Wednesday June 2nd

What do you get when you cross a homophobic asylum seeker with a campy mincer with the same views as the Daily Mail, a rampant feminist with a wannabe glamour model who loves porn, a couple of alpha males with a transsexual, and a man in a leopard print thong? Big Brother 5, of course. I've been suckered. I've never really watched Big Brother before. Well, I mean....alright, I have watched it on occasion, but last year I didn't watch it at all, nor the first year, and only a bit of two because I was working for the company who rigged the shag palace, and I suppose quite a lot of three because I was temping and had no life....but I fear I've been suckered this year. It was a cruel trick to start Big Brother at the beginning of half term, and after the final episode of Friends (by the way, Jacob's Creek, sponsoring, did their bit to promote crutch-drinking, "What will you do without Friends?" read the caption, and then, "Find some new ones!" with bottles floating about suggestively). I could barely avoid watching the housemates arrive, and they're such a shocking bunch I can't stop from watching it. I'm waiting to see who gets punched first. Now I see Kitten's been so awful that one of the other housemates is going to get booted out because of her bad behaviour. But I was reading the news on Big Brother tonight on the Channel 4 website (shut up. Just...shut up.) and I see Kitten was chatting about asylum seekers...she has offended me!
"I think we're very much influenced by the media...I just think we're a very rich country...because of history. We took things from people without asking, but you don't learn that in history [lessons] 'cos they don't want us to."

Bah! BAH! What did I teach in my Ofsted lesson last term? What did I teach in front of a government official? The bloody Opium Wars, and specifically about Britain forcing China to trade with us through war and drug-dealing, and that was building on a series of lessons about whether the East India Company, who laid the whole foundation for the British Empire, were a bunch of pirates. That's not on the National Curriculum, or any scheme of work I ever saw. I had to write my own resources for it. So DON'T TELL ME I avoid teaching stuff because "they" don't want me to! Bloody woman. She's all big chat and ideas with absolutely no back up. All mouth and no naval jackets. Very true, considering they haven't given her her luggage. I tried to find a place to post my opinions, but there seems to be no forum, and I don't fancy mailing Big Brother direct since it's such a little thing.

But it does piss me off. Poor History teachers, we all get tarred with the same brush. History's like Marmite, except that many people seem to hate it more than love it. And so many bad people seem to be History teachers - the guy from Trowbridge who was accused of kidnapping a student; then there's this guy, who apparently masterminded a load of soccer yobbery, and he was a head of History too. Why is it always Hitory teachers? Can I say it's a good thing, that perhaps it shows we're really an exciting bunch, and we don't all sit around reading History books and discussing A.J.P.Taylor? No, I fear I can't. There's only one thing for it. I'm going to have to become famous for doing something wonderful and raise the profile of History teachers.

And I'm off to an excellent start. Recently I reported (well, I think I did...spring was a bit of a blur) that I was sixth on the list on a Google search for "bunnyland" and I was very impressed with that. WELL! You'll NEVER guess....I'm now top of the list. TOP! I'm very impressed. I've been digging around in my hit logs and looking at who's been looking at me again, people seem to stumble across me for the strangest of reasons. The other day a chap emailed me to tell me that my page was a Googlewhack. I was very amused, since I'd spent much of the previous week trying to get a Googlewhack of my own, much to Ben's amusement. "You sad bastard!" he said, when I was late answering the door to him after tapping in a couple of obscure words from my sociology dictionary. The next day, he sent me an email with just two words - his own Googlewhack, the hypocrite. Anyway, I'd finally found one (although I forget what it was now) and then this bloke sent me one telling me that I'm a Googlewhack because my page is the only one which comes up when you put in Bagpuss and plaits. Nice, except that Bagpuss isn't in the dictionary so it's not a real one.

A few weeks ago, there was a real Dallas moment, when Yul and Me'Julie came to visit and it was all like an awful dream and in fact they'd never left but were still inhabiting the Tree and we were just out to neck some bevvies at Oldland Club, only luckily I didn't have to witness the sight of Yul waking up in the shower staring at his hand (ha ha, only joking, Yul). It was really lovely to see them again, and Julie's shoes, and the picture of her grandaughter. Sarah turned up and then got all upset and spent about half an hour leaving so it really was just like old times. Yul got a bit tiddly on the local apple brew and spent quite a lot of time leaning on me and talking about Pompey and football in a loop.

And didn't we do well? Finishing the season above Spurs, and only two points behind Scumhampton. Next season's shaping up well, hopefully we'll do a little bit better, and who knows, I might even make it to a live game if they build the new stand.

I was in Portsmouth at the beginning of the last two weeks of term for a course. I was very excited, it was a course for Playscheme this summer - Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention, or SCIP, because they're promoting me to Senior Playworker for Autism this year. So the course was two days of proactive behaviour management strategies - preventing bad behaviour before it starts and so on, with some useful soundbytes ("For children, the bad behaviour is the solution, not the problem" - I'll try and remember that the next time my tutor group are telling me I should go on "Ten Years Younger", the little bastards) - and then the last day was physical behaviour management - getting out of headlocks, removing pupils from dangerous situations, all fun stuff. It was very interesting and I was glad to finally have the opportunity to do it, although I did meet a couple of interesting characters, including a lady who worked in an autism unit. We were meant to be discussing bad behaviour that we'd experienced, and I referred to a pupil at school. "Oh but that was in normal school...I think we should address playscheme, because that's where the real problems are," she said. Erm, excuse me? Are you trying to tell me I don't have to put up with bad behaviour? Just because my pupils aren't sticking their fngers up their noses til they bleed or fiddling with their bits in public constantly, doesn't mean it's a bed of roses. It's just different. My school's not that bad - although that depends on who you talk to, as a number of applicants for posts who I have come across since commencing my employment there have referred to it as "dead rough" - but I still have to put up with a fair amount of bad behaviour, some of which is documented here. I regularly had to attempt to teach a year 11 pupil who would come in stoned to St Stephen. I met a teacher from a local school last week who told me sh'd had to conceal her shock on being told, by a year ten boy, that he'd been "blown by another year ten boy". What do you say to that? What does Clause 38 have to say about that? And in some places it's even worse. OK, so it's 2002, but when I was looking for that soccer yob article I read this article about a teacher who was punched in the stomach whilst pregnant.

Any work environment comes with its own problems. Autistic children can be extremely difficult to deal with on a day to day basis, but the slight benefit of working with them is that generally you are on a one-to-one basis, or close. Dealing with up to 150 different children every day presents issues in its own right, and it's small-minded to suggest that my input is not as valid as that of a special needs teacher.

In fact, it's something that Kitten would say. But she is great though. I assume that they will all nominate her to leave this Friday (although...are they nominating? Should they not have done that by now?) which is a sensible self-preservation thing, but she is good comedy value.