Where the hell have i been?
Well. Since I last posted (sometime around the Pleistocene period apparently) some sort of minor deity with too much time on their hands seems to have taken hold of the word, turned it upside down and given it a ruddy good shaking. In short lots of changes. In long…
Now I have the best boss ever. Her name is Maggie, she is made of lovely and she has a voice that you could listen to for hours (this Irish lilt that is very soothing). She is also one smart cookie and as such was granted a fellowship and a grant to work on a research paper for the winter term (sept - xmas). So yours truly was put in charge of the department while she is away. Not too bad - just keeping things ticking over till she gets back.
So Maggie is off working at Liverpool hope Uni on her paper (its on community cohesion if your interested, and why wouldn’t you be?). but because of the aforementioned ‘smart cookieness’ she impressed them to the point that the’ve gone and given her a job. Excellent for Maggie, and I’m really happy for her. Sucks for me. So here I am, head of department. Or more accurately, doing the head of departments job - cue fighting for pay and recognition. Yesterday I found out I had got it and have been but on the management pay scale - yay me!
So this year I’ve been given another form class of Y11’s. I quite like them. I do. But man there are some characters in there. Now no details can be gone into for ethical (and legal) reasons, but suffice to say that one of these pupils is having a hard time at home. So they have come to me and told me and I’m giving advice and doing the things you do in this situation. Apparantly I’m quite good at it, and also apparently this is the sort of information that spreads as not only does there seem to be some sort of social network for people haveing a hard time that has resulted in quite a few people turning up after classes to talk, but I have been chosen to go on the school Ski trip as the ‘approachable one’ of the staff. (as apposed to ‘the organiser’, ‘the one who can ski’, ‘the scary one’ or the ‘I’m in the PE dept. dammit’). So Skiing in January. I’m gonna hit a tree.
Of course the best bit of the last few months has been Eve. She is now 22 months, and while I am sure that every parent must feel this way (or at least should!) she is obviously a genius with the best sense of humour and most beautiful child to have ever existed. I thought putting a list of her achievements would be boring to you lot. But then I thought screw you - its my blog and you didn’t have to read it anyway ;-)
She can…
Say loads of words and picks up new ones just about every day at the moment.
Count to 12 and read the numbers to 10.
Spell her name.
Use a computer mouse (my fault)
Identify 9 colours
Name all the characters from the ‘In the night garden’
And some other stuff (okay, I felt sorry for you)
SOS continues to be drama laden goodness, and I am enjoying it immensely, even if my last dungeon went a bit wrong. Probably need a weekend without writing but don’t know if that’s possible. Missing the Jan one due to Skiing so don’t really have the time to miss anyway.
In the quite nice, if annoying, position of having two characters who I really need to play all the time, so between that and campaigns stuff it’s quite hectic at the mo. But defiantly fun hectic. Hey ho - campaigns meet at the weekend, and much time spent prodding the metaphysics of the world to see if stuff falls out - watch this space fae!