Tuesday 13th April

Do you know what I think is really ironic? J Lo's new perfume adverts in the magazines. "STILL" they say, naming the scent, as she lounges on a couch in evening wear, her enormous pink diamond engagement ring picked out, glittering. "Still" what? Still not happily married? Since her detachment from Ben Affleck (probably something to do with Matt Damon controlling the weather again, isn't everything...) I heard she's going to sell the ring and donate the proceeds to charity. A pity that she didn't consult her Santo whatsit mystic adviser before she had the pictures taken for her ad campaign.

I'm going to claim it was a knee-jerk reaction to the end of Sex and the City for as long as I live (yes, I did cry, it was an excellent if bittersweet ending &c. &c.) but I had to rush out and buy a fabulous new pair of shoes the day after in spite of the fact that it was the day before payday and they were £65. It happened to be the weekend that Mr Z had his clan friends down so maybe it was also a reaction to so many men in the house. These included the constantly toking "I've got a bad hip, me" Scotsman; Jazzy, almost unnervingly Thug-like in certain moods and the winner of the "Longest Male Use of Shower" award; and an assortment of others, including the Jack-Black-a-like and Bro' who do little DJ sessions online and reminded me of the time Jen and I got drunk and dueted to Steps over Mr Z's mic and it was Friday and I'd smoked 10 fags and my voice was breaking like a teenaged boy's. Oh joy.

I digress. I should take a picture of the shoes really (in fact, I just have and here it is!) because they are the most delicious shoes ever. I went into the opticians where Claire (la student) was working that day and we swapped coos, as she'd purchased a fabulous pair of red ones from Jones. Opening the boxes inspired gasps of delight from all women assembled, leading me to surmise that shoes are the new babies. They are four inch white spike heels with a cut out pink sandal upper decorated with white polka dots. A veritable confection. Not to everybody's taste of course, but I adore them, and they have been the victim of many a double-take on the two occasions I've had to wear them. I can stand in them quite easily; walking is slightly more of a problem but I've found that copious gins helps. I tested this theory at the Linsell wedding a few weeks ago and found that I coped very well, apart from a bit of dancing during which I went unshod.

Steve and Louise both looked very happy and naturally Mr Z and I looked fantastic, me resplendent in The Shoes and he in The Red Shirt. I spent ages blow drying my hair to within an inch of its life and am still suffering the frizzies but it was worth it for the glass-like finish I achieved. Mr Z, Stu and I showed up having already got a few cheap rounds in at the pub as we didn't want to be the first people there but the party was already in full swing so that was OK. It was weird seeing people again. I know I always say that, but it wasn't just Neil and Gitboy, but even Ady and some others who I've not clapped eyes on since before uni. Also met Neil's girlfriend - she was very chatty and pleasant and I think she even gazed at my shoes - and was in the same room as Gitboy's girlfriend...sorry, fiancee...although we naturally remained unintroduced and she managed to avoid me effectively for the entire evening which was pretty good going considering how overbearing I can be after the best part of the bottle of gin concealed in my handbag (I opted for BYOB, since it sounded like the sort of classy joint I wouldn't have been able to afford to drink myself into sterility in).

Meeting Neil's girlfriend was almost uncomfortable in that she had no idea who I was (but then, why would she?) and seemed shocked to the point of soap opera acting when I explained...
Sarah: I'm Sarah, Neil's girlfriend
Me: Hi, I'm Sally
(Long, uncomfortable pause - the question hangs in the air like inaudible treacle)
Me: Oh, I used to go out with...er...(gesture in direction of Gitboy)
Neil: Ah ha ha [just like that] yes, she used to go out with old Rodders
Sarah: (jaw drops) REALLY?
Me: (thinks) yes, I can't quite believe it either
Me: (says) well yes...but I went out with one of their other friends before that..
Neil: Oh yes, how is old Jonny, doing well I hope, ah ha ha (no love lost between those two)
(General conversation about my murky dating past with this particular group of techies)
Sarah: You didn't go out with my Neil, did you?
Me: (thinks) How the hell can I get out of this one without offending anybody?
Me: (says) Er nooooooo no no no...ha ha...but he would have been next on the list of course...ha ha...alphabetically
Sarah: Oh, that's a pity because he's (torrent of gut-curdling mush about Neil which I have blanked from my mind, in much the same way, I assume, as my friends do when I gush about Mr Z)
Me: Oh well, if I'd known all THAT...ha ha ha...

In reality, I think Neil would have been as horrified at the prospect of going out with me as I would have been with him. Big fish and Tommy Cooper have never really been my scene. And the brash, loud qualities I maintain as a drunken adult have been toned down a lot (don't faint in surprise! I didn't start the taupe-ing of my drunken antics until I realised one day I couldn't remember a time when I'd been drunk and not embarrassed myself) since my teenaged yoga-in-platforms, chuck-Bacardi-Breezer-over-everyone days. (Rummage) I shall now publish a word from the Bunnyland vaults, an email from Steve "I'm married!" Linsell recounting our antics from those hedonistic days of 1997...

I am totally an utterly dead today. I feel like I have a massive hangover, but I wasn't drinking last night....
[Note: our nights out would have begun and ended in the dodgy Irish pub in Colindale were it not for Steve's fab Fiesta, affectionately named Big Tessa's Tits. We got six of us in it on one occasion, no mean feat when one of them was me in my "I'm a cook, let me eat everything" phase and one of the others was Stu in his pre-gym and healthy lifestyle days. I digress.]
Anyway, it was a really good night, I thought. Pulse [the fine Stevenage nightclub] was a bit quiet but there was enough people to make it worthwhile. Chris, you missed Sally dancing on the middle of the stage on her own. Sal tied balloons to her arms and really went for the old dancing thing, they managed to get some other people up on the stage about 10 mins later when the DJ asked people to come and join "Sally", they knew her name by this stage. She even managed to drag the rest of us up on the stage at various points in the evening.
You also missed her drinking flaming cocktails in this bar we went in beforehand. Funny it's always an interesting evening when Sally's around........
[Note: Use of word "interesting", not "fun". Isn't that the word people use around alcoholics? Or maybe he was alluding to the fact that by this point he and the others were having to suffer the burgeoning flirtations Gitboy and I were indulging in. Good grief, and it took me at least another five years to learn to tone down my drunken behaviour. I could just blush for a year, I really could.]
The music in the club was acceptable, and they had proper dancers (wearing skimpy outfits) on the podium. Good evening, but I don't think we'll be going back there too often.
[Note: That was the night a girl claimed I had been bitching about her to Stu and smacked me in the face (I believe I had been admiring her shoes). Then she did it again and the bouncers tried to chuck her out, but relented since it was her birthday. I spent the rest of the night sneering at her and flicking the bird because she couldn't do anything else. I never really quite got how that happened, but Steve, Stu and Gitboy escorted me around the club like personal bodyguards for the rest of the night.]

See, shoes can be evil. They can get you into trouble. I was staring at the shoes of an interviewee for the admin place at school the other day. She was wearing black stilletto courts which seemed unfeasibly high for a job interview and I was admiring her courage and mentioned it to Markus (he whose house I chucked up all over - more in a minute). Then Ange, Head of Year 7, came over and whispered, "I saw that look!" to me. I tried to look innocent cos I thought she meant I was being mean, and protested, "I was only looking at her shoes!" "I know!" she replied, "your eyes were practically out on stalks!"

It was tradition for Steve, or someone, to write an email to our list after such nights out, although I only have a few left in the archives which I'd printed out as being of particular note. I recently purged them of the ones which made me cringe particularly hard. I expect yon geeks (and I use the term with the utmost affection) still have copies on their machines, anyway. The benefit of hanging out with techies is that, generally, you don't lose stuff like that. The exception is when they get too techie for their keyboards and try and do something clever and end up having to format their disks and reinstall Windows (Mr Z and Father Hand, come on down).

I don't know why I've always hung out with computer types. It's a bit of a mystery. When I turned up at Mr Z's clan meet after an evening of school talk with Ben, a rather drunk specimen questioned my presence. "Oh, I don't know anybody here," I dead-panned. "I'm just attracted by groups of geeks." He seemed to take slight umbrage at that, but I was only half joking. And I don't regard the term "geek" as offensive. It took a lot of diligent computer-scientist-dating to raise my own computing knowledge to the level of "geek" in the eyes of my historian colleagues and I know I hardly know anything. I think Gitboy and Ady were bit tickled at the prospect of me teaching ICT. I hope I get the chance to next year though. It'll beat bloody PSHE hands down...don't talk to me about puberty...mutter...

Markus is back in da school after his sojourn in his complementary school, his pupils there liked him so much they took to calling him God and made a website in his honour. A good sign, I expect. My pupils like me so much they've taken to calling me Bitch and pray I'll fall pregnant so I'll leave and they'll get Ian for History next year (that's only a small clutch of my year 10s, to be fair, but then maybe they're the only honest ones.) This last half term saw an incident in which, after I requested my room be kept locked when the form tutor was out of it and the keys secreted in the office, some boys took my keys off my desk (very carefully hidden, then), unlocked my filing cabinet and deprived me of the few lollies they hadn't taken the day before. I was apoplectic with rage and, upon hearing the names of the perps from a reliable informant, demanded senior duty pick them up immediately. Senior Duty, at that point a very reasonable and friendly geography teacher named Ian, said he was too busy and suggested ways I deal with it myself, until I swept myself off in a fit of righteous indignation and slammed the door in his face. The form tutor was less helpful, suggesting a talking to from me would "mean more" than if he were to pick it up, the lazy git. "Oh yes, it'll mean a lot coming from an NQT with less than a year at the school," I snapped and swept off again. How to make friends and influence people, Sal. Good job. Anyway, after a sniffle in the loos and a good whinge to Cath I felt marginally better and then discovered Ian had found some time to pick the perps up and stick one in internal isolation for the next day and the rest in detention. And I got a bag of lollies back. Winner.

I should set him on my personal trainer really. I finally extracted a tenner (it seems his fist is even tighter than his abs) in repayment and am still spitting about that. Is he really trying to claim that personal training with him is only worth a fiver an hour? Bollocks. This didn't make me the ideal candidate for targetting by a new personal trainer as I slogged up a hill in the gym today. He seemed nice enough but I had to come clean and tell him I couldn't consider personal training after my last experience. Poor guy, it can't be easy trying to recruit people in the gym as they sweat and puff their rancid breath in your face. The truth is, it's not that I don't trust him - I just feel slightly intimidated. When I'm climbing an incline of 4 at a speed of 6.5 the only thing I want to be gazing at is some interesting TV. I don't appreciate having to make awkward eye contact with someone whilst being in the same sweaty state conducive with a good session of bed Olympics. It's just too PERSONAL. The ideal personal trainer would have no olfactory sensation and stand behind me, giving advice and encouragement. Or better still, they would observe me closely via CCTV and communicate via a headset which would play music when they weren't actually speaking.

Sally Hand Training Services - Taking the PERSONAL out of PERSONAL TRAINING.

Anyway, I apologised to Markus for chucking up all over his house but it turned out that one of my puddles had been blamed on someone else and the house wasn't in too much of a state anyway, so that's alright. He's on about having another party in the summer. I think I'll drive.

Saturday 24th April

I've been swanning around today in a new 04 plate Corsa. It's got remote central locking and stereo controls on the steering wheel and although it's diesel it goes like the clappers on a long straight road. My Ford was getting a bit dirty, you see, so I decided to trade it in for a new one. Well, it was six months old - high time for a change. The kids were all disgusted at school on Friday and questioned whether I had ever come across such a thing as a car wash. They all think I'm loaded.

Sadly, I haven't won the lottery and the Corsa isn't mine to keep (I expect the novelty will wear off quite quickly anyway). I do have it for two weeks though, because I got rear-ended at a roundabout close to home on Thursday. Ironically, I was giving Andy a lift to school because he was jet lagged from his Easter holidays in America and didn't want to fall aslep at the wheel and have an accident. I was stationary and waiting for a space when a girlie rammed me from behind with considerable force (some kids hypothesised that this occurred because I have a Pompey sticker in my car but I don't buy it). I was more upset about my car than anything, but upon perusal it didn't look damaged at all - just a crack in the bumper and the light above my number plate smashed. The girl, who couldn't have been much older than 20 and worked for TLT solicitors (who I used to temp for, coincidentally, and are listed in the top ten Google hits when searching for car accident liability of some description) looked really upset and fiddled desperately with the bumper, trying to pull it back to its correct position. "It's just the light...this pops out," she muttered miserably. "Well don't touch it, you don't want to make it worse," I snapped, feeling most unsympathetic, which was a bit uncalled for since it could very easily have been me in her situation, and on some occasions very nearly has been. I got her details - it transpired she was on her dad's insurance so fireworks for her that evening - and went on to school. Half way there my contact lens dropped out and I didn't notice for ages so I had to soak it in water to get it back into my eye.

Then when I arrived at school I went to open the boot and the damn thing wouldn't shut again. When we looked, the whole back end was all rippled and deformed, and some big dents had appeared in the tailgate. No amount of coaxing would get it shut, so I had to get a member of the tech department to rope it shut and that made me much more upset than I had been - I couldn't see how it could be fixed. Then I told Claire about my contact lens and she went white and told me that I might get amoeba blah something from the water and go blind within 24 hours, which just put a crimp on an otherwise perfect day.

Needless to say, I am not blind, and I rang my insurers and they were brilliant. The courtesy car people and the garage rang me within two hours - as I was trying to calm down a hysterical year seven who was trying to punch someone for calling her fat, and then again while I was trying to hold a detention for one of my nastier year nine pupils, so they must think I'm a right cow of a teacher now - and I went straight there after school. The garage estimated £500 for labour and respray alone (no paintwork needed doing from what I could see so I am hoping he meant the scrape along the side that I did a couple of weeks ago) with parts on top - and I need a new tailgate, back piece, boot floor (which was rippled like raspberry ice cream when he lifted the carpet) and bumper, and the plate light. That's one expensive claim. Sam, the TA who helped me try to close the boot, said it cost £5k when the same thing happened to her. Eek!

I could always claim for personal injury, too. But I feel a bit greedy. I haven't had to take any time off - and if I'd needed to be absent on the Friday she'd have been doing me a favour anyway because it was my horrible Friday. I did have back pain on the Thursday and I've had a bit of a stiff neck since; like I said, she was doing a far whack; Mr Z says if the situation was reversed she'd probably claim for personal injury but I don't want to perpetuate the behaviour. People keep telling me to "Be careful" - "Be careful, that happened to so and so and six months later she had to have extensive dental work where she'd clenched her jaw" or "Be careful - the back problems might come on much later". How, exactly, am I meant to be careful? Perhaps I should avoid being rear ended for a second time? I'll just hang on to the details and presumably I can make a claim at a later date if any further injuries transpire. I suppose it makes no difference to her or her dad - he'll lose his no claims anyway - but it doesn't seem particularly honest, and also I'd probably have to go and sit in A&E for seven hours waiting for x-rays.

Didn't Pompey do well last weekend?! One nil to the former best team in the Premiereship! I really had to force myself to not ring the Thug and tease him about it, I expect that would have gone down like a lead balloon. I cut out all the stories from the papers and stuck them on my wall and I've had to contend with kids trying to rip them down all week or complaining that they're destroying their concentration. I actually saw the second half of the match from the gym floor - I started off a way back and was unable to see the score - just Pompey 1 and Man Utd something illegible which I assumed was a 2 - so when I moved forwards to a treadmill I was euphoric and watched the last 20 minutes with bated breath, as was the man next to me who I had quite a chat with. I enquired as to whether his loyalties lay with my hometown and he replied, "Well, I definitely don't support United that's for sure!" and proceeded to tell me about Sunderland's fortunes, which were a bit over my head. I nearly danced on the treadmill when the final whistle went. Just what we needed! And with tomorrow's game against Leeds being (I hope) a foregone conclusion, Redknapp deserves a medal.

I'm getting a bit good at this football lark these days. I think it's self-preservation, the kids at school can spot a fake at 100 paces. It's been an interesting first week back; I've survived remarkably well considering how lazy I was over the Easter holidays. Friday was a bit of a downer - I locked my classroom and the bastards pried a window open and robbed my lollies that way, and then in the last lesson a kid tried to retrieve his football from my bottom filing cabinet drawer and I kicked it shut without looking and slammed his fingers in it. I apologised. He then stood up - nearly in tears - and shouted, "Fuck off you fat fucking bitch. You can stick my football up your arse because it would probably fit," grabbed his bag and then stormed out. "OK, page 46...who wants to read the second paragraph?" I asked the class in an attempt to return to normality.

He gets a three day external exclusion, I get another reminder of why it's important to plan my Friday lessons with military prescision to avoid repeats of such situations.

Thursday 15th April

Rebecca Loos - WHAT?! You have sex with an international footballing hero and then you decide to sell your story because you don't want to "live a lie"? What is this woman on? Let's ignore fact number one - that if you were the world's most famous footballer you'd never risk everything by shagging a cheap PA - and move straight on to her motives. Why publish? Why bother? You have a sordid affair, it finishes, you're not surprised or upset, and then you set out to wreck his home life. The interviewer on Sky One suggested that she was destroying a national icon but what about the bloody kids?!

You know how I feel about kids in general (hiss). But that's not the point. No child should have to put up with a divorce, especially not one that's going to be splashed across the world's media for weeks. Miss Loos is a hypocrite, suggesting that it wasn't her intention to split the couple up. If she wanted to make sure they didn't break up, she wouldn't have spoken up. Her story has more holes than a pair of Madonna's fishnet gloves.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care if he's had an affair. It doesn't stop him playing football. It might mean he stops making those appalling Pepsi adverts, which is a good thing. Lots of people have affairs - Royalty, Father Hand, Mick Jagger, John Major...yet marriages often survive them. I have a feeling that if there's any way Miss Loos can prove she shagged Becks, the media won't let Victoria be until she leaves her husband, and that's almost the worst thing about it. Other couples have the ability to make the choice to try and work through it or to split up, but such high profile media darlings will not be afforded the same luxury, methinks. So, I'm unsure about why Miss Loos chose to spill her guts - maybe she was scorned, or fancied the money, or as looking to boost a modelling career or something similar - but I hope it was worth it, because she's made their lives hell for the forseeable future.

Wednesday 14th April

While I'm on the topic of adverts (do try and keep up), that advert for Dove Firming Moisuriser. The one with the plus-sized women, where the voiceover chats about there being no point on testing firming lotion on size 8 supermodels. Am I the only one who finds it mildly offensive? I can't quite explain why. Power to the women starring in it, and if I had a few friends round these parts who I knew well enough to enter for the shoot for the next ad, I would. But I think they've missed the mark just slightly. Firming lotion is meant for firming skin and cellulite, not toning up your flabby bits. I may be a size 18 but, from the waist up at least (let's not talk about the legs - let's just say, bring on the endless squats and lunges again please, Circuits Nazi), I'm toned and firm from all the exercise I do. From that point of view, why shouldn't a supermodel need to use the lotion just as much? Half of them live on fags and smack and never go near a gym. That's a recipe for cellulite and bingo wings if ever there was one.

I have watched the change in models in magazines with interest. It started out that even the health and fitness magazines used the skinniest of models with the muscle tone of a small chunk of margarine to model their sports gear and pose for their fitness features. It used to befuddle me how these pipe cleaner girls had the strength to hold a squat or "the Plank" &c. for the length of time required to get a good shot when I'd been practicing for months and could barely go 10 seconds before my muscles shook with fatigue. Were they wired up, suspended from the ceiling? It's still a mystery to me. Thankfully they've got rid of the stick insects and replaced them with fit and healthy types, albeit still skinny. But at least something to aspire to. Who, apart from a professional clothes horse, wants to look like they live off fags and smack?

Of course, I don't want to look like I live off doughnuts and Guinness, which is a mirror image which is fast approaching me. I am going to have to face up to the fact that I have absolutely no will power at all. As I lift the food to my mouth the imaginary angel squeaks, "NO!" in my ear but I just ignore it. I plan my meals, keep a food diary, work out regularly at the right intensity; I read enough literature on weight loss to give nutritional advice to Oprah bloody Winfrey. There is nobody more prepared to lose weight than I am. But nobody can solve the eternal conundrum for me - where can I find the willpower to put all my theory into practice?

Bloody hell, if this was the 50s I'd be the perfect size and none of this would matter! But you wouldn't be reading this, either.

I've set myself a challenge, anyway, which I hope will be enough to motivate me. On visiting Sibling Hand a few weeks ago at his pied a terre in Notting Hill (the jammy git is living spitting distance from Portobello Market for £300 a month, don't even get me STARTED...) I had a wander around and came across a branch of Office, the shoe mecca. Office are prejudiced against the south west and only have branches in London, Brighton, Scotland and the Midlands, so I have to drool at their shoes in magazines and on their website. There's no point in me buying the shoes over the Internet since I can't try them on (and we all know about my wide foot problem). So, I have to visit London for a moderation meeting in June (yes, I've sold my soul to Edexcel) - that's assuming they don't totally screw up and send me to Birmingham, which is a very real possibility - and I'm planning to stay with Sibling Hand, so I will be near Office. And if I've lost 15 pounds by then, I shall allow myself to indulge in a pair of their shoes. This is a big sacrifice for me since they currently have a divine pair of peep toe platforms with a nice chunky heel and I had to forego them for the ruse to work.

Losing 15 pounds will put me back to my pre-Christmas weight. I know it's meant to be hard to lose weight and stuff, and that the harder you fight the more you appreciate yada yada yada, but it's still a bit depressing. That said, every time I bump into someone I haven't seen for ages (Zoe, Kez, Mad Sarah from the Tree) they always gasp, "You've lost loads of weight!" but I think I've reached the size now that people just remember me fatter than I actually am. And I purposefully avoid trousers with any stretch in them, which helps keep everything sucked in.