whole day and we had to cut our skiing short and go bowling instead, or risk a mutiny from the students. I came down with a horrible cough/throat thing and had to avoid skiing for a day and cut the next day short so I could go back to the hotel to sleep. Our instructors were quite old and struggled to keep up with the students, and refused to take us to the glacier to ski. I was woken up near midnight two nights in a row, first by one of the drivers (drunk) bringing women into the hotel and giggling with them in the corridor; then by a woman coming to knock on the rep's door at nearly midnight, and then going inside to have some noisy sex with him. Cue me lying awake until well past 2am, panicking about how she got into the hotel and who else might therefore be able to get in. I penned a stiff email to the tour operator and the next day, the woman (it turned out she was on the hotel staff) was fired, the rep was forced to switch rooms with one of the drivers and the hotelier had a permanent scowl. He made a point of coming to chat with me about how angry he was with the rep. 

The rep asked me to ask the hotelier to give the woman her job back. She wasn't a professional, he insisted, as the hotelier had suggested. She was a single mother of two. This was a small valley and she would struggle to find another job. She was young and a bit stupid. As the rep was neither young nor stupid, I had to bite back my instant reply which was, 'I'm very much over men making awful choices and women suffering the lion's share of the consequences, why don't you clean up your own mess by inviting her to live with you in Vienna, if you feel that bad?'

I did plan to have a word but the hotelier was notably absent for the rest of the trip. A shame indeed. Not that I think I could have made a difference. My main issue was strangers in the hotel so the fact that she worked there mitigated that. But once I'd complained there was no going back.

Anyway.

There were some really good bits too. Beating my top time down the mountain and finally breaking 80kph, after years of trying - Rachael said that she was stood near two people on the side of the piste when I did this and they broke their conversation to marvel at my speed. I bought new goggles and then the driver took them back for me to get the magnetic tag removed, what a nice thing to do. Kaiserschmarrn and those Austrian ski wafers. Sipping coffee in a Guess-sponsored mountain hotel whilst watching a hardcore Austrian walk up the mountain in front of us. Fun with the drivers who were Irish and generally lovely although very fond of a beer (not before driving, obvs). They took us to the wrong hotel to start with, two hours away from ours, and then we got stuck in a traffic jam getting back to the main road, but even that was fun. 

The students decided this was how we wore our hair for the slopes. I didn't hate it. 

I finished the book I was reading, The Ottoman Secret. It improved as it went on. I felt like it was a bit of a moral defence of western democracy which, given the current state of western democracy, did not thrill me, but it was a good yarn. I've started a new one, Lone Women by Victor LaValle. It is a horror set in homesteading Montana at the start of the 20th century. It's making me want to reread Annie Proulx's short stories. 

Naturally not much else happened in terms of leisure. I did finish knitting the front panels for my nephew's Presto Chango and managed to adequately reproduce the Notts Forest logo, as that is Sib's team.  

It's a bit pointier than I'd like but tough to do a big rounded tree over such a small number of stitches. 

Off to London tomorrow for some museums and a play. Very exciting. 

2024 Weeknote 12

I began the week with a spectacularly early start so I could get to Birmingham for a meeting. It is really very easy to get the train anywhere from Bristol Parkway, what with the large and reasonable car park, and if you're on the train at 6.45am, the traffic is non-existent too. The meeting was interesting and finished predictably early, which meant I say around at Birmingham New Street for an hour, in spite of walking the half hour back to the station and then having a shop in Selfridges, because school told me that the Trainline had 'run out' of flexible tickets. A shameless lie, but of course they had already booked the advanced ticket by the time they told me this. When I tried to get it changed, the man at the station told me it was £30, which considering the singles there and back totalled £52, was a rip off. 

I've got to go again in June. I will be driving. Parkway is easy enough but as for the rest of it...bleuch. 

That said, on my way home from the station, I stopped for petrol and thought my front tyres looked a bit bald, and upon closer inspection, found a nail driven into one of them. We have a neighbour who has form for this but I don't think I've done anything to upset him recently. Mr Z took my car in the next day so I had to get the bus in to work, meaning I arrived at 6.59am, which is too early for anyone to be to work tbh. When I got home, Mr Z said there was also a nail in one of my rear tyres (he tried to make this sound like it could have been an unhappy accident but my money is definitely on the neighbour). I'm saving those for when I am away skiing next week. I can't do any more pre-6am get ups this close to a holiday. 

We interviewed for staff for my department this week and got two really good ones, so that was nice. One of them is already working with us on a temp contract and I really thought he was a shoo-in but, on the day, someone else did a stronger interview. Luckily I came up with a solution so we could have both. The stronger candidate, as it turned out, had been in to do some pre-teaching observations with me in my first year at the school and liked it enough to want to come back. I used to say yes to absolutely anybody who asked back in those days, when it was a bit easier (no escorting to the toilet), because I was so lonely as the sole subject teacher. It's nice to know that it bears fruit. 

We are reaching the end of Better Call Saul - three episodes left. We speeded up a bit so we could get it in before I go away on Friday. It really is exceptional TV and it makes me want to visit Albuquerque again, even though Albuquerque isn't the sort of place one goes on holiday. I bet there's a Better Call Saul locations tour though. And there's skiing only a few hours away. Maybe one day...in my copious free time. 

I am continuing to make good progress on Topolino and am about four inches into the body now. 

As always, the blue isn't quite right in this picture - it is a little more turquoise. The yarn is 10% linen which gives it a lovely rustic look. I'm supposed to knit to 7 inches and then start the lace section, but I think I'm going to knit to 5 inches instead. I'm finding that a lot of my 4-ply sweaters are just a smidge too long these days and I'm not sure if this is because I've knitted them a bit long or because they've grown. The Ravelry notes on this yarn (Madelinetosh Dandelion) say it grows with blocking so I am going for a scant 12 inches instead of the recommended 14. I can always make the bottom longer. 

I do love a boatneck and an Isabell Kraemer pattern but I am already thinking about how I'm going to finish the collar on this. One round of purl and bind off is not going to be the one. I already have one Isabell Kramer 4-ply jumper that slides off the shoulder and nobody needs to be looking like they're in an 80s dance movie that often. 

It was a very relaxing weekend, tbh. I drove into town and bought pastry treats and some hot cross buns from Farro. I packed for skiing and made some granola, as is my ritual. I finished work on the two exam papers I had left so they are all ready to go. I didn't do any school work, which may turn out to be a mistake - more interviews tomorrow. 

Next weekend I will attempt to weeknote from Austria...we will see. I don't want to take a laptop and the Blogger app really isn't friendly. I'll give it a go. 

2024 Weeknote 11

I am getting later and later with these but I am determined!

I went to Birmingham on Friday night with Rachael and we had a nice brief hotel stay before going to an education conference on Saturday. I've been a few times before but it was interesting to go now that I am preparing for/doing a senior role. The sessions are largely generic, whereas the vast majority of the training I attend is subject-specific, so it had lost its shine for me. But it's very shiny now! Loads of ideas to come away with and it was lovely to go with someone as well, because we got to natter about the sessions with each other afterwards. And then we got to go to Gloucester Services on the way home as well. 

I made good progress on the Topolino sweater and divided for the armholes on Sunday. This indicates that progress will now slow right down but I have been picking away at it this week. I need to go back to my nephew's toddler cardigan but I am sort of saving that for the ski trip.

Books and TV series continued as last week. There was a busy parents evening and an attempt at yoga, which my still-poorly hamstring....I know it's not surprising to anybody that being older makes healing such a long process, least of all me (lest we forget the time when I fell off a paddleboard in summer 2020 and my coccyx hurt until roughly January 2022) but that doesn't make it any less damn frustrating....complained about, so I had to do a lot of weird, made-up poses. Skiing again in under two weeks so I am hoping I don't make it any worse. 

I've had two crack-of-dawn starts in a row but I'll tell you all about that next weekend, or else these weeknotes are going to become a mixture of fortnight notes and day notes. 

All my pictures last week are screenshots of social media because I didn't really do anything. My magnolia did finally flower though. Four years it's been in the ground and it finally got there. I have some pictures of that but I am not sure where they are. Something for next week's post. 

2024 Weeknote 10

It was a busy old week. I drove to Walsall on Thursday night for a trust meeting on Friday, then drove straight on to Wales to join the bunkhouse sprucing volunteer party. I spent all day Saturday cleaning and this was more blissful than it sounds. The meals were all cooked for me, the woodburner kept stoked and there was barely any internet so it was delightfully peaceful. The rest of the work party were mostly decades older, mostly male and mostly retired teachers with a heavy predilection for outward bound - hence their love of the bunkhouse - and it was sort of nice to be back in this quaint time where it's perfectly acceptable to say that, since it's international women's day, perhaps the international women should wash up? Cute. Woman clean. Man fix things with drill. All know their place. I didn't mind it for a weekend and I dutifully donned the marigolds...someone else had cooked, after all. Also I am shockingly bad at DIY. I don't care enough to do it well. 

In solidarity, I invited the other woman from the volunteer party to come along with us to Wonderwool next month. 

I drove home earlyish on Sunday because I had an interview on Monday, for an internal role, the one I am currently doing. I got the job. Both pleased and disappointed, as this means I will definitely be working and doing a Masters at the same time next year. I guess we'll suck it and see. 

I finished Prisoners of Geography on the drive home from Wales. In the end, I didn't like it much. It was very interesting but, having now listened to quite a lot of non-fiction about the continent of Africa, I found what he had to say to be quite narrow-minded. This was not helped by the narrator who had quite the public school accent. I'm sure a lot of well-educated people will take comfort from the narrative that Africa is underdeveloped because of its unlucky geography but I don't buy it. When he referred to Jared Diamond as 'that most lucid of writers', I realised this was not really the book for me. 

I've moved on to one from my favourite genre of audiobook, women escaping from religious cults: Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young. The Children of God sound like a particularly unpleasant bunch of people, or at least they were in the 1990s, but it has given me some fodder to discuss with my students when it comes to the limits that should (or should not) be placed on personal freedoms for adults. 

I've been knitting away at a new jumper, Topolino, that I cast on just before the Great Hexagon Knit, and I'm about 16 rows off dividing the sleeves and body. I have creeping dread about not having finished my nephew's latest Presto Chango, but I am afraid it will be too big and it will go into the black hole of knitwear that my sister-in-law doesn't want to put on her children. Trying not to feel aggrieved about this, they are her kids after all. 

I feel like other things must have happened last week. There were two leaving parties on Monday, one for some school colleagues and one, on Zoom, for an exam board colleague. On Tuesday I had another exam board meeting after school but it didn't go on too long. I watched a lot of Better Call Saul and Game of Thrones...now into the epic sixth season of GoT which I probably think is the best. 

And nobody pulled my hair last week so that is a definite win. 

2024 Weeknote 9

Another quite quiet week. I brought very little work home and found that I had plenty of time to finish my blanket hexagons (all done now and ends sewn in on over half of them, hurrah!) and continue with Better Call Saul and Game of Thrones. I had a sports massage on the dodgy hamstring - defo a hamstring, it seems, and not the ACL, which has felt better since though still a little twingey. I gave blood, my 22nd donation, completed in 7 mins 48sec, which is quite slow for me but I probably haven't been drinking enough water this week.

I had a bad school day on Friday with some students who were verbally quite abusive and then one of them ever so slightly pulled my hair. This sounds like a small thing but it is a big thing when it happens. The idea that a student could cross a line and make physical contact with me does not make me feel particularly safe, so I'll be following that up robustly next week. At the same time, I'm writing my application letter for the permanent senior role and, once again, considering whether I really want to be in a job where children think this is an acceptable way to behave towards other human beings, let alone their teachers. 

Timehop reminds me, though, that this term is always the worst for my personal morale. In this term, over the past 20 years, I was passed over for a pay rise, passed over for a promotion, shouted at by a colleague for doing things differently to how she would have done them and put on a support plan because of a single lesson observation. But this is also the term when I've got new jobs, run the ever-popular murder mystery weekend and prepared for lots of ski trips. A hinge point in the year, clearly. Lows but lots of highs.

I finished An Inspector Calls on audiobook and started Prisoners of Geography, which begins with a chapter on why Russia thinks it has to control Ukraine - particularly interesting as this is a few years old now and pre-dates the current conflict. 

I'm off to Bristol Lido now for a spa and a massage. This is sponsored by a generous voucher from the parents of last year's ski trippers: another positive to dwell on. 

2024 Weeknote 8

It's been a bit of a nothing week. Term started but I found myself a bit listless and struggled to get much done, partly because I was quite literally listless - everything on my list was either massive and unstartable without taking some time to break it down, or tiny and over in a flash. I had a ski meeting on Monday night and an exam board meeting on Wednesday, and took my hurty leg (which I now think might be an over-extended ACL, following a conversation with someone at work) to a gym session at which we just did upper body. I'm actually missing my usual gym routine, even though it wasn't particularly often, so I've got a physio session booked in next week. 

I did resign from my permanent job. This isn't quite the news that is seems to be, because I will apply for a senior role when it's advertised internally and I am about 70/30 sure I'll get it. For various reasons, though, it was sensible to quit what I no longer have any desire to return to and the thought that I might not get the senior role and then I might have next year off is as comforting as thinking that I will get it. I can't lose. I was also approached about being involved in a bid to do some work across the region over the next three years, led by a woman I have wanted to work with for a while, and the head is happy to support me in this so that was an exciting whiff of the future as well.

I finished The Vanishing Witch and started a new book called The Ottoman Secret, which is set in an alternative reality where the Ottoman Empire defeated Vienna and went on to conquer Europe. It's OK but I realised when I started it that the main recommender, on the front cover, is Lee Child - I wouldn't normally read this genre. But it might be good to branch out.

I finished the outstanding How the Word is Passed and liked it so much that I ordered a physical copy as well. It's World Book Day soon and we've been asked to read to all our classes that day from a favourite book, so I will choose that one. I've got a couple of new audiobooks in the wings but think I will next be listening to An Inspector Calls because that's the team dress-up for World Book Day and I should probably know what it's about.

I am really, really close to finishing the hexagon blanket - just two more hexagons to go. And then the sewing in, and the blocking, and the sewing up. It is too big to lay out on the sitting room floor, I can't imagine how big it will be once they're all blocked. 

The different colours down the right-hand side are piles of hexagons in the colourways where I didn't have two full skeins of yarn - mostly these are piles of 4; I'm not totally sure how to incorporate them yet. I think it's interesting how similar the two colourways in the middle look, both quite pale grey. They are not the same, the upper one being Winter is Coming, which is the one I still need to finish (hence the gaps) and the lower one being A River Runs Through It. 

Lenin came to do his inspection and he found it passable. 

This weekend was the last chance I had to get out in my kayak if I wanted to meet my resolution, so yesterday I duly strapped it onto the roof of my car and set off in search of water. They turned out to be ill omens that I got the ratchets ratchetting first time and that the sun came out as I set off. My first attempt, down by Hanham Mills, would certainly have resulted in the loss of my kayak and/or my death as the water was very high (the pier was higher than the bank) and flowing at considerable speed. I nearly went home but then decided it was too nice a day to waste, so I headed to Bristol harbour, as I thought the water would be calmer. Probably it was but I never found out because the road to my usual spot was closed. I probably could have reached it via another route, but by that point I had been driving around for the better part of an hour and I would have probably managed 20 minutes on the water before I needed to reload to make it home before dark.

So I have failed in my resolution, but not for want of trying. There was a huge puddle in the Hanham car park, maybe I should have put it in there. My PT suggested that such a choice might help me become an internet sensation, though, and I think that's best avoided.