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.