Would you or wouldn't you?

Feeling much better today, little "angel" who bit/bruised/kicked me was in fact a little angel all day. Mum wouldn't make eye contact!!

More pressing problem right now - there's a big meaty spider in the bedroom ... probably come in out of the rain! As we speak he's taking his "bovver boots" off and making himself comfortable! Hmm!

Question of the day - can you go to sleep in a room if you know there's a "bigger than you like" spider in there?

Me? Cluck - I'm off to the spare room with the other chickens!!

Remind me ...

Remind me again why I like my job?
Remind me again why it is ok for a 5 yr old to knock 6 barrels of shit out of me?
Remind me again why it is ok for him to punch, pinch and bruise my arms?
Remind me again why it is ok for him to swear at me?
Remind me again why it is ok for him mum to turn up @ 3.45 (1/2 hour late) pissed and stinking of fags?
Remind me again why it is ok for her to not apologise and tell him to hurry up?
Remind me again why it is ok for to have two beautiful healthy children? And for me not to have any?

I need a drink tonight! :o(

My favourite place to ...

... eat Italian ~ there's a fantastic restaurant just around the corner from Harrods in Knightsbridge called ... umm, ah, oh god what's it called? I'll have to ring my mum and get back to you on the name. But if you're standing looking at the front of Harrods turn right and walk along the street in front of the store and then take the first turning left (at the end of the building - Hans Road I think??) and the restaurant is 100 yards down on the right! Incredible spaghetti carbonara, amazing veal with sage & masala, velvety zabaglione. [What do you know - good old Google (who by the way is celebrating his/her 7th birthday today .... Happy Birthday big G!) - the restaurant is Zia Teresa .... sometimes the Internet is a fab place to be!]

... holiday ~ last November Kent County Council and the British Council paid for me and 22 other teachers from Kent to go to Durban in South Africa ... all in the name of International Professional Development you understand. It was an incredible week - I saw things, visited places, met people that the normal tourist will never ever see and I would really love to go back as the "holiday" part of my trip was just as fantastic! I'd love to take Simon so he could see the things I described, visit the places and meet some new friends I made!

... sleep ~ my bed, super king size with a deluxe mattress. Bliss! However ... I wouldn't say no to one of these ... my friend Kev, in his new job as an accomodation inspector said "Oh my god, I'm lying on the most comfortable bed EVER!" [He was staying in a small hotel in Torquay doing an inspection ... I was GUTTED that it wasn't more Fawlty Towers :o) ]

... buy chocolate ~ Rococo in London's Kings Road. Please, please, please promise me that the next time you're in London, you'll go just to smell the shop and you'll try their organic dark chocolate with chilli.

... watch the world go by ~ it's a bit twee, but on the morning of my 23rd birthday I had coffee and pain au chocolat in a cafe on the Champs d'Elysee - the sun was shining, it was already hot at 10am. The breakfast cost an absolute fortune £15 each *coughs* 13 years ago but it was wonderful. We sat for an hour and soaked in the "where" and watched Parisians and tourists (actually probably more tourists than Parisians as they are all in Provence by mid August!) do "metro-boulot-dodo" aka the daily grind ~ see it sounds better in French doesn't it?

So, come on, you choose your ending for the sentence ~ My favourite place to ...is ...

I have developed a bit of a reputation ...

... as the teacher who gets the "willful" kids. Willful, there's a word to conjure with. Dictionary.com gives the definition of willful as ~

Said or done on purpose; deliberate.

Obstinately bent on having one's own way.

My parents will probably tell you that I was willful - an only child, a first grandchild to both sets of grandparents - my first words were probably "mine" or "no!" I was verbally precocious (what do you mean no surprise there?) who asked "why?" and "why do we need to?" with amazing regularity. I always wanted to explore ~ usually where I wasn't supposed to be and ended up in bucket after bucket of hot water. I vividly remember being made to sit on a chair on my first day of school because I had wanted to go and look in the book corner and the teacher (Mrs Quick) said it wasn't time ... she's still teaching too, the old boot & is currently nephew #3's head teacher!

Anyway back to the subject, this reputation I have developed gets me down a bit, I don't want to be the teacher that children are sent to so they get "sorted out!" That gets the "difficult children" ~ I'd rather have the reputation as someone who teaches fabulous lessons, is kind to all children, a good listener somebody who is caring ... but wait, this "reputation" that I have is stuck on me by teachers and TAs who send children into my class year after year. Maybe I should instead be talking to the children in my class about my reputation - asking them if we have fun, if their lessons are interesting? Or the children who were in my class last year or before that? What would they say about me? How would they come into school if they were worried about me sorting them out? Would they come back to "visit" on the playground for a hug or a high-five in passing in the corridors if all I ever did was sort them out? Anyway, do I really want to "sort out that obstinacy" that makes a child stay on task / persevere with an activity / find out about or do something that might be a little difficult for them? NO!

This is a bit of a garbled post but what it really boils down to is :: I guess I have to stop worrying about what other adults (staff and parents) in school think of me the teacher ~ ok, realistically there are times/people who's opinions do count BUT in all reality the only day to day opinions I care about are the little ones.

Question ~ so, does the real you match up to your reputation?

Thank you Sainsburys

I have been having a rough time with my bloggin' of late ~ new school year, new head of department, new headteacher, new kids = very, very busy = too tired to do ANYTHING. I would like to say that my consumption of alcohol and chocolate ice~cream has slipped ... but no instead it is my blogging and my perspiration blogging inspiration which is taking a hammering. Until @ the checkouts in Sainsburys on Friday night when I found an interview with Jamie Cullum in the new monthly Sainsburys magazine - I am so nicking his questions sentence starts and answering them myself! That's 16 days of simple posts right there - hurrah!

Unconscious mutterings #138

I say ... and you think ... ?

Crave :: pickled food, no I'm not pregnant, yes I wish I was normal and craved chocolate BUT give me a gherkin, sweet cucumber, Carluccio's sweet & sour aubergines or a spiced shallot anyday!

Whole package :: the whole kit and caboodle

Roommates :: friends

5:30 :: on the way home along the A2, listening to Johnnie Walker or preferably Stuart Maconie, the mystery voice competition at the moment is really, really, really hard - I was convinced it was Keira Knightley - shows what I know!

Lesbian :: woman / women

Poignant :: music

Hurtful :: bigots

You and I :: bloggers

Grateful :: Grateful Dead

Giggle :: me and my mum giggling like Muttley with asthma at any opportunity ~ there were the Spanish Irish dancer's @ Paco's Irish pub in Lloret-de-mar [we didn't really see them, or even go to the bar ... they were just in our imaginations; but that was good enough for us] and the "fallen Madonna with the big boobies" crossed with the famous Black Madonna @ Rocamadour ~ I guess you just had to be there!

Doctor, doctor!

So last Monday I went for my visit to the doctor after last week's dodgy Friday afternoon girly oojy-ma-flip fainting episode in the bathroom. She wasn't surprised to see me having had a letter from the hospital about me and we settled down for a little chat. She checked my pulse spoke about my needing blood tests à la hospital letter and then .... took my blood pressure ~ YIKES! "Mmm" she says "that's a little high!" "No shit Sherlock" thinks I! "Come back in a fortnight so we can check it again, the BMA decrees you should have 3 high blood pressure readings in a row before I can give you medication!" I don't want blood pressure medication this is a for a lifetime thing start now, never come off it! SO .. then she looks at my ankles and needless to say I now have medication - not blood pressure meds yet but low dose diuretics. LOW DOSE? These are LOW DOSE? ~ Good grief, if peeing was a national sport I could represent GB @ the next Olympics - as long as there are plenty of public loos around the stadium!

I think my blood pressure would come down much better if I was allowed to go away and do some more watercolour painting! Here's another one that I did during the summer for you to see!!

What?

Update ~ a great big thankyou to this fruity New Zealander & this bloggie superstar for their technical know-how! Cheers ladies!

Ok, so what's the difference between a visit and a page view? And how do I put a link in a comment? Just 2 little questions this morning for you all to answer!!

The things kids say #3

Last Friday .... what a hoot!

K - Lauren's picking me up tonight!

Me - no problem K! Who's Lauren?

K - my nanny.

Me - what, your grandma? You call your grandma Lauren?

K - no! Well Mummy doesn't call her my nanny.

Me - What does Mummy call her? *I was being incredibly nosey*

K - Umm? *insert theatrical thinking poses galore here* Umm?

Me - Have you forgotten?

K - Yeh, it's like banana but it's not that!

Me - *crying* K, is Lauren your aupair?

K - Yes the pear!

Unconscious mutterings #137

I say ... and you think ... ?

Less filling :: more bread? I love sandwiches - sweet & savoury together usually on white bread, steam baked if I can get it. Brie and pear, roast turkey with cranberry sauce, philadelphia cram cheese with strawberry jam!

Glue :: spreaders. I'm always asking for more of these little green sticks ... where do they go? Are there Borrowers living @ school in little houses made entirely out of my glue spreaders? Probably.

Surprise me :: with flowers or diamonds Simon!

Model :: cocaine (thank Kate Moss for that one this week!)

Fee :: "Fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of an Englishman!"

Microphone :: "testing?" - The embarassment of speaking out loud in public *blushes* I hat these things, the whole "testing 1, 2, 3" thing! No thanks, I'd really rather not!

Choices :: decision

To the bone :: Cuts to the bone

Run! :: Run! Forrest run! One of my favourite feel good films of all time - a superb idea and the whole "life is like a box of choclates" line - wonderful! And for some strange reason table tennis at speed has ALWAYS mesmerised (sp?) me!

Appeal :: plea

Why?

Dear Mr Gates,

why does Outlook Express compact my mail as I exit when I have never asked it to?

Love & kisses
Jo

The things kids say #2

On Friday afternoon, one of the little girls in my class was brought in by a "junior" after having an accident. She's a lovely little thing - tiny, with curly hair and glasses and still a little clumsy. She has this unfortunate ability to fall over all kinds of things and on Friday had run into a wall ... skinning her nose (thank goodness they're not doing photos anytime soon!) I am the senior lunch time supervisor on a Friday (school speak for only mug left on the school premises because all the others bugger off to the pub) so E was brought to me!

Me - Oh E, what happenned?

E - I knocked the wall, I was running and suddenly it was there!

Me - *stifling laughter, for a change* Oh no! We might have to have some lessons on how not to run into walls!

E - *by this point crying pitiful little sobs* Can we start soon Mrs L because it does hurt my dose so much when that happens!!