A Little Bit of House Envy....

On the Easter Bank Holiday I took Mum and Dad down to Newark Park in Gloucestershire.  It's a National Trust property at the top of a steep and secluded valley in the South Cotswolds.  The weather forecast for Monday had been really grim, so we had the added bonus of surprise good weather.  It was a perfect day to explore the house and grounds at a leisurely pace - which really suits my Mum.


The house was given to the National Trust in 1949, but it was let to a nursing home until 1969 and become increasingly run-down.  In 1970 a Texan-born architect called Bob Parsons took over the tenancy (joined in 1980 by his friend Michael Claydon).  The house and gardens that we visited were the result of 40 years of their hard work and vision.  (Bob Parsons died in 2000 but Michael Claydon stayed on in the property until 2011.)


The house is now cleverly arranged so that it feels like you are part of a house party and the tenants are just somewhere else, waiting for you to join them.  It's a technique that the National Trust have used in other houses where it feels a bit 'contrived'.  Here it seems to work perfectly... even on a busy Bank Holiday when the grounds were over-run with small people doing an Easter Egg Hunt!


In-fact I am now officially suffering from an acute attack of house envy.  This is my dream home and I'm sure that the National Trust could offer me a tenancy.....!  To see why - click here.


Back to the chalk face tomorrow...... but there's a day of trips on Thursday AND a long weekend coming up so I don't feel too bad about things!
Jx

Tidying up the Wool Stash...

 Introducing.... my first ever 'scrappy blanket'.

 

After two years of happy crocheting I've collected loads of 'part balls'.  There's some cheap and cheerful DK in there but I've also got some lovely soft cottons and bits of interesting textured yarns.  My first 2014 project is to work them all together into a 'scrappy blanket'.  (I'm just working with one yarn until it runs out then tying the next one in.) Currently I'm in a pink and purple phase....

 

I'm trying to create a bit of a 'summer garden' effect with all this colour.  The blue bit at the centre is supposed to be a garden pond, the green is the grass and all the other colours are the flower borders.  It may not be the most elegant piece of crochet I've ever done but the riot of colour is banishing my January blues!!

 

 

Once I've finished up all the purple and pink, there's still another red section to do and enough bits of yellow for one more paler border.  I hope that it will be finished by the end of January.

 

I spent some time tidying up my wool stash over the holiday.  I realised that there's several 'close to being finished' pieces of work tucked away in there.  I hope that I'm going to have the self-discipline in February to finish these things off! 

 

I'm back to school tomorrow... although the New Year starts with training rather than teaching.  My school has joined up with some of the local primaries to do a large scale training event at the NEC.  (That's another first for my 'Novelty' list!).  I'm actually really looking forward to the new term.  I feel as if I've had a proper chance to recharge my batteries over the holidays.  I've also had plenty of time to catch up with niggling jobs and other bits and pieces that were waiting patiently for my attention at home.  In short, I feel 'smiley and positive'.

 

Not sure if I'll feel the same way when I have to get up at 'stupid o'clock' tomorrow morning....!!!

Ha Ha!

Jx



 

Sunrise, Sunset....

Here are a small selection of my favourite photos from last week's break in the New Forest...

Boats on the Beaulieu River - in early morning stillness after the storms had passed..

 

 

The hotel's landing stage and reflections of a deep blue sky..

 

Reflections further up the river as we walked to the little village of Beaulieu..

 

Peaceful lanes..

 

Sunset over the marina by the hotel...

 

 

..And a seriously dramatic sky (taken a few moments later)

 

 

Stormy skies over the Isle of Wight and the Needles...

 

..And the last sunset of the holiday at Lymington Marina..

 

I really didn't enjoy the transition back to work this morning.

The pupils were fairly grumpy too - I think we all wanted to be at home under our respective duvets!

After school we had a staff meeting about the latest changes to our pay and conditions.

Pay.... deteriorating (in real terms against the cost of living)

Conditions........!!!!!!!!

 

I've popped a couple of shells from the coast near Lymington next to my computer in my classroom.

A little reminder of the beauty of things when everything gets a bit complicated...

 



Getting a Grip...

This week I've started my 25th year of teaching.  I started work at a small Upper School (actually a Secondary Modern) in Buckinghamshire back in September 1989.  I've taught ever since - without a break for Maternity Leave but in a variety of schools and situations, which has kept things interesting.

This week has caught me in a slightly pensive and reflective mood. 

I still love being a teaching as much as I always did.  I adore getting to know the kids, and trying to match my enthusiasms to their interests so that we both benefit from being in the classroom.  I think I'm lucky to have chosen Music teaching as my career.

BUT.... I'm not keen on the idea that another 12 months of teaching is going to have another 12 months of 'wear and tear' on me. 

IF.... I handle the 5.45 alarm calls; the 70 miles commute; the considerable workload; the additional concert schedule and stress generated by the general staff politics in the same way as last year.... I will just end up in the same place at the end of the year.  I was drinking a bit (sometimes a lot) too much wine; far too much coffee and virtually no water.  I slept badly and the sleep deprivation made the stresses and stupidity harder to handle.  I was too tired to function in the evenings and the cycle just kept on repeating and growing. Standard stuff really.....

ANYWAY...THINGS HAVE GOT TO CHANGE!

SO.... I'm implementing some 'New School Year' Resolutions.

• Exercise every evening - in the form of walking (while the weather is dry and we can get out) and Pilates (when the weather is wet).
• No 'habit drinking' - especially while I'm cooking or continuing through the evening after the meal while I'm watching TV. 
• Driving myself whenever possible, so that I can get home a little earlier and start dinner before Mark gets home.
• Doing everything I reasonably can to ensure that I sleep properly when I go to bed.  (This may result in a trip to the Docs - but we'll see..).  If I slept every hour that I was under the duvet, I'd never be sleep deprived again! 
• Working out some of my priorities.  I can't remember the last time I went out to be sociable mid-week because I'm become frightened of missing out on sleep.
• Keeping a sense of perspective - after all, 24 years at the chalk face must generate some useful prior experience!!!!!

Wish me luck.....

I hope that the new academic year is going well for everyone.
Jx

Up-dates and Other Stuff....

First of all, an up-date on D.  X-rays confirmed that he'd been by an air gun pellet.  The pellet 'skimmed' his skull rather than hitting it - which is why there was so much blood.  He came to school on Friday because he didn't want to miss the fun of the last day - brave soul.  Naturally all the adults in his life are horrified by the incident and 'what might have been' - but we are playing it down as a 'lucky escape from an accident' with D.  I understand that the local police are now involved, but I'm going to have to wait until September before I hear anymore because I live too far away to get local news for my school. 

So............... it's the holiday!!  To be honest, it feels a little weird.  I think teachers use so much adrenaline to get to the end of term that the first few days frequently leave you feeling over-tired and deflated.  Don't get me wrong - I'm having a great time.  It's just that my brain hasn't quite caught up with the concept yet!!!

On Sunday I took Mark to Broadway Tower Country Park, about 20 miles to the east of us and on the edge of the Cotswolds.  I'd been planning a return visit ever since I met my friends there in June (see 'Catching Up' post). The weather was still warm but cloudy enough to make walking comfortable.  We parked the car by the visitor centre and pottered off along the lanes.  After a couple of miles we started to cross the lavender fields of 'Cotswold Lavender'.  We stopped at their tea room for a morning coffee and to try their lavender shortbread (seriously nice!).

 

After another half of mile, we arrived in the tiny village of Snowshill.  It's one of those 'perfect' Cotswold villages where time appears to have stood still.  I imagine that it must be very difficult to live there..

 

Here's the church, with the pub in the background...

 

When we got back to the car we spread out a rug the shade of a large tree and enjoyed our picnic lunch.  Then we came to the REAL reason for our visit.  A little past the Tower, in a small compound, is the entrance to a NUCLEAR BUNKER!  It's only open a few days of the year so we'd made a special visit to find out more.  My husband is absolutely fascinated by these types of holes in the ground and the history round them.  The entrance here is the top of a 15 feet 'rung ladder' that leads to the small room, complete with all the artefacts of the period.  Against my better judgement - as I really don't like being in enclosed spaces underground - I was helped down by the guide.  He let me stand at the bottom of the shaft for the 30 minutes presentation.  It helped immensely that I could see the sky and feel a little fresh air on my face, but I would NEVER voluntarily go inside one of these things again!!!!!!



 

After I'd recovered from the ordeal (ha ha!) we also visited the tower.  There's just three rooms - one on each floor - and they deal with different aspects of the tower's history.  My favourite was the middle room, which explored the links with William Morris.

 

The room had been restored with a Morris-deign wallpaper and fabrics.....

 

And then we reached the top of the tower.  After my time underground I particularly enjoyed the fresh air and the panorama.  Unfortunately it wasn't very clear and visibility was limited to about 5 miles.  Nevertheless, it was definitely worth the entry fee and the climb up all the stairs!

 

Wishing all you fellow teacher+bloggers a very happy holiday!

Jx

Hoping that this was a terrible accident...

As you've probably realised from my previous posts - I am immensely fond of the pupils that I teach.  They make my epic commute bearable through their enthusiasm for my subject and their generally quirky outlooks on life.  In a school full of nice kids, D. has always stood out.  He's a great boy - keen to do well, but still 'one of the lads'.  Earlier today he was in tears because his final performance assessment didn't go perfectly.  He's one of several hundred kids that I'm proud to be associated with.

On the way home from school today, maybe 250 metres from the school gate, there was a loud bang and D. was suddenly bleeding profusely from a head wound.  His friends (he's only 12 years old) and some adult witnesses called the police and the ambulance.  My colleague happened to be passing on her way home.  She saw a group of pupils from our school and stopped.  Once she had sorted out what was happening, she called me and asked me to tell the Senior Management Team that one of pupils had been involved in what appeared to be a serious incident.  As soon as I heard what had happened I went to join them, along with one of the Assistant Heads.

At around 4.30pm D. went by ambulance to the main regional hospital, where someone should be able to determine if he was hit by a bullet.  He's lucky that the wound isn't life-threatening - just a glancing blow.  Again, I'm proud to be associated with these kids and other great people in the community.  A lot of D's blood was on his friends and a person, who lived nearby, invited the boys indoors to clean up.  These two young lads then talked clearly and calmly to the police.

At the moment we have to hope that it was just a terrible accident - maybe involving an air rifle or something else that exploded and caught somehow caught the side of D's head.   It's too terrible to think that some-one would deliberately OR randomly decide to fire at a child's head, in broad daylight on the penultimate night of term.

Lost my 'Mo-Jo'...

What with the heat AND end of term exhaustion, I seem to have lost my blogging 'Mo-Jo' in the last couple of weeks.  Please bear with me - I will be back with a vengeance when my holiday starts on the 19th July!  ("So near and yet so far...!!!")

Tom has been desperately seeking a cool spot since last Friday. 

It's not particularly comfortable on our bedroom windowsill - but he 'gave it a go'..

 

He stuck his whiskers outside for a while..

but it didn't seem to help much...

 

Eventually he just gave into exhaustion and crashed out on the landing..

 

Poor cat - I really feel for him in this heat.

 

The decent weather has also brought out all the neighbourhood cats.

They all go 'out on manoeuvers' at around 3.00 in the morning.

There's a kind of guerrilla warfare being carried out on the street as each cat tries

to maintain its own space and invade neighbouring territories.

All the cats are very young - maybe 2 years old at the most.

My poor Tom is 13 next birthday but he's out there 'playing the game'!

 

I'm proud of him - he's not giving in to the young ones!!!!

(Just like his Mum!!!)

Catching up....

Thank you to everyone who left a comment on my last post.  I got back into work last Monday and - sadly - my colleague HAD been up to her disloyal tricks.  However, my line managers were absolutely great and 'took her to task' about her behaviour.  This is quite unusual for my school so I made sure that everyone knew how much I appreciated their support!  Unfortunately I had to take a little break from posting because my back really hurt each evening.  Here are a few rather overdue pictures from last weekend...

 

The weather forecast for last Sunday wasn't great - so we decided to take Dad and Mum to the Transport Museum at Coventry to celebrate Father's Day.  It worked out really well because there were loads of 'trip down memory lane' exhibits...

 

Mum remembered going on holiday in a caravan like this...

 

 

I remembered Mum cooking on a little stove like this in our trailer tent in the early 70s..

 

When I was a little girl and the Triumph TR7 was launched I always said that I wanted a white one - just like this...  (I had to wait almost 30 years and compromise on colour... but I did drive a TR7 daily for many happy years!!!!)

 

There's also a huge display about the land speed record - when they went through the sound barrier for the first time...

 

.. And, towards the end of the exhibitions, there's this little Metro.

It was Lady Diana Spencer's car in the months before she married Prince Charles.

I couldn't get over how tiny the car was...

 

We really enjoyed the museum because it focuses as much on the social history of transport as it does on the vehicles themselves.  I loved the section where some old road safety adverts were being played.  There was a hysterical Dad's Army sketch about how to cross the road at the 'new' Pelican crossings and several 'Tufty Club' adverts.

 

The thing is.... I remembered them clearly!!!

Have a good week.

Jx

A 'Letting Off Steam' Post

WARNING - THIS IS LITTLE MORE THAN A RANT!

One way and another I've just come to the end of a really grotty week.  The 'grottiness' didn't just come out of the blue - it's been brewing for several weeks.  Unfortunately once it hit me this week it sort of settled and I'm feeling pretty down.

Basically I have a really dodgy neck. Over the years, I've learnt how to manage it.  I avoid pushing shopping trolleys and packing the food shopping completely (first instance of how I couldn't manage without my lovely husband).  I drive an automatic car.  I do a job that rarely requires me to carry anything and allows me to 'prowl around' - thus keeping my back loose.  I also walk as much as possible the rest of the time for the same reason.  I don't even carry wet washing around (lovely husband again) or do the ironing or vacuum (more lovely husband).

At this point I should point out that Mark is incredible about all of this.  He is my rock - literally!

There are three reasons for this on-going problem.  Firstly I was born with the first vertebrae fused to my skull.  It wouldn't have been an issue, except that I had a major motor-racing accident in 1999.  Reason number two was a full 360 degree barrel roll at racing speed in an Off-Road Racer on the moors above Burnley.  (Hmmm - I should have had more sense!)  Thirdly, in 2005, I tried to picked up an amplifier which was way to big for me.  My poor neck sort of 'gave way' and I had quite a period of time off work.

Anyway, I've been back at work and managing everything for years.  Occasionally I get terrible headaches and painful muscle spasms, but I'm functioning and OK.  Lovely husband has learnt how to massage and manipulate my neck to keep everything moving.  In fact there have been weeks when I haven't need any work on my neck at all.

Then - just before the half-term holiday - Mark was working on my neck and he said that it 'felt different'.  There were huge lumps of muscle knots right up behind my jaw line.  On the left hand side of my face the muscles affected the nerves in my mouth and it felt like I had an abscess.  I couldn't open my mouth properly in the morning and eating was painful.  We slowly worked on the muscles and my mouth finally became less painful (it took about two weeks).  At the end of last week I started to get 'tunnel vision' and all the other symptoms of fainting.  I was also far more emotional than normal, which I recognise as a symptom of muscles and bone pushing and pulling at the back of my skull.

On Tuesday I gave up and phoned in sick.  I went to the Docs to confirm that it was nothing more sinister then have spent the last three days trying to find a functioning level again.  I'm so annoyed because I'd worked so hard to get rid of the 'Teacher with the Dodgy Neck' label.  My immediate (and much younger) colleague is quietly horrible about stuff like this.  She plays the martyr to the Senior Staff - one of those people who really knows how to work a situation.

Reading through this, I know that I'm doing the right thing by staying at home, taking the pain killers and following a programme of stretching exercises that will get me back on my feet.  It's just the unpleasantness of my school that upsets me.  The only person to ring and check on me was the lady in the office who does all my admin.  She's lovely and very kind.  Otherwise it would be fair to say that my school doesn't care at all.

Rant over.....!