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Back To School



 When my little sister arrived home from her first day at school she declared it was ‘all right, but I don’t think I’ll go back tomorrow.’ 

Oh dear.

I was ‘back to school’ on Wednesday, with the start of my year long diploma course. As usual, (and I know this because I was a teacher) the first session was taken up with admin, rules and responsibilities, and getting to know you’ exercises in various groups with other students and the tutors. I was slightly disappointed not to receive the instructions to cover all my exercise books with decorative paper but I might do it anyway, for old times’ sake. This was a ‘thing’ when I was at secondary school. Often, the only decorative paper available to me was wallpaper of the anaglypta variety, which made for some very chunky and unwieldy results. But anaglypta wallpaper is very absorbent, should you happen to drop your Maths exercise book in a puddle, for example. The weekly tutorials are two and a half hours long, and I’ve already got homework to do in readiness for next week. It’s all systems go. 

We were issued with our learning platform passwords so on Thursday I was able to gain access to the course materials and assignments. My goodness me! I’m going to be a busy bunny. But I have been very diligent today and got myself organised with dates and deadlines, and have made a goodly start on my first bit of homework. 

In other news, we have been able to leave the stair gate open as Nell now seems less obsessed with going upstairs to pester Bambino. This is good progress. As I write this, Nell is eviscerating her monkey toy which is her longest surviving soft toy, being almost four months old. This is also good progress because back in the day soft toys would be lucky to last a fortnight. And Monkey was gathering a certain aroma about his person, what with being left out in the rain and covered in dog saliva. Nice…

Today’s weather has been cold ‘n’ sunny ‘n’ windy. We have escaped the worst of the rain that has deluged other areas of the country. When I was out walking with Nell this morning, I had to stand to one side on the pavement in order to allow an elderly gentleman in a mobility scooter pass by. He stopped to make a fuss of Nell, and said, ‘Isn’t it getting cold all of a sudden?’ I agreed that it was. And then he said, ‘And the rain! I’ve never seen anything like it in my LIFE!’

‘That’s the weather for you,’ said I. ‘And we can’t do anything about it other than just plod on.’

The elderly man looked at me. ‘It would probably help if everyone went back to church,’ he said. ‘But I can’t see THAT happening.’

I agreed that neither could I, but I didn’t say it was because the church is a patriarchal system designed to control and oppress the masses and caused more problems than it solved. In my opinion. Instead I laughed, rolled my eyes in a sympathetic way and said, ‘Ah well, keep warm,’ before going on my way. 

That’s it. All is well. 


Comments

Anonymous said…
Your story about the man and the church made me laugh out loud. Yeah, exactly that. Well said
KJ
28 September 2024 at 14:13
Denise said…
I have to say, KJ, that his comment wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought he’d say something about everyone recycling better, or being more mindful about how they lived. But I suppose he was of a generation where church was more popular than it is now.
28 September 2024 at 15:18
Anonymous said…
Churches were the guiding North Star for many people, morale and otherwise so I can follow his argument in that example. He might have referring to the lack of knowing what is right and wrong using the church as an example of where you learned about that. That is of course debatable.
KJ
29 September 2024 at 14:36
Denise said…
Yes, you’ve certainly got a point there, KJ. On the rare occasions I watch the news these days, it certainly seems like the moral compass of the world is way off these days. Unless it has always been thus and we just know more about it because the world has been shrunk by technological advances.
29 September 2024 at 16:37
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