Nuns, spinning in their graves.
2010-07-05, 4:08 p.m.
Because I don�t do Facebook and sometimes don�t even come here for days at a time, I found out very late that awittykitty had passed away. I am very crap at saying how I feel about things sometimes and its taken me until this afternoon to be able to go to the funeral home website and leave my condolences on her guestbook. I erased my message at least fifty times � everything I wrote just sounded trite, or inappropriate, or tritely inappropriate. I am sad beyond sad at the loss of someone I considered to be a real friend � the stupid email conversations we had about life, men and the universe were touching and genuine and yet still funny enough to have me snorting tea out of my nose. That we lived a continent apart didn�t seem to matter � friends are friends are friends.She was a wonderful person and I feel privileged to have known her, even just in a virtual sense. May she be everything in the next life that she was in this�.but with knobs on!
I think I may have scored myself a new job. Remember I was saying before about the ILN head asking me if I was interested in a one-to-one support job with a Year 11 (age 15/16) boy? Well, I was in school on Wednesday and I saw the Headmistress (Principal) across the courtyard. I was already halfway up the stairs to the ILN Dept so I just waved. She did an �Ahaaa!� face and shouted over to me.
�Have you taken that job yet? That (Name of Boy) one?�
I yelled back �Err, no. Not yet.�
�Are you going to?� she bellowed.
�Umm, yes,� I said, cupping my hand round my mouth so my yelling would reach her, �I expect so.�
�Good!� she called back. �Talk to the office about your start date. Oh, and don�t worry about it being a temporary contract � we�ll find you something else to do after May�.
I think that might have been my interview.
I�ve learned so much in my few days at the school. I learned that some girls come to school with perfect hair and makeup, even though their hands clearly haven�t been washed for some days and their clothes smell. I learned that The Eyebrow of Doom, when raised, strikes fear not only into husbands but also into the souls of teenage boys who think they know better than me what constitutes �appropriate behaviour�.
I also learned that anyone working in a classroom situation has to go through a humiliating series of initiations, and that their reaction to these tests sets the bar for how they are treated by pupils thereafter. Jooj laughed like a loon when she heard that the boys I�d had in my group last week had all given me fictitious names (not Mike Hunt or Duncan Donuts or Paddy O�Doors or anything like that � these kids are ILN kids, their imagination is limited. They just used each others names) and then had spent the morning sniggering when I called them by the wrong names. Next morning, they were surprised to find me leading their group again (there�s lots of rotation, so there was a fairly good chance they�d get someone else) and I got my own back by calling them hyphenated versions of their real name and their fictitious one for most of the morning. �Ahh, Peter-Ben! How nice to see you again! And Jack-Josh, too! Perhaps you two can get on with this worksheet while we wait for Josh-Peter and Ben-Jack?�
Ive been lavish with praise and uncompromising with discipline (bit like being at home, really!) and so far Ive had a pretty good time. The sheer volume of unwashed, undernourished, illiterate and �unparented� children bothers me � it bothers me a lot � but Im starting to get the idea that I cant just say �Right! You, you, you and you, you�re coming home to live with me now. Lets get you a hot meal, a change of clothes and a little bit of self-esteem, shall we?� My friend BadFriend (see cast!) is a �proper� teacher at the same school, not just a lowly quasi-teacher like me, and she sent me a text after I�d had my yelling match conversation with the headmistress. It said �Don�t think of it as a job, more of a social experiment. Welcome to the institution!�
Oh, and I feel a little �ping� of glee every time one of the spotty, scruffy, mouthy little herberts greets me with an �Awright, Miss?�
Treacle had her sports day on Wednesday and I stood around in the sunshine watching her come second in the skipping race and then beating all-comers in the triple jump. That she is probably 10� taller than any other girl in her year occasionally has its advantages. Especially as she didn�t know she was going to be in the triple jump event (another girl was off sick) and had never done the triple jump before. The games teacher had to give her a bit of a demonstration before she had her first go cos she couldn�t work out how to get her legs in the right order. There�s a valedictory prize for sports awarded in year 6 and she�s desperate to win it next year. I feel some coaching in the triple jump coming on, especially as she tells me that the valedictory sports prize has never been won by a girl!
Its now Monday and yet another weekend has bitten the dust. Ive got some kind of weird �day inversion� thing going on, in that my weekends are manic and full of shit I don�t really want to do, yet my Mondays and Tuesdays are quiet and filled with baking and farting about on the laptop and mooching around the house with no makeup on, looking like the bastard child of Eminem and Miss Piggy. There surely cant be anyone else in the western world who actually LOOKS FORWARD to Monday mornings, is there?
By 9.30 I�d done the Lidl shop (eerily quiet in there on a Monday � I felt a bit like I was doing one of those apocalyptic/zombie last-person-alive looting expeditions, although, if it really WERE the end of the world and I was inclined to a little light looting, I hope I would have the good sense to go to Waitrose, where there are surely a better class of zombie hanging about by the organic bruschetta. It would only be pikey zombies lurking in Lidl, methinks.) and taken Wee Treacle to school. Got back home to find L had also been particularly productive, in that he had managed not only a) getting out of bed, but also b) drinking the entire pot of weapons-grade coffee that I had prepared myself before I went out (and which should have been waiting for me, in all its �nicely matured� badness, when I got back from Zombie Apocalypse Hideout Lidl).
Despite the sheer Herculean amounts of caffeine he�d consumed, L was still shuffling about like a low budget Ozzy Osborne, roll-up dangling and unshod. Surely he should have been bouncing off the walls in Billy Whizz stylee? However, the goose-shit green shade of his t-shirt and the general unshaven gangliness of the man has led me to believe I may well be married to Shaggy-out-of-Scooby-Doo. *shakes head*
As I have the attention span of an Oh Look! I have also taken some time out from my extensive programme of putting the sheets in the boil-wash (What? Don�t judge me! *tssk*), cooking, scrubbing odd-looking sticky bits off the bathroom floor (Eeeuuw!), and sending texts to Jooj and Treac: �Yr bedrms r DISGUSTING. B ashamed. Yr mummie v mad wth u. Poke u in the eye wen u get home cos u 2 big 2 spank. Kissy kiss��
(actually, it wasn�t quite like that. I never do �text speak�. My texts are properly spelled, with punctuation and shit like that. I was just tryin� to be �down wid da kidz� there. I failed, didn�t I?)
�.to measure my boobs, which seem to have taken on alarming proportions recently. Throughout my adulthood, there has always been a good 6-8� difference between boobs measurement and arse measurement. These days, we�re down to a mere 2�. Arse hasn�t got significantly bigger over the same timespan, so it can only be Nork Expansion that�s to blame. Golly. Wish I�d had these when I was a bit younger and bendier, could�ve probably bagged myself a couple of better husbands.
Got a text back from Jooj: �It was Wardie. Ha ha ha�
Both girls had sleepovers this weekend (hence the blaming the mess on someone else) so there were lanterns
and fire-pits
and toasted marshmallows (and toasted feet)
and larking about in the garden
games of Giant Frisbee (remember THAT?) and watching Hairspray on DVD (not the Divine/Ricki Lake one, unfortunately). Treac, whilst reticent at first (Zac Efron? Oh, No, mummie, puhleeeeease!), was quite keen on Hairspray in the end. In particular the whole black/white thing seems to have struck something of a chord, possibly as the DVD belongs to her friend, who is from Gambia.
Oh, and we made ice lollies out of yoghurt and fresh strawberries. There wasn�t quite enough mixture for us all, so I had to have whisky instead. I am very very clever, as you know, and so I am aware that neat whisky doesn�t freeze too well. I also know that it isn�t really an ice lolly unless its frozen, so I added some�.a splash of�.about half a teaspoon of Coke, which made it taste horrid and by the time I�d finished half of it I was ready to make stupid faces and have my picture taken.
Last night was Quiz Night at the Workies. I write the quizzes, cos I got Book Learnin nobody else wants to do it. The team that comes last gets to choose the subject for one of the rounds in the next month�s quiz. Usually its something like Cartoons. Last night it was The Simpsons. The losing team from last night chose �Premiership Football� for their specialist round next month. I don�t know anything about premiership football. If anyone wants to write me ten multiple choice questions suitable for use in a pub quiz, I�d be eternally grateful (and willing to swap something for the effort, obviously. What would you like?). Incidentally, if anyone wants copies of the quizzes so far � six rounds of 10, some multichoice, some picture questions on Powerpoint � do let me know as Im happy to email them to you.
The world of work is a funny one, isn�t it. Still haven�t actually been paid ANY money for any of the work Ive done so far. Picked up another 7 training sessions today which will net me about �1000 and Ive got another tutoring session with L�s niece. We�re looking at themes of conflict in Dulce et Decorum Est and Romeo & Juliet 3:1 (the big scrap with Mercutio etc). Hopefully someone will start paying me soon. Real soon. Or it�ll be Dulce et decorum est, pro familia ut astrum.
I know that�s not right but, hey, it�s been a while. And Sister Peter never taught us anything of worth, just rabitted on about how she was a missionary in Malawi (her finest hour, natch) and left us to wrestle with bo, bis, bit, bimus, bitis, bunt.
Maybe.
Later
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