Wednesday April 2nd

I freely hang my head in shame. Let's get the stoning over with. Let ye who hath completed a PGCE cast the first stone. Nobody else can truly know how busy I have been over the past month. Although, it's true, I have had my lazy moments. But lazy moments are for lazing, not writing diario entries.

Some highlights...
...Yul and Me'Julie visited Bristol for a couple of nights and we accompanied them to Oldland Social Club. It was weird - like the whole of the Tree clientele had suddenly picked up for the night and decamped. First time they'd all been back in the same place for a while, and certainly the first time *I'd* seen most of them in weeks. Between school and not particularly liking the new landlady, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been in the Tree since Yul and Me'Julie left. The end of an era, to be sure. Mr Z and I are off to visit them this weekend which should be a laugh, especially since they have just been to the Pub and Bar Exhibition in London and brought back some "Blow Job in a Jar" drinks. I shudder to think...

...On the one occasion I did go to drink at the Tree, I took with me Ben from uni, who is like a 6 foot 5 tall Andrex puppy on speed, and got totally bullied by Beeton who wouldn't leave me alone for the whole night about bringing him back the DVD he leant me about 4 months ago. He pissed me off so much I managed to leave my fags in the pub, along with the lighter I "borrowed" off my brother nearly 2 years ago - one of the longest serving lighters ever. Ben seemed happy enough in the presence of 6X and Apple Sourz. That was the first Friday after school started - I tried to get everyone out for a drink but only Ben responded. Everybody has turned into right recluses since we started teaching again, I am resigning as head of the social committee I think. It doesn't help that Adam and Sarah, two of the biggest party animals, went through a rather messy break up at the end of the college-based course, thus rather splintering the group...

...I had a job interview, at Frome College, where aforementioned Sarah is currently on her placement. I was dead chuffed to get an interview and made to feel very clever when the Head said he considered me to be top of my class at Bath Spa (although since he vaguely knows about two other people on it, I must assume he is making a big assumption there). He said lots of nice things about me being intellectual and a person of great depth and that I could be Head of Department within three years and that if he'd given me the job he would have been perfectly happy. Needless to say I did not get the job - apparently, in spite of all that, I interviewed worst - but then it was my first interview so I wasn't too gutted about that. The school is huge - 500 odd pupils to a year group - and there are no year 7s or year 8s - I think I would miss that. The job went to the chap already there on short term contract - I was pleased for him since it means he will be able to finish his NQT year all in one place. Also he was from Portsmouth, went to St John's College and used to have a crush on one of my best friends! Very small world...

Monday April 14th

Of course, not much really happened to me in March because I was at school during March and that basically took up all my time. Between travelling to and from school, being at school, planning for school, scribbling sums on scraps of paper to work out if I could afford the petrol to get to school and dreaming about school in my sleep, there wasn't really much adventuring time. Mostly my adventures, even at the weekends, consisted of staying in on Friday and Saturday nights doing the hoovering and the ironing, and then going down to the Tree and hanging around until Mr Z and Sibling Z finished their beers, and then putting up with Sibling Z pestering me for a visit to Marmaris kebabs. I dunno, when they talk about pester power it's usually in relation to kids - they should do a study of it in relation to 36 year old men after 6 pints of flat Stella.

Gather round, my little ones, and let me tell you a funny story.
Miss Hand dismisses her year 8s and shoots out of school at 5pm like she had a rocket up where the sun doesn't shine.
She skips to her car, prepares her 5pm fag for lighting and turns the ignition key.
Alas, not even a cough.
Miss Hand chokes back a sob of panic as she realises she has committed the cardinal sin of leaving the lights on all day and rushes off to find her friendly form tutor, who quickly rounds up a strapping young PE teacher and a stick thin business studies teacher, who already hates Miss Hand because one of Miss Hand's year 10s broke her OHP.
The three teachers try to bump start the Mini, up and down the drive.
It doesn't work.
At first this is because Miss Hand doesn't know how to bump start cars and doesn't bother with the gears or the clutch or anything complicated like that.
By the third time down, the boarders have all turned out and are lined up in hysterics as we all trundle past, the teachers breaking into a sweat as they push the Mini over speed bumps.
The stick lady business studies teacher is gnashing her teeth about going to the theatre in Salisbury so everyone gives up.
Eventually a helpful maintenance man appears with jump leads. Miss Hand chokes back another sob, this time of gratitude at not having to spend the night asleep in a boarding house. The man goes for his car. Miss Hand helpfully prepares by putting the bonnet up.
Friendly coach man appears. Miss Hand dies of embarrassment after asking where to attach the jumpers and being informed that the battery on Minis is in the boot.
It's a Mini adventure....

That was sort of the most interesting adventure I have had over the past six weeks of school, the rest are to do with pupils and ergo cannot be so exciting, by law. But they can be funny things sometimes. The first week, I had two boys in one of my year seven classes swap their names around. One of them happens to be dyslexic and, not knowing this (because he'd swapped his name) I made him read aloud to the whole class, and then felt horrible. Oh how I laughed when I found out. And then had a right go at them and put them in a seating plan which they must adhere to for the remainder of my time there. That's the good thing about being a teacher, you have the power.

The day after my Mini adventure, the ole guru Mike came in to observe me. It didn't quite go as well as I had hoped, since I popped the video into the machine at the start of the class, only to find when I switched on the TV 20 minutes later that the damn thing had been playing for the entire time and I had to rewind it, but he was very understanding, luckily. He was very happy with me, but both he and my mentor suggested that perhaps I wasn't letting my personality come across quite as much as it should, and thus my lessons were missing some sparkle. With this in mind, I went to teach my last-lesson-of-the-day year 8 RE class. They were doing plays - I just let them get on with it. One particular lad, with a particularly buoyant character and a manner befitting someone older than his years acted in his play buying a girl a Porsche and showering her with money. At the end I clapped and, mindful of what Mike had said, attempted a little joke. "Wow, you're the perfect man!" I enthused.
"Sorry Miss, you're too old," he replied, holding his hand out in an apologetic gesture.

I also managed to stab myself in the leg with a computer desk. I'd taken one of my year 7 groups into the sixth form centre to do some computer work (absolutely unheard of and not allowed, but I have to do an assignment involving computer tasks and my mentor, being deputy head, ignored the rules and sent me in without bothering to ask anybody). I squeezed between the evil desk and a chair, when something went rip and my leg went "OW!". Said evil desk had a huge splinter peeling off the bottom, which had ripped two holes in my favourite grey pin striped trousers and then buried itself two inches deep into my leg. "Shit!" I said, before remembering where I was (luckily nobody heard). I managed to pull the splinter out without exposing myself to the assembled pre-teens, and luckily I had a teacher coming to observe for the second half of the lesson. "Mr McQueen," I said, when he arrived, "I have just stabbed myself in the leg. Blood is running down it. Would you be so kind as to keep an eye on them while I go to the toilet and sort it out?" He was happy to oblige and on inspection my leg wasn't bleeding, but it did hurt. It swelled up like the bite of the mosquito from hell and continued to hurt for nearly a week, in spite of Mr Z deftly applying the Savlon when I wasn't looking. Mother Hand suggested I sue but, well, I didn't exactly lose a leg.

My mentor, meanwhile, is really very sweet to me, although less popular in the staff room, for reasons which h ave become more obvious. I had a problem year 7 boy in my final week, and told him he was going to have to come with me to see my mentor, whereupon he burst into tears and started gibbering about being expelled (second year 7 I have made cry, I'm on a roll. The last one, you may remember, was the daughter of the Head of Education at Bath Spa. She had a right go at me when she came in to chat to us at the end of the course - told me us all we should go easier on Year 7s and think of the parents who had to pick up the pieces. I was mad as hell - she said her daughter worked the whole weekend on her project - but she'd had four weeks to do it in! Hypocrite...) I digress. When I told me mentor, before morning briefing, that I had made a year 7 boy cry, she said, "Good! Make them all cry! I've made a sixth former cry already this morning. Now it's time to start on the staff." I was most amused.

If you took away the rumours that I am sleeping with Mr McQueen (who is about twice my age, rather short and married) and made it closer to home, it would be almost the perfect place to teach - seemingly. I can't put my finger on it, but I wouldn't actually want to teach there permanently. It has rather put me off applying for independent schools - but I couldn't tell you why. The kids are alright, if a little arrogant - no better or worse than state school kids but the smaller classes make it seem much better. After all the jokes about G&Ts in the staffroom at break time that went round my coursemates when they heard where I was teaching, I found out about three weeks in that the school does actually have a bar on site, for the boarders. Some quirk in the licensing laws allows them to serve alcohol to pupils from the age of 17, so I hear. The staff as a whole are much friendlier and more supportive than at the other school. I think it's the fact that they only really have an hour of history a week before GCSE - it just doesn't seem like enough to me. And the way they teach makes it a whistle-stop tour of the last thousand years - nothing really in depth, no "enquiry questions" like we've been taught at uni.

Also, because the classes are smaller and the kids expect book work, some of the time I find myself lazily getting away with giving them book work to do rather than exciting teaching. That's not always true. When I taught Thomas Becket I took a beef tomato in, drew a smiley face on it and then hacked it to pieces in an effort to explain exactly what happened to old Thomas when those knights caught up with him; that was popular - all the kids crowded around, bits of tomato flying everywhere... And when I did my session on the Medieval church I played Gregorian chants, burned incense and blessed each child as they came through the door. The head turned up unannounced half way through that class (it was one he originally taught) to talk to me about grade cards, and was suitably impressed - I was so happy SOMEbody got to see it, it wasn't a scheduled lesson for observation. When I think about these fun things, I find it easy to play personal cheerleader, but it has to be said that I don't do that kind of stuff as much as I would like, because I am too lazy, and more importantly, I can get away with being lazy. The liberation I feel from not constantly having a teacher in the room with me is amazing - although half the other staff think it is wrong and/or illegal to leave me alone (in spite of my thorough police check).

Nevermind. Next term is four weeks long - that's four lessons for each KS3 group. After half term, there's one week of exam preparation, then exams, then returning exams, and then the course is over - so really I only have four weeks of real teaching left, and I can plan all that before I go back to school. Theoretically, anyway. I also have to (alas) go on about four history trips, to the Imperial War Museum, Old Sarum, Corfe Castle (or Farleigh Hungerford) and Longleat House ( where Charles I's shirt is, apparently). On top of that I might have some more job interviews, and in the middle of May I have to go to court and be a witness in the trial of those bastards that threw the trolley at the bloke's head in Asda carpark last October. So really there's hardly any teaching at all left. It's amazing when you think about it. This year has just whizzed by.

I really hope we go to Farleigh Hungerford with the year 7s. Everyone from the course went there on a field trip towards the end of the college-based course, with the local education officer for English Heritage. The trip was preceded by a pub lunch and so Llinos, Elaine and I had a bit of a laugh doing the activity we were set. It was supposed to involve walking the ruins and identifying which rooms were where, but it actually involved standing at the edge and saying, "That looks like it might have been the loo, how's your sex life then?" and smoking fags and throwing the butts into the moat. After that we were all put into character and had to spread out across the ruins and pretend to be Medieval people greeting the lord and lady of the manor after a day's hunting. I was the spit boy. Watching Nadia pretend to play the lute (by blowing into it, at first) has to be one of the funniest things I have seen, especially when Gail started yelling at her to play louder. It's been so nice to be around so many like-minded people again, the shared experiences have been fantastic. It's been a bit sad since the two of our number who (publicly) got it together have since suffered a messy split, so the group is somewhat splintered. But a few of us went out on Friday night and played the "How did she get that job?" game and compared war stories, so that was nice.

Sunday 20th April

And I quote...
"For example, if I got an email from one person saying they liked my diary, and one from another saying it was crap, which opinion would I pay more attention to? Actually, since this is me and I am a bit paranoid, I would probably discount the compliment and spend ages getting all neurotic about the criticism, and not write again for a month."
I wrote that in August, 2000. It's in my August 2000 diario entry, if anybody wants to cross-reference (and no I'm not doing an internal link, I can't remember how to tag something).

The reason I bring this up....Has anybody been following the latest series of "Sex and the City?"
Did anybody see the episode where Carrie was ruminating?
You're right, you're right, Carrie ruminates in every single episode of SATC that has ever aired...
But in this particular episode, she was considering why it is always easier to believe a criticism than it is to believe a compliment.
Do you know what?
*I* think that Candace Bushnell, SJP and all those other megabucks stars involved in writing the scripts have been STEALING ideas from my diario. PLAGIARISING me!
God, does that mean that at the tender age of 22 I was unconsciously writing in the style of a jaded New York fashionista approaching the wrong side of 40?

(Backs slowly away from the can of worms wriggling all over the floor)

Anyway, there was a reason for me reading back over those entries. It wasn't just that I am so narcissistic that I read back over all that old stuff just to pass the time (nobody has that much time on their hands anymore). I got another email from somebody who stumbled across my diario doing a random search on the internet.
I did a search on MSN looking for information about writing a dissertation based on travel writing and lo and behold your site came up. I noticed that you did a dissertation on the creation of Romanian national identity through travel writing and I am looking at doing a similar thing on French national identity. I was wondering how you went about doing this as I am having problems knowing where to start! I realise you are probably completely fed up with the topic by now, but any pointers would be fantastic!
Thanks in advance for your help.

How random! I am amazed that someone else is doing something travel writingy and doesn't know my old tutor. She might, of course, be a student of hers, but having seen all the SSEES references in the entry she found I'd be surprised if she were and didn't mention it. Also the under-grad dissertation deadline at SSEES would have been a month ago. She could be post-grad. I can't imagine a post-grad asking me for help, that's just surreal, I feel much too dumb for that. Crumbs, I feel out of my depth teaching an A-level class, and even my year 10s are vaguely disparaging. That said, I suppose that in a few months I will have a post-grad degree of my own. True, not as academically rigorous as your average MA or PhD, but a damn site harder, and I'd put money on that.

I am also quite amazed she found me at all. I conducted my own search on Google and was disgusted to find my page 86th on a list of 215. Get out there and click people! Find me through bizarre links such as "cosmic hair gallery" and "sibling z"! The bunnies cannot do all the world-dominating on their own - they need some help. It's nice to see my hits counter spiralling upwards ever rapidly, although I have a sneaking suspicion that this is more to do with Mr Z pasting the link into IRC every so often than anything else.