Oh, My Days!

  I don't mind admitting I am erring on the side of grimness today. Amongst other (minor) irritations, the pay for the three weeks of supply teaching I did at the beginning of the month has not arrived in my bank account. This means I shall have to waste MY time chasing it up. In the back of my mind I had an inkling that this would happen. There is no reason for the payment not to have happened because I submitted all the relevant paperwork correctly and in ample time (because I am organised like that). The error is clearly down to the organisational inadequacies of someone else, and there lies the irritation - the fact that other people aren't as organised as me. Of course, I know this to be completely irrational thinking on my part because of the imperfect nature of the human being. And I know that, eventually, I shall be paid for the work I have done. But still, it has set me off on a wrong foot this morn...

It’s National Whistle Blowing Day today. The act of whistle-blowing, I have discovered from my one personal experience of attempting to raise concerns about bullying, is a complete and utter pointless waste of time and adjectives. Its effectiveness relies on a company or business or whatever having an honest, caring and robust management and HR team. That they recognise there is a serious problem. And that they have the intelligence, honesty and compassion to do something about that problem. If they are lazy, dismissive, corrupt pathological liars then your valid concerns will find themselves swept under the proverbial carpet, rendered invisible and therefore not worth addressing. Of course, you might have experienced more success in using a whistle blowing policy. Personally, I shan’t waste my precious time on it again. It’s not worth the bother, and actually, there are more effective and cunning ways to address malpractices. Let’s move on, eh? A joke! To lighten the mood. Ahem....

We went to see a film this afternoon at this lovely little theatre in Shrewsbury - The Old Market Hall. It is upstairs in this building which is in the middle of Shrewsbury town centre. There’s a lovely little café up there, too, which does a bloomin’ good hot chocolate and one of the best chocolate brownies I’ve had the joy to eat in a long while - not too dry, not too stodgy but just right. The Goldilocks of brownies, if you like. I’m not generally a chocolate brownie sort of person, preferring a nice fruit cake or flapjack, but if I WAS in the mood for a chocolate brownie, I would travel to the Old Market Hall to have one. The cinema is small - 81 seats - and looks like this inside... The only disadvantage is if you happen to be seeing a quiet film, as we were this afternoon, then the noise from someone eating, say, a large bag of crisps in the same row as the one you happen to be sitting in can prove quite irritating. Did I say ‘quite’? I meant ‘very.’ Luckily, Andy was sit...

When one lives in a Cottage, one feels it is only right and proper to have roses growing around the front door, wouldn’t you agree? Not so the previous incumbents of Damson Cottage because when we took ownership just over 3 years ago, there was a pale and insipid hollyhock by the front door but sign of roses there was not. It was one of the first gardening jobs I did, planting a rose by the front door. In the ‘Lost and Lonely’ part of a local garden centre, the last chance saloon for plants past their best, I found a half price climbing rose, or was it a rambling one? What’s the difference? Who knows? Anyway, I found this rose, ‘Starlight Express’ it was called, and I think I paid £6 or £7 for it. It was a small stick of a thing but I took it home and popped it in the ground and three years later... Ta-dah!! And this is after me having to prune it back a bit so we can use the front door! A profusion of pretty pink and gorgeous smelling flowers, it’s been flowering since late May...

The word 'cornucopia' has rather been spoiled for me ever since I watched the film, 'The Hunger Games.' (I read all three books in the series first, of course, because that is the correct way of things - book first, film second.) If you aren't familiar with the story, it's basically a desperate and miserable dystopian slog aimed at the teen market involving themes of poverty, societal division, murder, torture and fighting, literally, for your life. Not my cup of tea at all, really, but I felt obliged to read the trilogy when it came out because it was the 'trendy' thing purported to have the power to engage secondary school pupils with reading, and it was my job to be familiar with the oeuvre.  I suppose 'The Hunger Games' is akin to the 'Watership Down' of my youth. Only less rabbits. And more misery. And, in my opinion, not as well written. At one point in the first film, the two dozen child/teen representatives of th...

Melting cats, that’s what we’ve had here today. Poor things, especially Bambino Bobble Wilson who is massively furry. He’s like a walking fur coat wearing a rug with an extra layer of fluff just in case. Perfect for Winter, of course, but at times of heat, he just flollops. I went out today. I did check the National Days Calendar, but nothing inspired and besides, I was in a serious writing mood, not one for quick-stop blogging. I’ve dug out an old draft manuscript, you see, one which has been pestering the back of my mind for a while now. And I’ve been doing some editing and redrafting of its current 50,000 words and I am rather caught up in it again. It needs to be finished. But it was stuck. So I went for a long walk. The walk involved circumnavigating a substantial lake beneath some shady trees so was rather pleasant despite the sometimes oppressive heat. I pootled around, enjoying the flowers and trees, the garden sculptures, the nods of good morning from fellow lakeside walke...

It’s National Drive-Thru Day today. I shan’t be celebrating because a) ‘thru’ is not how you spell ‘through’ b) it all smacks of MuckDonalds (as my brother wisely calls it) and c) the idea of driving through somewhere to obtain food is abhorrent to me ref: mention of my becoming a fussy eater from yesterday’s post, m’lud. Onwards. It is also Thermal Engineer Day and I started reading about the heady, exciting life of the thermal engineer in order to report something witty and scintillating, and almost died from boredom. Onwards again. National Amelia Earhart Day! That’s more like it! The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, she ‘disappeared’ on 2nd July 1937, aged 39, whilst crossing the Pacific. This is Amelia... Now, I’ve said ‘disappeared’ because, to me, she looks like the kind of feisty gal who would engineer her own vanishing act because she’d had enough of people in general, and wanted to go adventuring out of the limelight. Or just hang up her goggles and helmet ...

It’s National Vanilla Ice Cream Day today. Be careful if you ask for it at your local ice cream emporium because you could end up with a cone of gorilla instead, all furry and pungent with testosterone. 🤢🤮And that is WHY, dear blogging chums, I am not a fan of vanilla ice cream. Can’t be taking unnecessary risks at my age, don’t you know? Much safer with strawberry, or honeycomb, or ginger. I think. 🤔 I am properly fussy about ice cream, now I am officially middle aged. I don’t know if it is because I grow more and more aware of what I eat the older I become, and I make more effort to sustain good health and some semblance of a waist line that I never really had anyway - classic case of bolting horse and open gate there. Excuse me a moment of self indulgent sighing...(menopause, cake, I never knew lettuce was so fattening...) Anyway, I don’t eat ice cream that often but when I DO I like PROPER ice cream, made from ice + cream + some sort of squished up fruit or other natural sub...

Teachers will be all too familiar with that delicious feeling known as ‘No School Monday.’ These days are preceded by ‘Panic Free Sunday Evening’ where sometimes you get to enjoy the tail end of a  weekend without suffering that sense of impending doom and huge mood crash as you prepare for another week at the whiteboard and wipeable marker face. Today, for this ex-teacher, is the first of many ‘No School Monday’ feelings. It’s fab! Today is also National Hammock Day. Pity, then, that it is overcast outside and whipping up a bit of a wind, bordering on the brisk side. If I fancied a bit of a fairground ride, though, I could hie me to the far end of the garden where we have one of these installed in our magnificent silver birch tree... It is a hammock chair. It is a cocoon. It is comfy and calming. It is the perfect observation point for the garden. It is also very easy to fall asleep inside. His Lordship Malarkey uses it more than I do, but I’ve been known to indulge in the oc...

Sitting here today, dear reader, rain determined to wreck another summer's day (but at least it is damping down the hideous honk of some intense muck spreading performed yesterday by the local farmer across the whole field that wraps around our countryside home) I find myself pondering the nature of the circle of life. Specifically, my life. Is it a) an ever-decreasing circle, that is following the same route over and over again whilst achieving worse results each time by growing smaller and smaller or b) merely going around, that is being repetitive whilst achieving nothing. You see, having previously been most determined to leave teaching, what have I spent the last three weeks doing? Yup, supply teaching, that's what. During which time lead to various mutual conversations along the lines of, 'Would I like to do three days a week from September?' to 'How about I do full time from September to December on a temporary contract?' to 'Maybe continue...