2026 Week 25

It's been a week of exam work, with a little dissertation work wedged in around the edges. Oh, and school, obvs. 

School is weird. What I'm doing looks like it's being successful, I'm told by my boss it's being successful, but the trust don't want me to continue doing it, so my role might change for next year. I'm trying to resist this, for a variety of reasons, but ultimately need to remember something I say often to other people: I work for them, they get to choose what I do. A few conversations have been had. In one of these conversations, I plucked up the courage to tell the Head that I think next year needs to be my last year in teaching for a while. I've been thinking it for so long without saying it that I could feel myself blushing and hear the blood in my ears. I know this isn't the same as resigning and I'll still be in role for another year, but I feel like I've started the countdown. I don't want to leave my school but I don't think I can continue to work for this MAT. I don't have it in my to lie down and shut up. 

So, a lot of the week has also been spent mentally calculating my living expenses and mourning the future loss of my monthly salary. I will be financially fine but I kind of like being paid every month, you know? I expect interesting projects will come along once I have capacity for them. Mr Z has also pointed out that I haven't been particularly happy at work for about two years, which I hadn't really noticed (I realise how stupid this sounds but sometimes it does take someone else to say these things out loud to recognise them). So I think I am ready to start letting it go. 

I spent Wednesday at the university for a training day, with my good friend Jonty who does my job at another school, so we get this nice catch up every year now. A couple of other friends I haven't seen for a while were there as well, so nice to see people, especially at this time of year when it feels like all my communication is with people I mark with and all by email or text. 

I went to the sauna, to hot yoga and for a quarry swim. No Sunday gym, I am out of the habit now but I am not being down on myself about it, it will come back when I've got through the dissertation work. We continued with the second season of The Pitt until we ran out of episodes; I've been watching the new series of Amandaland which is almost too awkward for me to cope with, but I love Lucy Punch in it. No knitting. Bit of Dracula reading. 

TLDR - not a very interesting week but it might turn out to be an important one, in the long run. 

2026 Week 24

It has been a predictably busy few weeks. 

In half term, I went to Oxford for the week. It was a very productive trip. First of all, I found a new library that I hadn't been into before; it turns out that it was only opened in October last year, which explains why I had never been in, even though it is under 10 minutes' walk from where I stay and open 9-9. I spent a very long day in there, as well as hitting All Souls and the Rad Cam, my two long-standing favourites; I ate at my favourite breakfast, lunch and dinner spots; I walked in University Parks. My Oxford swansong. I booked an additional night there just before dissertation hand in and also discovered I can get a Bodleian libraries card as an alumna, so the libraries won't be totally off-limits. I'm fairly sure I won't get back there nearly as often as I'd like to, though. 

The best thing about going to Oxford was the progress I managed to make on my dissertation. I have gone from it being a low-level panic that I thought of when I woke up every morning, to something that I am now confident I can finish on time in a state that will pass. I got about 7000 words down in the week and I finished my research interviews; since then, I have made some updates to my lit review and started coding my data, as they say. I was all in my head about coding my data for a long old time but then I realised that it just means reading it and picking out some things that look like common themes. Not such a big deal. I had an online meeting with my supervisor this week and it really does feel like the end if in sight; after doing some coding, with the meeting coming up a day earlier than expected, I decided I would sit for an hour and bash out some things I had spotted: that turned into a thousand words and a comment that 'this looks really good, now it's just a question of finding some quotes'. Thrilling. 

It is hard to carve out the time now that we are into marking season, but carve it out I will. The date for the end of All The Work is still the end of September, but as that draws closer, it is actually comforting. The period of endless hard work is shortening. Work is being done. It will be fine. 

A couple of other half term adventures included a walk around Chew Lake with Saff and Kate, on a blisteringly sunny day, and a visit to an exhibition of lesser-seen Elizabethan portraits during my quick trip to London. Plus the new Banksy statue. 

I wedged a lot in. It's what happens when I'm busy with work. On Friday night I got AI to teach me how to code a button on my homescreen that plays the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme tune whenever Mr Z says something about everything going wrong. It took longer than it should have done but I was thrilled with my new knowledge and with my new ability to soundtrack his life. We are into week 4 or 5 of impossibly hurty knee, so he is less thrilled than me. 

This past week has been setting up everything for exam marking, which necessitated a couple of 16-hour days, but it is becoming clearer to me that the more hours I can put in ahead of online marking starting (this weekend), the more fruits will appear. The way that the system works now, the bulk of my labour is done. That feels very odd to say that, but it is true. There is plenty more to do, of course, but it is spread out and deadlines are fairly moveable. 

I've been re-reading Dracula through all of this, which is easy to pick up for a few pages, mostly because I know it so well. I saw Cynthia Erivo playing Dracula in London during Oxford week. It was a great version where she played 23 different parts, interacting with pre-recorded characters she'd played, and I enjoyed it hugely. The one thing that irritated me was that she had a conversation with Lucy, early on in the play, where Lucy admitted to having been intimate with Arthur. I didn't remember this being in the book and it was so f'ing hackneyed, that awful old trope of 'woman has sex and then gets horribly murdered' that shows up in all the sexually-repressed American films, that I had to come back and reread the book to see if it was in there and I'd forgotten. It's not. There's a letter that Lucy writes to Mina where she says she is looking forward to Arthur being her 'husband and lover', but that's it. Now, I never read Dracula at school: I haven't done a deep dive into the themes and metaphors Stoker apparently put in there (I think he was just looking to write a blockbuster horror book like Mary Shelley but I'm not an English teacher so...) but I think it would be a stretch to suggest that Lucy was promiscuous just because she was proposed to three times in one day and was excited about marrying a man. 

As you can see, this topic has been living rent-free in my head for some time now. I just hate the inherent misogyny of the whole 'if you have sex, things will end badly for you' theme. For a modern example, see Taken: friend says she will have sex with Frenchman she met, friend kidnapped and ends up dying after being overdosed with heroin in a squat. Meanwhile, girl who was shocked at the idea of having sex is rescued. Tell me that's not barely-coded messaging to elicit patriarchal society's preferred behaviours among women, but I will not believe you. And I'm very annoyed that the writers of stage Dracula decided to take this quite modern trope and wedge it into a 19th century book. As if we need any more trad wife messaging*. 

Anyway. 

The blue jumper grows: I'm about 4 inches off finishing the body. I am concerned about the roll of the neck but I will take some steps to fix it when I'm finished and know how much yarn I have left. I shouldn't be spending any time knitting but I am desperate to see how much yarn the body will take and the only way to find that out is by knitting it. 

The peonies came out in the garden in spectacular fashion and have now gone over and been replaced by the honeysuckle. The cooler June has enabled outside sitting. I've enjoyed it. Maybe a separate post for the peony pictures because they were so lovely, I took loads. 

I've been baking this weekend, ahead of teacher appreciation day. I don't bake so often these days and I don't write about it on here, but I will say that I made a mint version of the lemon curd recipe I discovered over 15 years ago. I think I had in my mind that a lovely mint curd would be like a slightly less cloying version of the centre of a Fry's peppermint cream bar. I couldn't find a recipe I liked, so I halved the OG lemon curd recipe and blended a fair old bunch of mint leaves with the sugar before I made it. This definitely worked, but the result is more toothpaste that peppermint cream. I might try mixing in some icing sugar before I put it in a cake. 

* be a trad wife if you want to. I am here for it. Feminism is all about women, and men, choosing what they want. But within that, don't tell other people that it's the better way to be. That's up to them to decide. 

Early Summer Goals

I tried to make this list a bit more about accountability and it was helpful. 

Not too shabby at all! I didn't manage seven gym trips; I didn't go on any Mondays. Letting myself off a bit. I was very close to seven but, meh. I also didn't make it to hot yoga because I bought a 10-class card that expires in September, so of course I didn't go even once. But meh, there's always this term. 

I've ticked a couple that others might not have done. I have sorted well over 100 things to donate (socks count as two - my rules) but they haven't left my house yet, I need to sort into ragging and wearable. I did make a start on this but I need to do one last sort before I end up taking holey socks to the charity shop. Did I do an hour of dissertation work every day? No. I tried to on every day that I could, though. Sometimes it was just staring. But it has, thank goodness, all started to come together, thanks to my week in the libraries of Oxford last week. I am horrified that the first draft is due in under 8 weeks but this no longer feels completely unachievable. Also - it may be awful for the next 8 weeks but, after that, it will be basically done. 

I finished my research, hurrah! I did lovely things like catching up with my coursemates at a lecture in Oxford and the Macfarlane lecture and Wonderwool and Powis Castle. 

I returned to the quarry for a swim, first time in nearly a year, it made me sad I don't go as often these days. But it has been winter so, yknow. And I have found the local sauna now and that is not the same but very good in its own way, and cheaper, and closer to home. 

I've been reflecting on whether I need a list for this term. I don't think I do. It is going to be too chaotic between the marking and the end of the school year and the dissertation. I have written myself an impossible schedule of work to follow and so my goal is really just to stick as close to that as I can, because this will make for a happier summer. 

But I will be thinking of nice things to put on my summer holiday list - of that you can be assured.