Wednesday 14th July

Some additions to my CV from the last six weeks...

• ICT course for Key Stage Three called "Web Technologies". Out of seven people, five were heads of ICT, one was a technician and the last was me. I was the only person capable of using HTML. I am made to feel that this is a disadvantage and forced to use Frontpage, practically at gunpoint. Have a look at my source code, it's so simple Mother Hand would get it. Well, almost. It was a good course though.
• Mentoring course at Bath Spa in preparation for next year. Realise I might be slightly out of my depth when everyone else there is at least going into their third year as a teacher, but what the hell, I'm still fresh.
• Cannon firing. Civil War Re-enactorman and wife came in today for enrichment week. Their display included firing muskets and a cannon. The cannon was only loaded with grass but it still went halfway across the field. Loaded with a cannon ball it would have gone half a mile - and destroyed the hallowed supermarket, Coopers. The kids would have had nowhere to practice being menacing if that had happened. Anyway, I got to fire it the third time. HOW COOL IS THAT?!
• Script marking for the Hellhole. Can't believe I went back there after being treated so badly when I processed for them, but nevermind. I had to mark 478 scripts and got very behind when I managed to get 10 scripts ahead, got complacent and didn't do any for three days. I had to mark 120 over the weekend and ended up sleeping for 12 hours on Monday night. The first payment arrived on Saturday though which was very motivating. Tedious it was, but having made almost a grand I just know I'll be doing it next year. Some gems...
  • War encouraged the procedure of cross-dressing.
  • I strongly recommend listening in class and revising for this kind of test in future. Lots of love, Batman.
  • You don't just have to vaccinate against diseases, he also vaccinated against milk.
  • Pasteur vaccinated against Rabbis. (Hitler would have loved that).
  • Pasteur discovered pasteurised milk, and then made it into cheese and yogurt which helped people to get more protein and therefore fight disease.
• Pet keeper. We have a new kitten. She's called Tilly. She's adorable and has got really big since this picture was taken. This was her first night here. She was a bit upset because I was so busy cooing at her in a traffic jam on a hill on the way home that I rolled into the taxi in front. This was in the hire car so I had to pay for the minor dent to be fixed, on my insurance. Bye bye, profit from script marking, hello stupid insurance premium. I was so distracted I let Tilly sit in her box for 15 minutes before remembering her and letting her out. She was mega cute for the first week. Since then we've had a nightmare defleaing her and she flies around the house as if possessed. Her favourite trick is sitting on the back of Mr Z's chair and repeatedly pawing the window, as though climbing some rigging. She elaborates on this by jumping, sinking her claws into the putty around the top window of the double glazing, and then hanging there looking pathetic until you help her down.
• Fantastic whinger. Dell were rubbish when I had a problem with my laptop. It wouldn't charge, and it took over a week to get it sorted out, and numerous phone calls, and nobody knew what was going on whenever I called, and nobody called me back at the right time, and I could never call the same person because they were in Bangalore. Total, nightmare. A future addition to my Useless Bastards page.
• Year 7 tutor. I have met my new tutor group, they are mostly very sweet. Especially the girls. A few scaries though. On induction day, one little boy got so upset that his best friend spent the day talking to someone else that he drew a picture of the somebody else being stabbed through the head and himself laughing. "I hope he's a rapist!" he declared tearfully, at the end of the day. It's going to be a long five years...
• Uber Lush Shopper. I've spent a fortune there recently. They just keep coming out with lovely new things. And then offering limited edition sales of my favourite old things. Warm up the Mastercard...
• Tour guide. Ian and I took a group of kids to Portsmouth on Monday as part of enrichment week. I was fresh from my mega script marking session over the weekend on not sleeping on Sunday night. Ian was fresh from seeing Morrissey in Manchester on Sunday night and not getting home until 2am. The minibus had a broken speedo and only one door, at the back (surely not legal!). We arrived and one girl piped up "I don't like boats". Sigh. I fell asleep on the harbour tour and almost on the bus home, then came home and slept for 12 hours. Ian made it until 9.30 and then conked out, apparently. But it was fun. Mother Hand even came to meet us for lunch.
• Not quite fantasy teacher. We did our class lists on our off-timetable day a few weeks ago, and because I was teaching four out of seven year eight classes this year I got quite a lot of say over who went into next year's year nine sets. My one stipulation was that I refused to teach an evil child whom I abhorr. He ripped down my newspaper article about Pompey beating Man Utd while I was on a course, and then was witless enough to reveal himself ("Where's your poster Miss?" he smirked, knowingly. "Oh, I decided to take it down...it doesn't change the result of course," I replied airily. "Yeah RIGHT! I know better," he sniggered evilly. Well done, you fuckwit.) I should have told his mum that when she came in and laid it on the line about him needing everything increased in size because he's so blind (yet he can copy out of a History of Britain book when asked by one of his peers, and that text is SMALL.) Anyway, I made a swap for an officially worse kid, but I prefer him. Unfortunately I ended up with the original kid. Another year of him glaring at me myopically and tipping his chair. It can't all be fantasy. I refused to teach RE next year for example, but I have ended up with a year seven group so I'll be teaching RE AND geograpy. At least the latter's just colouring in. Haw haw.
• Imaginative IT teacher. My timetable arrived and I was teaching a set of year nine ICT in my mobile classroom. I have no computers. In fact, we have no network connection in the mobiles. I wrote, "I can't teach ICT in a mobile!" on my timetable and returned it to the head of timetabling. It returned the next day with, "No imagination!" scrawled on it. That made me happy. I pissed off the head of timetabling by trying to sneak a peek at my timetable when he was still at the ginormous spreadsheet phase. "Can I just..." I muttered, squinting to check there was no year 7 and I wasn't teaching 8.8 (one outta two ain't bad). "NO! NO! NO!" he yelled angrily at my swiftly retreating back. So hopefully the imagination remark means he's not holding a grudge.

The discovery of my website has finally been made by members of the staff at school. They seem to prefer looking around at all my old pictures and embarrassing profiles. I was a little uncomfortable when the head of personnel read my alternative CV - "Making jokes at the expense of senior management? I hope not!" she exclaimed as I reddened and pictured kissing future promotions goodbye (not really) - but anyway, nobody's mentioned this yet so perhaps we're safe to hide here for a bit longer. Ssshhh.....