No Snow

Snow Days - so good they used to go on all night.

I had a date with snow.  My plan was that some time during the spring term there would be a snow day when it was impossible for me to drive to school and I could get on with my PGCE work.  Oh, and take a magical walk in the local wood. 

It never happened.

Floods meant that on several occasions I had to turn back and take a circuitous route to school but things never got so bad in our area that there was a complete shutdown as there is on a snow day.  And for that I should be grateful.  Grateful also that I never had to set off with a shovel and sleeping bag in my car because snow had been forecast for later.

The hedges are white now, but it is what we call in our family “blackthorn winter” – the sloe bushes put out profuse white blossom early in the year, often on the heels of snow.   So the white in the hedgerows is a herald of spring, not a remnant of winter. 

So it looks as if the risk of snow is over.

And I’m a day behind with my PGCE work.

Daughter Rediscovered

We’re on our way today to retrieve our beloved daughter from her second term at university.  Carenza’s term is much shorter than her brother at Bristol whom I will continue to miss for another three weeks.  As my friend Jenny said of her own daughter, “For all the time they’re away, they might as well be signed up with the Open University as Oxbridge.” 

But it hasn’t felt like a short time.  I have been happy all week knowing we would get Carenza back this weekend.  I have heard it said that when there is a baby in a room all eyes are drawn to its movements like a candle flame, or a fire in the hearth.  I feel the same about my much older children.  Having them back home will re-animate our now-quiet house.

Frankly, I have thought about getting a pet to replace them.  I thought a cat might work, rewarding yet somewhat unreliable and with the potential to be moody.  My offspring, if they are reading this, are expecting me now to say that a cat could never replace them, but actually, the main problem is I’m allergic to cats.

And I’m only teasing.  

How could a cat ever replace them? 

For a start, cats cannot wash up, or wield a hoover….

Shoop Shoop

This is the longest I have ever left it between blogs.

“Oh”, you might say, “I suppose that now the children have left home, you have nothing to write about.”

The truth is, so much has happened that I haven’t had time to shape it into words.

I have visited Perran in Bristol and Pascoe in Edinburgh; attended a couple of job interviews; had a nasty cold; picked up my Classical Greek again; seen a few of the friends I’ve been missing.

And, as a constant bass level of busy-ness, I’ve been preparing and delivering lessons in subjects and with age groups that are new to me. 

Looking back, the maddest thing was teaming up with the four classics teachers in the school where I am on placement to deliver a synchronised dance to the Shoop Shoop Song by Cher to 800 over-excited pupils as part of a charity day.    Coming in the middle of everything else, it barely even made me nervous.

But it has left lasting scars – even finding a space to rehearse was a masterpiece of subterfuge.  Now, whenever I see a “meeting in progress” sign on the outside of a shut office door I will know that inside there is a chorus line of Latin teachers shoop-shooping away.