2024 Weeknote 3

It's been really cold all week, proper January weather with bright skies, hazy streets in the morning and lots of scraping required to get into the car. On one day this had to occur both inside and outside. I think I have probably spoiled the seal on my car with the roof bars I added for toting my kayak around.

Still, the afternoons are starting to get lighter and it's made for some colourful sunrises and sunsets, including this one from the back garden on Friday when I made it home before it got dark - a rarity at this time of year. 

It was my busier work week this week and there was a parents' evening, the briefing I give every other week and a staff meeting, on top of all the usual. So work was a bit of a grind but I have very much enjoyed hanging out with my team. The office is busier now that we have a trainee teacher and a new staff member, and on Friday we were all there and it was lovely to debrief and tell funny stories about the week. 

I had an online interview for the Masters I applied for which turned out to be considerably less formal than I was expecting; I hadn't really done any prep for it until the night before, which also happened to be post-parents evening and so I was a bit nervous that I might show myself up. It is Oxford, after all. But the interviewers were very friendly and asked lots of questions that proved quite easy to answer, so I am feeling quite hopeful. I should know by the time next week. It works out as 20 days out of school and, on top of the exam work and another project that may or may not be in the works, I am realising that this is not conducive to working in school full time. I am in such a dither about taking some time out because I like so much about my current job and I know I'll be able to drop the things I don't like; perhaps this is a little message to me from the universe that I don't have to hate something to stop doing it; that I can leave on a high note; that doors stay open even when we choose to walk through others. 

Fully leaning into my midlife crisis BTW. 

I've continued listening to The Witness Wore Red on audiobook this week, I am really enjoying it. I've carried on reading the short ghost stories in Winter Spirits and have about four left to go, but I've just checked a Karen Maitland out of the library so I might dig into that and save the other ghost stories for next winter. I finished the front and collar of the garter stitch jumper I'm making for my friend Char whose partner has just had their baby - two weeks early, so this is good timing on my part. Just the sleeves to go. 

I went to a really thought-provoking lecture by Ilan Pappe who was speaking about Palestine and its history, or (more specifically and controversially) the abuse of its history for the purposes of colonisers, over hundreds of years. This lecture was booked over a year ago and it is pure serendipity that it should come at this time of such rage and horror in that part of the world. There were lots of Opinions. The woman behind me at one point literally started clawing the desk. He wasn't what you'd call balanced, but then he didn't even pretend to be. The most interesting thing for me was the link he drew between the situation and both migration and the British Empire. This is what I love about a history lecture - I'll go and they will spin out a thread unknown to me, and yet when I pull on it I can see how it links to all of these other threads that I do know about. It's like spending a long time inspecting a spider web close up and then slowly realising that the web is connected to others that stretch as far as the eye can see. Something like that.

Today I went to the gym, then to do my marking at Starbucks, where I got to fuss a big softy of a labrador who flumped against my legs to allow for more fussing. So it has been a good day. 

2024 Weeknote 2

 It's been a weird week this week. My dad died on Wednesday afternoon.

I think this is probably the last picture taken of us together, back in December 2018. I hadn't been out to visit since, until the week before Christmas when I flew out because he was very ill. He had Stage 4 cancer and was attempting to die quietly at home without any fuss - something he almost achieved. 

I took a day off work but still went on a planned trip to Hampton Court on Friday. It's interesting to navigate other people's expectations of how I should be feeling and acting. Father Hand moved to the USA when I was about 12 and, though we had a good relationship, it was a very sporadic one. We weren't in each other's lives a lot, most of the time. So I don't feel his loss too keenly at present. I expect I will feel it when I read a book I think he'd really like or something happens that I think he'd want to hear about, and I don't have anybody to tell. He really liked blues and guitar music so I anticipate getting tearful when I hear music like that being played. For now, though, I'm relieved that he was spared losing his mind or his sight, both things he was really concerned would happen. 

In spite of this, a lot of people have been encouraging me to be off work and looking after myself. Work is my self-care at the moment though. Even when I took the day off I spent half of it cleaning (what a horrible nightmare). He was a workaholic who, even when I saw him in Christmas and he needed a nap after transferring from his bed to the sofa, was talking about when he could get back to work, so the irony of this is not lost on me. But it's also not the time to address it. 

Other things have obviously happened this week but nothing particularly noteworthy. Generally I've been looking after myself and trying to have early nights. As he was dying I was having to crawl into bed really early under a wave of exhaustion, which isn't like me in the second week of term; I used to know when he was upset or he'd call me out of the blue when I was, so maybe it was connected to that. Who knows. 

This week I've got an online interview for a Masters I applied for. I'm insistent I will go to circuits tomorrow, as I'm only four weeks away from my next skiing holiday and last Monday, I talked myself out of it because it snowed. There's a good history lecture on Wednesday which might turn out to be a bit controversial, as it's focused on the history of the holy land. So there are good and interesting things planned to keep my spirits up. 

2024 Weeknote 1

Giving this another whirl with a slightly less structured approach, to see if I can manage to write something every week. I did an online interview with someone yesterday for their PhD, which made me realise how much I miss writing a blog, even when it's about the most trivial topics. I don't know what's stopping me, though.

This week began with a fairly lazy Monday, during which I finished planning my session for the inset day and then went to look round the local David Lloyd, who reeled me in by advertising a 3-month contract. I can report that the 3-month contract results in access for 3 months whilst paying for 4, compared to the 12-month contract. Their facilities are insanely lush and it's very tempting, but I would need to be going every other day for me to feel I was getting my money's worth and I can't even read a book every other day at the moment, so I decided no. As usual, telling the person who showed me around was the most difficult part of the decision. 

We started term on Tuesday and I thus spent the rest of the week exhausted, peaking on Wednesday afternoon when I fell asleep in my car at a traffic light. Thankfully the handbrake was on and I woke up before anybody needed to beep at me, but I was full-on dreaming. 

As a result, there hasn't been much in the way of non-work but, between knitting group on Saturday morning and feeling inspired to get things done that afternoon, I did manage a few bits. I sewed buttons and added embroidery to the baby cardigan I've been knitting for my friend Rich, and reblocked - I finished all the knitting on this about 10 days ago but then, when I looked at it in daylight, realised the yarn I'd used for the sleeves and the button band must have been a different dyelot and was a slightly yellower shade of Natural. In daylight, this looked like nicotine staining. Not what anyone would choose for a baby cardigan. So, I ripped back and reknit - thankfully I had one more ball of Natural in a less 20-a-day shade. 

I worked on sewing up my giant bluetit which has been almost finished for nearly four years (and I bought the kit in 2016); finished the back of a striped garter stitch jumper for my friend Charlotte's impending baby; and started the front panel for a new Presto Chango for my nephew. Much small-person knitting. I am ruminating about my next project, between two jumper options for me, a crochet blanket or a concerted effort to finish the hexagons. 

I had a clear out of the knitting crate; Lenin helped. Eyeroll.

I've started a new audiobook, The Witness Wore Red, which is my favourite genre of audiobook (women escaping religious cults) and is proving really compelling. I've been attempting to continue reading Winter Spirits, short ghost stories, but this hasn't mixed well with the aforementioned exhaustion. 

I went to yoga on Wednesday (fell asleep in savasana) and took the headstand stool I impulse-purchased on black Friday. The instructor gave me some tips for using it. I had some more practice when I went to see my PT on Thursday. My whole body feels quite stiff and immobile at the moment so moving around more is definitely on the agenda for the coming week. 

We've been playing some Super Luigi, as this wasn't finished during the Chirstmas holidays (it is tradition); we tried watching The Rings of Power but it was a slow start. I feel like I need to keep trying but, meh. Instead I switched to The Undoing, which has proved a good mystery. I'm onto the final episode now but I can't quite see what the answer will be. I think maybe Nicole Kidman did it, but there was a question asked and left unanswered in an earlier episode that might be the key. We'll see. 

Work has been pretty tough. I'm setting cover for a member of staff teaching outside of my specialism and there is a limit to how long I can continue to do this and remain mentally healthy, I reckon. This has encouraged me even more strongly to step away from my teaching job next year, but after conversations with the headteacher, I think this is going to be tricky to do. I can see myself doing a new role and trying to manage the part-time Masters I'm applying for alongside it. This does not seem like it would help me achieve my aim of having choices about what I do with my time. But it might be fun. We'll see. 

2023 Round up: Reads

A slightly better year for reading, this year. I continue to go to the library and browse, which helps with picking out books I like the look of, rather than just going on recommendations or books by authors I've previously read. As you'll see, though, I do have some authors that I return to. I've particularly enjoyed the work of Claire North and Karen Maitland this year. Maitland's books set in the middle ages are intensely creepy and don't seem to ever have a happy ending, which I curiously enjoy. 

Ian Rankin - Exit Music

Hafsa Zayyan - We are all Birds of Uganda

Laura Shepherd Robinson - Sugar in the Blood

Sarah Winman - A Year of Marvellous Ways

K J Maitland - Traitor in the Ice

Phillippa Gregory - Dark Tides

Claire North - Ithaca (highly recommended. Some absolutely killer lines)

Kate Grenville - The Secret River

C J Carey - Queen High (it turned out this was a sequel, which explained a lot when I realised) 

Karen Maitland - The Gallows Curse

Claire North - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (AMAZING...I thought she couldn't have beaten Ithaca but this was probably my read of the year)

Phillippa Gregory - Dawnlands

Gavin McCrea - The Sisters Mao (unfinished - I didn't really rate it)

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi - The First Woman

Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (reverting back to easy reads as we slid into December)

Claire North - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (I read this a second time, see above)

Karen Maitland - A Gathering of Ghosts

Candice Carty-Williams - Queenie (not what I was expecting or I wouldn't have started it. It wasn't bad. It's just that I am a bit over beach-read stories of women in their 20s)

Finishing up the year with The Winter Spirits - Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights, a collection of short ghost stories by various authors. I was weak in Waterstones and bought this on a whim but it's perfect bedtime reading for December. 

Non-fiction - exclusively on audiobook this year as Mr Z installed a new stereo in my old car and so I can link my phone to it now. I can get through an average audiobook in about two weeks. 

Dipo Faloyin - Africa is not a Country - this was my first listen of the year so I don't remember it too well, but - as with Brit-ish and Natives last year - it was helpful in presenting another perspective on world history, particularly as I continue to teach about the early British Empire. 

Kit Malthouse - The Maths of Life and Death - interesting but didn't catch my attention, this one took a long time to get through.

Peter Frankopan - The Earth Transformed (unfinished) - this is 30 hours long and I didn't get past the ancient bits. Frankopan narrates and it made me chuckle that he can't pronounce some of the long words he loves to use. 

Jessica Hill - See What You Made Me Do - I loved this but it was a really tough listen. Made even better by the fact that Hill narrates it and sometimes is near tears with the stories she's having to tell. Most interesting was the case study of the town in America that started using public shaming (with support) to cut domestic violence rates. 

Patrick Radden Keefe - Say Nothing - about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was OK, some interesting historical points, such as how the IRA saw themselves as very leftie. Coming off the back of the previous listen, it was interesting to consider how much was leftie freedom-fighting and how much was toxic masculinity, in a country where half the male population were subjugated. Not read by the author and, imo, suffered for it - the reader clearly hadn't read the book ahead of time, there were weird pauses where he was obvs turning the page and hadn't prepared to do it, emphasis was wrong in places. 

Johann Hari - Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - ironically I listened to most of this while stuck in a three-hour traffic jam trying to get to Portsmouth. I didn't think there would be much to know but, as it turns out, it's all a bit creepier than I realised, what with the invention of infinite scroll. I already tightly control the notifications my phone is allowed to give me but this made me want to get hold of that 'How to break up with your phone' book, or at least uninstall some social media for 2024. 

Thomas Halliday - Otherlands - what a gorgeous book. I loved it. Each chapter is set in a different age of the world and written as a narrative description of what you might expect to see. I particularly liked the story of how the eastern Mediterranean refilled; the comment that everywhere, always, life builds on previous life; the explanation of how volcanic gases can smother a lake and kill everything in it; and the stories about how the world is changing through climate change - less coral but more glass sponges. I might buy this in hard copy to keep as there was so much I didn't know. 

Fave Friday

Five favourite moments of half term

1. Level 42 concert

I booked these tickets for Mother Hand last Christmas. It took place in the King's Theatre, a place I've seen pantos and Rocky Horror, and where I danced on stage with the dance school I attended as a child. I was unfortunately late due to a closure on the M4, meaning my journey took five hours (eugh) but luckily arrived while The Christians were still palying.

It was an odd place to see a gig. It was Mark King's 65th birthday. Someone with a walking stick was dancing at the front. But, it was really very enjoyable. Just nice to see people that have worked together for ages, getting up there and having loads of fun and doing what they love.

I'm not really one for taking pictures at things like this, they never look any good, but here's one for the memory.

I think this was my favourite song of the night. 'Southsea, there's something about you!'

2. Bikram

There's a studio in Southsea that still runs a Bikram-style hot yoga class so I went on Sunday morning. I was gratified that I didn't feel overheated, though I did have to take a drink partway through and the sequence was a little jumbled from what I remembered. I also realised I was quite physically broken, either from the long term or from, yknow, being middle-aged and fairly sedentary. I ached for three days. 

I really must get back to doing it more regularly.

On the way home I went into Bread Addiction, clearly one of Portsmouth's best bakeries as there are always people queuing outside. I felt no guilt in buying one each of their danishes, which I ate joyfully over the following 24 hours, still feeling virtuous from the yoga. 

3. Niece/nephew time

On Wednesday, I drove to London to stay with the fam before flying to Stockholm on Thursday. My niece continues to be extremely funny and good company; my nephew continues to grow. We went to the park and played on the swings. 

4. Stockholm

Zoe and I flew to Stockholm for three nights to go to see Madonna in concert. It was cold but what a lovely place! Full of beautiful trees, nice people, cardamom buns, watery places, interesting museums and general relaxation. We went to the hotel spa; I bought some new boots (noteworthy because I have been trying to find boots I like for a year); we went to the Abba museum which included an audition booth experience and a silent disco; we went to the Vasa museum - that is one enormous boat, I would happily go back and stare at it all day, strong Mary Rose vibe; we went to Halloween at a theme park; we ate meatballs and fish sandwiches and slept in and walked around. A very enjoyable break.

5. Madonna concert

Obvs Madge had to have her own spot. The second 65-year-old artist I saw in concert in half term. Just, wow. I hope I am that energetic and fabulous when I reach the age of the free bus pass. 

The theme was her life, so there were lots of dancers dressed as Madonna from bygone eras that she performed with. I liked the bit where a dancer was pretending to be Madonna pretending to masturbate on a bed, as a throwback to the Blonde Ambition tour, but then Madonna went over to sit on the bed and the two of them spooned. A nice touch. 

My first stadium gig! A good one to choose. 

Fave Friday

It is unseasonably hot. On Wednesday I wore the dress I wear when it is the hottest day - what a mistake that was. Yesterday I was akin to a swamp (and never been happier to have a quarry swim ticket for the evening, it was bliss). Today I had a lesson in a room with aircon and it was a definite high point. 

Naturally, now term has started everything else has stopped but I have been reflecting on times in my life I've been hotter than now so...

Five blazing hot moments

1. Death Valley. Probably the hottest place I've ever been, but reassuringly dry so it didn't feel too awful.

Probably already sunburned, just in the time it took to take the picture. 

2. Camping somewhere in Nevada. It was some kind of resort ghost town. I paid money to call and reserve a spot while we were on the road - ultimately, it was only us and one RV. Those campers knew something we didn't. It remains the only time we haven't put the flysheet over the tent and, when the sun rose and hit the tent netting at 6am, we were up and out. Never again. 

3. Hanoi. Everywhere in Vietnam was hot but this was next level. The sort of raging heat from the desert but backed up with humidity: sort of like leaning over a boiling pan but everywhere, all the time. We thought it was cute that everyone in Hanoi seemed to get up at 6am to work out in the park together, until we realised that was really the only comfortable time to be outside. I quickly made my peace with constant, running sweat. 

No picture can do it justice but I never wore these clothes for anything other than the gym; it was too hot for basically everything I took to wear, except the swimwear.

Bonus weird picture I found from my GoPro while I was looking through these holiday pictures. What a weirdo.

4. Malaysia. This was my first near-equator experience and, again, the humidity was almost unbearable. On the second school trip I took there, the staff were lodged in student flats, rather than the palatial, air-conditioned bungalow of the initial visit; it was a 5-minute walk from the main school and I required a shower before and after every one of those walks. Tough when it's a work thing and you have to look work-presentable. 

5. Corfu. This is a gappy memory for me; we went in the summer of my 10th birthday. Loving the water then as much as I do now, I spent the whole first day in the sea. I even went back in the sea after dinner. I didn't get sun burn, but I did get heatstroke. The only thing I remember about it, other than being very sick, was coming out of sleep with Mother Hand staring desperately into my face, shaking me and shouting, 'What is it? What is it?' in my face. Evidently I had been asleep with my eyes open and calling for her. This sounds terrifying even as a non-parent. 

Most of the ensuing holiday pictures from the trip feature me with a Corfu cap on. Mother Hand got bitten by a snake and we both got horribly travel sick during a trip to the mainland. I tried water-skiing and failed spectacularly to stand up. But other than that it was a fun trip. 

Fave Friday

Five favourite back-to-school memories

In honour of the new term...

1. Buying the new school bag. Nanny Hand took me round many shops looking for the perfect item, some time towards the end of August, before I went into (I think) Year 9. I have a dim memory of some kind of half-covered precinct that was probably near where they lived in Redditch, and being my usual unbelievably picky teen self. In the end I picked some hideous canvas shoulder bag that was beige and had camels or some kind of Aztec print on it. Heavy 90s vibe. Mother Hand was suitably disappointed that I got something that was (a) so easily dirtied and (b) relatively impractical for carrying large amounts of school-related items with me. 

2. The smell of WHSmith. It is common for everybody to bang on about the stench of a Lush shop but I think all shops have their own scent and WHSmith is a particularly evocative one for me. What is it? Books, pens, cards, magazines. The smell of choosing a new pencil case, and wheedling for wholly impractical rubbers shaped like ice cream cones and wholly unnecessary highlighter pens. Towers of colourful lever arch files that I never needed because there were always second-hand ones available from Mother Hand's work and, anyway, who needs more than one lever arch folder when you're at school. Doing pocket money maths so you could sneak a CD single in and still afford everything you needed. 

3. On my first day of my first teaching job, I went to the toilets and put my heavily-loaded handbag on top of the cistern. As I turned away from it, it promptly upended directly into the toilet. The main casualties were my camera (I don't know why I felt this was an essential item for an inset day) which happily survived, and a whole tube of new gold and black striped pencils. I still have one of those pencils (naturally I washed it off) to remind me of this humbling experience. My main takeaway, on that nervous day, was that it couldn't get much worse. I was right. 

4. More bags (so many bags) - I fondly remember the time when I got the school bag right by buying a denim backpack from River Island. It was the best bag ever. It was a drawstring, flap over backpack but it had a full length zip down the side so you didn't have to faff. In my memory, it saw me all the way through sixth form, being toted around on one shoulder while I carried my lever arch file ostentatiously, on account of how I was so learned now, all my learning couldn't even fit in a bag. 

5. The weighing and measuring. A funny favourite memory this but it sticks with me and serves as a constant reminder that throwaway comments are not throwaway comments to teenagers. At the start of every new year, everyone in the class was weighed and measured in the first PE lesson. I cannot fathom what the school did with this information and, come to reflect on it, I wonder if they just did it for something to do in the first lesson of the year. Anyway, as a fat teenager this was mortifying for me and I had a horror about anybody seeing how much I weighed. The one I remember the most was going forward to the scale and (what has formed in my mind but is undoubtedly an exaggeration of the actual event) the entire popular clique craning forwards as I gingerly hovered, unwilling to step on. 

'Don't worry Sally,' chirped my ever-cheerful games teacher, 'the scales are probably wrong.'