First of all, my apologies to all readers - I have suffered a virus attack on my PC which has made writing very difficult. This is a particularly annoying virus which has succeeded in turning off my antivirus protection, reset the boot file, played stupid messages to me (including singing stupid messages to me!) and despite a stay in the local computer hospital is still not fixed. Suffice it to say I have not been sending messages to people and the laptop is now being used and I'm having to save everything onto external drive just to be on the safe side. Anyway enough of the moaning - I'm off out to bring in the New Year.
My New Year's project - I am going to chronicle the year 2009 by way of reference to quirky/interesting items in the local regional newspaper - keeping a cross referenced cuttings book and a writing journal. Of course I shall be posting any best bits/poems/musings here as well.
I hope the New Year brings lots of writing success for everyone.
Love from Sujen
A Very Merry Christmas!
A poem for all my friends; my wish for everyone is for them to find peace within their own selves, enough to last 2009 and beyond.
A Christmas poem for you all, with love ...
So the week was more than usually testing and for a number of utterly unrelated reasons. Exchanging one kind of trauma (family) for another (Ofsted) is par for the course with me and mine, but the comic elements do not usually make themselves so obvious, or so it seems.
This week started with all marking to be completed, all lesson plans completed, (in triplicate) and everything tidy by Wednesday - when you have more than 200 students, this is no mean task. But it was done - within reason and on Wednesday morning I arrived (somewhat bedraggled and very cold) on the dot of 7.45 am wearing a very endearing bucket style hat which had somehow slipped down over my eyes, so that I looked a lot like a flowerpot man, my not too clean waterproof coat, and a bag of marked folders in each hand as well as my bag on my back. Elegant is nowhere near what I was, and of course my arrival coincided perfectly with the arrival of the Ofsted inspector being greeted by our perfectly coiffed and beautiful head teacher and her immaculately suited deputy. There being nowhere to hide, and unable to drag by key fob from the depth of my third bag, I could only wait until the party made their way through the security door with me in their wake. At least, I reasoned, they would never be able to recognise me once I had removed the outer gear.
And that proved to be the case - after four days of marking and preparing and a day of delivering truly outstanding and innovate lessons in which children were unusually engaged and learned a lot - I wasn't observed. Now, if you've been in this situation, you will know the mixture of relief and disappointment I felt; it's only possible to give a shrug and look to the second day of the torture.
Which is when the weather stepped in with a vengeance. Like many parts of our county we were already blanketed with the white stuff which had fallen on Tuesday but Thursday was something different - deep, deep snow lying like icing on the road and relentlessly driving and swirling from the leaden sky. Snowploughs made little impact, we could not drive up the steep bank into the town and geography made it impossible to leave. Imagine a ring mould - the type used for making fancy rice dishes for buffets, or jelly circles for children's parties; now you see the problem - you either live on the top of the circle (great views over Weardale), in the bowl (no phone reception, protection from the weather) or, like us, on one of the sides (in our case facing outwards). Whereever you are there is no avoiding a steep hill either to leave the town or to return. With two rivers wound around the town when snow comes we are trapped.
Eventually a snow day was called - I sat in exhaustion in front of the tele watching all sorts of nonsense - and woke the next day refreshed to find that the inspection team had left and we were deemed satisfactory.
All in all a somewhat sudden end to the drama - just what will next week bring?
Having committed once more to getting some new (and maybe some old) poems posted on the blog, Friday brought some dire news - the Ofsted inspection (which means that now I feel as if I should be committed - but to where?). Consequently, all has been wall to wall with marking, planning and panicking - and therefore no poems, just wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Thanks to all new Facebook friends for visiting here, will be free of the tyranny on Friday and promise will be creative once more.
Love to all, Sujen