Friday December 31st
It's the end of another year. It's not a particularly happy time here in Bunnyland. Mother Hand is still severely depressed and has been suicidal for much of the past month. Sib is quite as bad, but wallowing in his Notting Hill flat, refusing to answer to the phone or comminicate for fear of "spreading his misery". Father Hand is aware but not really with the program, which I suppose is fair enough since he lives thousands of miles away. So Christmas has been a bit weird, thankfully the family Z have been lovely and made Christmas slightly more seasonal. I'm also heavily addicted to the Lush forum now, and the products that Lush makes, and baths, and so on. I bought £76 worth of stuff on Monday, but got £105 worth of freebies! Which is quite cool.
My student teachers both finished, they passed and have returned my classes to me, hurrah. Well, hurrah about the year 8s, anyway. My tutor group have finished their first term with very little strife, but a LOT of mud. There was a bit of an upset in the last week when one girl - we'll call her Cameron - was upset by another girl - we'll call her Shirley - because of smoking. Cameron was getting picked on at the start of term, by older girls, but Shirley's sister stepped in and sorted it out and they've been good friends ever since. At least, until Shirley's older sister's older boyfriend started pressuring Shirley to smoke, and Shirley started pressuring Cameron to smoke. Cameron gave up smoking when she was 8, she tells me, due to her asthma. I was ready to put Shirley in permanent detention until she gets into year 8, but wasn't allowed to say anything since Cameron was afraid of making things worse. Thankfully, my excellent head of year involved himself and sorted it out, since I had run out of ideas.
I was working with some year 9 boys during a lesson taught by my lady student teacher a couple of weeks ago. Her pants were showing over her trousers - not major thongage, just a little flash of blue over the waistband of her trousers. Anyway, the kiddish boys were laughing and nudging each other, and eventually I got so fed up with it I said, "Oh for crying out loud - go home and look in your mum's knicke drawer, you won't see anything different." At this point one of the boys fairly wet himself laughing, and said to one of the others, "Miss says go and look in your mum's knicker drawer, we all know what's in there!" and started making a humming noise whilst rotating his fingers in a motion I had recently seen. On a battery powered object. At an Ann Summers party.
How I'm going to face his mum at parents evening, I don't know.
I've been trying to think about all the things I have learned in 2004 and how I have changed....
December, while being a bit depressing on the family front, has been a good month for parties. The staff party was in mid December, I managed to NOT get totally wasted and embarrass myself by falling over or showing my knickers to everybody. The head teacher even bought me a drink. He offered me one, then retracted it (not sure why), then offered again, and when he turned away, the barmaid turned around and whispered, "Double?" and I replied, "Yes please!" so he did have something to do with me being quite trollied. Also the wine and tequila slammers at Cath's house beforehand weren't good (yes, I managed tequila without spewing, it was a proud moment). There was lots of staffroom tension but thankfully it didn't bubble over. One of the science NQTs won the Sally Award for Most Wasted, she came to Frome's only nightclub with us (ooo, it was happening, especially when a 12 year old tried to grind his crotch on me during a Christina Aguilera song) and ended up copping off with a bloke. Cath and I weren't really sure what to do - I mean, she's an adult, right? We just felt she was very drunk and needed looking after. But in the end we left her to it. She did arrive at work on Monday morning, but didn't even remember we'd been at the club with her, in spite of the fact we'd shared her taxi there!
Then on the Sunday afternoon I went to Kath's, she is from the Lush forum, with lots of other forumites and we ate Christmas buffet food and had a lot of fun doing Playstation Songstar Party, or Singstar party, or whatever. Karaoke on the telly, on other words. The microphones pick up your pitch, so you can sing in any octave, any words, and still do well. Just as well, since I had to sing Heart of Glass and my voice is, at best, alto. I did pretty well though, and was much cheered. And also confident enough to agree to sing La Bamba at the staff review (although that was cancelled due to one of the technicians dying on the last day of term,).
The weekend after that, Philippa, the head of science, and I hotfooted it down to Essex to Sian's end of term party. I worse my home made red PVC dress for the first time with cowboy boots - the theme was 80s so I just went for over-the-top tack, since it's what I do best. Sian was wearing a panda suit complete with white and black makeup, which was still smeared all over her face the next morning. It was fab to see her and she's loving her job. Curse her for moving so far away! Met her boyfriend too, who is very nice.
After that weekend we had to go back to school for a day and a half, which was slightly pointless but nevermind. We all went out on the Tuesday night; I'd convinced Cath H to driv on Tuesday so I got a bit tiddly at lunchtime and cracked open a bottle of bubbly to drink in the bath when I got home. I decanted the rest into a plastic bottle and drank it on the bus into Bath later, like a total chav. It was a good night, only slightly ruined by the fact that we ended up in Delfter Krug AGAIN, the nasty, overheated, scummy hole. In the end I got so pissed off with one or two of the people I work with acting like total losers that I rang Mr Z and he came and fetched me. It was one of thos nights where I really drank too much and probably got a bit too honest with my head of department, but he should be used to that by now. He told me it pisses him off the way I apologise for everything, all the time, even when it's not my fault. Thi is fair comment. I must make more of an effort not to.
Christmas was quite quiet, but I ventured down to Portsmouth for a few days afterwards and went out with some of the playscheme gang, just to the pub really and then to Walkabout. I still managed to drink quite a lot. Then they cancelled my train back to Bristol (grrr) which had the plus side of meaning tht I'll get a partial refund on my ticket now, but meant I was very later for Lushies lunch (just as well, as missed Lush spending spree part 2). Then I went out with Ben and his loverly girlfriend Kirsty in the evening. Which was a BAD idea. They insisted I bring playing cards and it turned out we were to be playing a drinking game called ring of fire. I am going to put down the card values here in case I forget - 2,3,4,5 - that many fingers, to one person or split between several. 6 - thumb card. 7 - neck or groin card. 8 - toilet card. 9 - fuck off card. 10 - topic card. Jack - action card. Queen - toast card. King - these get placed in the middle. The person who draws the fourth king finishes everything in their glass. Ace - drinking around the world. I know that makes no sense, but if you ever fancy going out drinking with me, I will explain it much better. It was a killer. Ben's bar bill cam to a shad over three figures - he had 8 pints of Hoegarden, Kirsty and I managed 5 bottles of wine between us and we did at least 2 rounds of shots. I don't remember paying the bus driver home, and I am fairly sure I dropped a fiver somewhere. I got home and ate everything, with cheese melted on top. My poor liver. I am supposed to be out tonight, but think I had better take it a bit easy. My spare tyre around my ribs has reappeared, and I've realised I've gained 2 stone back of the 3 and a half I lost, which is very depressing.
Last night I went to the gym, to try and make good, but they'd cancelled my class so I went for RPM instead, a spinning class. My arse really hurts today, it was an absolute killer. I mean, not terribly hard work - it's good because you can choose your own level and stuff - but half way through I was literally whimpering with the pain in my arse. I think it's worse for me since I am heavy. That's my excuse, anyway.
Well, new year, new start and all, as they say. I must make some resolutions, and post them on here. Maybe one of my resolutions should be to post here, more regularly at least. Happy New Year!
Saturday December 4th
Sat watching Quantum Leap at the moment, I really love this show, I'm so glad the Sci Fi channel has proved useful for something. It always amazes me how many episodes feature cameos by actors who are really famous now. For example, in this episode Sam is a Vietnam vet with no legs, and his marriage is going to fail and he's falling for his nurse, who is played by Jennifer Aniston.
Admittedly the show is occasionally a little weird. At the end of this episode Sam gets out of his wheelchair and runs around to save a drowning man - I don't really understand, if he's in the body of someone else, how this is possible. Like when he is in the body of a woman and he has Sam's strength but the woman's shoe size. It doesn't make sense to me. But I think the episodes tackle real issues that have come up in American history - the black panther movement, the Vietnam war, the shooting of JFK... they sure had some good writers. And I get that they must have been running out of storylines but I was gutted when they stopped filming it. It's just not right that Sam is now in Star Trek. He was supposed to spend his life leaping from person to person, hoping every time that his next leap would be the leap home.
(Cough) yeah, I may have watched too many repeats of it.
Entries for February 2005 (Nope, there aren't any for January 2005!)