Happy Mondays

I went to see the Happy Mondays tonight. It was a last minute invite from Parpy Jo, who was a bit of an indie chick in her teens. It was, as you might imagine, full of middle-aged people reminiscing about their youth (ourselves among them) though I did see someone wearing an acid house smiley t-shirt, someone else shaking light-up maracas and many, many people doing Bez dancing. At one point the man next to me leaned over, pointed at Shaun Ryder and yelled in my ear, "Last time I saw these lot there were two men either side of him holding him up and he was so out of it he couldn't even sing!" This is their best song. They saved it until last, of course.

Fave Friday

This week: my Pure DAB radio alarm clock. I have this one. I bought it quite some time ago now, new from ebay, and it is one of those sort of unseen things in my home that I use every single day without really noticing, because it wakes me up every morning.

In October it stopped working. It would kind of crash when the alarm went off in the morning. I missed Radio 4 in the morning, but actually I was getting up more quickly because there was nothing interesting to listen to. And anyway, I thought, I've been getting up before 7 for over a decade now and I think I am probably old enough that I no longer need to set two alarms.

(I have traditionally been notoriously bad at waking up. My most notable oversleep was on my very first day at my current school as a trainee.)

That attitude lasted until the penultimate week of term, when I was woken by a text. "That's funny," I thought, "because that app on my phone doesn't switch the sound back on until 6.30am so why did it wake me up?" Then I realised it was 6.52. I had been meant to pick up a colleague at 6.45. I realised that perhaps I did still need two alarms (although, in my defence, my phone was being very shifty and had not sounded the morning alarm in spite of it being set to go off. Perhaps it thought I needed a lie in).

I digress. I went on Amazon looking for a new radio and discovered in the reviews that a faulty power cable causes this problem so I gambled and replaced that for one fifth of the price, and it worked. So happy! I missed the Today program.

For a while, I was bereft when Chris Moyles was dismissed by Radio 1. He never played any music until after 7am and the new guy seemed to have a preference for thumping dance music which is NOT the way to be woken up, I think. So I switched to Radio 4 and have never looked back. This morning, for example, there was an article about 18th century sugar production, quoting the cost of sugar per pound (£10) compared to annual average wage (£15) - I can't explain more than that what it was about as I was drifting in and out of consciousness at the time - and I was teaching that in a lesson period 1 today. How perfect?

Now, I know that was Radio 4 really and this post could easily be about them (maybe next week) but the humble radio alarm clock is the conduit through which I receive this information every morning, and I am a huge fan. I had an inferior radio alarm previously, which never wanted to stay tuned and almost always had an irritating whistle....it stood me in good stead, even though it took me about 5 years to work out how to switch it from radio alarm to beeping alarm because it came without a manual; but I couldn't go back now. The crystal clear sound and the way I don't have to fiddle around with a dial, inching it this way and that until I get to something acceptable make it worth its weight in gold.

Today I wish I was...

....here.

I searched through pictures for quite some time looking for somewhere else I might rather be, but I have mainly, this week, been lamenting my inability to find time to (a) finish either of the very interesting books on the growth of the British Empire I started in October, (b) continue with any knitting or (c) sleep for as long as I choose. These things all require a comfortable chair, a soft bed and easily accessible beverages. The El Mono in Lee Vining has it all, with the added bonus of spritely hummingbirds, pretty sunset and an excellent breakfast diner and ice cream parlour, both within easy walk. Oh, yeah, and Yosemite, should one ever become bored with reading, knitting and sleeping. Chance'd be a fine thing.

Scenes from the Classroom #5

My bottom set year 9 classroom, today:

Girl: Guess what Miss! Guess what!
Me: Ooh, what?
Girl: Out of my mum, my dad and my sister...
Me: Yes?
Girl: ...I'm going to be the only one who doesn't take GCSE History!
Me: (deflates slightly) Oh. Why aren't you going to take GCSE History?
Girl: I hate History, it's really boring.

Knife in the ribs when you least expect it, sometimes. Still, you can't fault her honesty.

Tuesday Ten

Ten Things on my To-do List (only ten? How can I narrow it down?)

1. Finish Mother Hands handwarmers.

2. Come up with a cunning plan for adding mouths to my snowmen and making them scarves so I can finish the Christmas jumper.

3. Decorate the house for Christmas.

4. Go to the gym - I have slipped back to once-a-week with remarkable ease and I am not feeling well on it.

5. Marking. Three sets of exams, one set of sixth form essays. I suppose I should mark exercise books too, but that adds another 8 sets to my list and it's just too overwhelming, and I really, really want to get it done before the weekend. #dreaming

6. Write Christmas cards.

7. Visit farm shop to buy Christmas cheeeeeeese.

8. Do that thing Ian asked me to do for work over a week ago.

9. Get the car washed.

10. Go to a carol concert. As luck would have it, there is one tonight to which I have tickets. I can cross one thing off by bedtime, at least!

Thanks for the inspiration, Carole.

Weekend WIPs

I have been working away at Mother Hand's mitts this weekend; I finished one frill at knitting group on Saturday and have done four peaks of the second one. I had hoped to finish tonight for posting tomorrow for her birthday on Wednesday but, alas, work got in the way.



I do love the colours together. Helpfully, Mother Hand has mislaid the purple beret I knit her for Christmas 2011 (she's lucky she's my mother or these crimes against knitting would have rendered her unknitworthy by now) so I might buy another skein of each and whip her up some kind of matching hat. Yknow, in my copious free time.

The other thing I have been knitting this weekend is this -



It's to hang down the stairs and around the hallway, if it gets long enough, adorned with candy canes and chocolate Santas. It's the leftover sock yarn from my first ever pair of socks and it's too pretty to just be left languishing in a bag somewhere (really, really wish Regia would re-release it). So, it is becoming an extremely long icord....slowly. Veeeery slowly.

I really wanted to get the Christmas decorations up this weekend but time just got away from me. Hopefully this weekend will be the one.

Evolution of a Christmas Jumper

I finished knitting my long-planned snowman jumper back in October. Then I blocked it, and it grew six inches in length, thus ensuring that my waist decreases hit my widest part, the increase were at my waist and the original bottom, with its massive wedges of additional fabric, flapped unbecomingly somewhere around the lower part of my hips. I was glum, but thought I would just style it out. Knatterers suggested stitching up the triangles of fabric and cutting off the excess, which I will do as soon as I find the leftover yarn.

I then considered carefully what to do with the snowmen. Leave them undecorated and keep the Christmas jumper quite subtle? Um, no. I don't think that sounds like the sort of thing I'd do. I thought about decorating just one. In the end I asked Louzle, queen of the Christmas jumper. She suggested I do an "evolution of a snowman" - beginning with eyes on the first, then eyes and a nose, and so on.



I love this way too much. They are MUCH nicer now that they have eyes and I don't feel it is too twee. I need to find a satisfactory way of doing the mouth (Louzle suggested something orange, since she always uses a clementine, but we always use a stick so I need to maybe embroider something on there) and create a scarf for the last two. I would like to make a stripy icord for this but it may end up being a piece of ribbon or fabric. We'll see how the time goes.

My biggest triumph is the buttons. When they arrived from ebay, they had green fronds on, and I struggled to consider how I would make it work - after all, on a snowman any greenery would be stuck deeply into the face. Luckily, though, the green part just popped right off.



Very much looking forward to Christmas jumper day on the last day of term. I am also considering "evolution of a Christmas tree" for next year.