The best laid plans...
...or, y'know, stuff that we've semi-arranged on the fly :P
Right, let's back it up a few days, so you've got an idea of how on-the-go I've been lately. Venture all the way back to ... the end of the week before last.
Wednesday - went out to a pub in Bitchburn for a goodbye dinner for Dorothy. I'm having mixed feelings about this because there's a huge to-do for her leaving, and people are *still* just finding out about me. I mean, yes, she's retiring, as opposed to me, so I shouldn't be jealous of the attention, but still ... :shakes head at own childishness: Anyways, good food, life is good.
Thursday - Parents' evening is tonight (for the incoming kids), so I end up spending 13.5 hours out of my house. I'm seriously ready to melt into bed, but first I need to check on the boys ... and I notice that Jerry is acting very oddly. An hour and a half later, Jerry is dead. I call Tracy. Tracy is very very upset (to put it mildly).
Friday - Tracy is still very upset with me, which is making me very upset, of course. I actually had one of my students ask me who had pee'd in my cornflakes that morning, which made me laugh, as that was one of grandpa's sayings, and it was the first time I'd heard anyone in this country use it :P
Saturday - Tracy arrives for the weekend. It's Louisa's bday so we had made plans to meet in Newcastle for a meal and a movie. Because H still has my spare key, I asked Tracy to get her train to Newcastle, and I would give her my key, then she could retrace to Durham and crash. That plan lasted until I mentioned that the movie we were going to see was HP ... so we prodded the zombie Tracy (who had been up for hours numbering into the 30s at that point) along for the day, and generally had a good time.
Sunday - Tracy headed back down to the South to get ready to fly to Barcelona on Monday. I try to brace myself for my final week at Wolsie.
Monday - our sports day. I threw my first discus (11.3m -- not too shabby!) and, after spending all day trying to coach students on how to maximise their throws (b/c yes, I am that good at faking it), I threw my second discus and reached 12.75m :) Yay :D As soon as school is finished, Sam and I book it outta there (as in the first bus hadn't even left yet! We hit a downed power line on the way to Durham, and have to detour. Doesn't take long, but gets me to the train station at 4.05 ... which means the next train isn't for another 44 minutes. Okay, no worries - I get a chance to catch my breath.
The journey (yes, this needs it's own paragraph!) - Now there are two basic routes to get to Luton (the closest train station to Dunstable - where I'm working next year) -- you can either take a direct train to London and then walk to Thames Link where you take a direct train to Luton, or, for £15 cheaper, you go via x-country (otherwise known as Sheffield). It takes about a half hour longer. Right, so I decide for the half hour difference, I'll take the cheaper route. BIG MISTAKE. For the last 40 min of the approach to Sheffield, we get announcements saying that there is a signalling problem between Sheffield and Darby, so everyone will have to disembark at Sheffield. No skin off my nose, as that's where I'm supposedly getting off anyway. We wait a good 10 minutes outside the station cueing for a platform. As we're finally pulling in to the station, they announce that this train will actually be continuing on its journey, so to please return to your seats ... meaning everyone in front of me in the queue for the doors is now trying to jostle past me to return to their seats. Great. Anyways, get off the train and realise I have no idea which train will take me to the next leg of the journey (the lovely gentleman in Durham not having been thoughtful enough to give me a printout of my connections). So I ask an attendant which train -- he cuts me off with a harrassed look and tells me the information booth is over that way. Right. So I go and join a queue of 6 or so people ... standing at an empty booth. Bloody heck! As people are giving up and leaving, I'm busy calling H, hoping she can sign onto the National Rail website and look up which train I need next. Which she tries to do, but the website is down. Typical. Finally I reach the front of the queue, and I ask the nice gentleman how I get to Luton from here. Where? Luton. Where? Luton. I'm sorry, where are you going? LOO-TON! Oh, Luton - why didn't you say so? *Amy smacks forehead, H giggles on other end of phone* I think I'm supposed to go via Leichester, but I don't know which train will take me there... Leichester? Yes. No, you don't want to go THAT way! No, no, no! You want to go to Darby, then transfer to (at this point my brain is sticking on Darby -- wasn't that where all the signalling problems were?) So I turn to the nice gentleman, who is now pointing me in the direction of the train from whence I came, and asked "sir, are the trains actually running to Darby?" He nods and says that he bloody well hopes so, then hops out of his box to escort me back to the guy who had sent me over to the info booth in the first place. "This young lady would like to go to Darby - is the train going to go there?" (Still looking highly harrassed) YES! Older guy leaves me, and I'm stood there looking at now two trains buttressed up to each other on the track. So I ask which train I'm supposed to board. Harrassed guy tells me the back one. Okay, sure - I had come off the front one, so no worries. As I'm updating H on this (and asking her to find out where I'm going from Derby), an attendant from the front train comes onto the back train and tells us all to move to the front train. I said that I had just been told to get onto this one, and he replied "look, I'm not going to argue. Just move to the other train, b/c we haven't enough staff for this one!" Righto, that's me told. So we all cram onto the front train (for those of you trying to keep count, this would be my original train). After another 20 minute wait (during which time, more and more people keep piling onto the train from all directions), we finally pull out of the station. By the time we get to Darby, I'm sore and tired and just want to be there ... I climb the stairs to go find the info booth and join a queue of a dozen or so also very tired looking travellers. I finally reach the front of the queue, and ask how I get to Luton from here. Where? Luton. I'm sorry, where? L-U-T-O-N. Ah, Luton! *insert more smacking of forehead* She tells me I need to get onto a train to London, which caused me some consternation as my ticket says that I specifically can't go via London ... As I'm getting onto my next train -- my phone dies. Greatness. Fastforward another couple hours, a very late cab, and my generally increasing exhaustion ... I finally get to Carmel's place!
Tuesday - on one hand this seemed like a bit of a waste of time. On the other hand I finished filling out all my medical and financial forms, as well as gave them the final details for my work permit application. Nicky (my head of English) agreed to drop me at the train station in Luton if I didn't mind stopping with her at the stables first, as she had a vet coming to look at her horse. So I got to spend almost 2 hours meeting 2 horses and 2 ponies (who were very very pretty) ... and then getting on the train back up to Durham. Thankfully that trip wasn't quite as crazy as the trip down, but yeah, still exhausted when I got back home again.
Wednesday - back to 'regular' classes again ... dinner with Christina and Debbie at the Black Boar in Wolsie (very good food) and then off to see FAME! in Newcastle. Good music, good dancing ... but it was a bit odd being the only one in the group who was at all familiar with both the movie and the telly series. In fact, most of the kids weren't familiar with the storylines at all!
Thursday - last day of 'regular' classes. I managed to get one class to do actual work. By the end of the day, I gave up. Andrew recommended that I find one of the other teachers who had a young class and play a game of rounders (similiar to baseball), so I did.
Friday - very bittersweet day. I got 3 bouquets of flowers and two boxes of chocolate and 2 bottles of wine and many cards and even more hugs ... I almost broke into tears twice, but managed to hold them in both times, so it was all good.ish. Yeah - totally emotional day, to put it mildly :(
Friday night - I got on a train to Salisbury. Well, technically I got on a train to London ... this would be a good time to mention to all the readership out there currently not situated in England that we've been having rain for weeks ... and lots of flooding. This is relevant because I got to spend over an hour sat just North of Grantham due to a tunnel being flooded. As in we were starting to discuss sleeping arrangements in the car of the train :P Finally got to London, having missed my connection. Made my way from X-Cross to Waterloo ... and waited. Poor Tracy had arrived from Barcelona back into the country earlier on Friday, and had been trying to find out what time I was due in so she could crash ... so we were both waiting. And waiting. Finally my train appeared on the board, but without a platform. I shortly discovered that was because it was delayed (no explanation). And delayed .... and delayed .... finally got into the station almost 40 minutes late. Found the right platform, got on, crashed. Luckily the final stop was Salisbury, b/c otherwise I probably would have slept right through it! Disembarked, found Tracy, she drove us back to the hotel, and sleeeeeeeeeeeep was good..........
Saturday/Sunday - Tracy bought me a copy of HP & the DH and herself an umbrella (yes, it was still raining...). We went to Salisbury to see what we could see, including the tallest cathedral spire in England!, and as we wandered decided that we both wanted to catch the movie Hairspray. The local cinema wasn't carrying it, so off to Southampton for us. On the way she showed me her school as well as the drive she takes daily ... turned out that the matinee was sold out, so we grabbed dinner at the Frankie and Benny's (our neighbours were incredibly RUDE!!!) and then off for ice cream and then the flick. A bit Disneyfied look at racial issues and personal image, but good music, good dancing, and fairly good acting. Headed back to the hotel for HP time! Finished HP, packed up, got ready to head back. Tracy only had to work a half day on Monday, so the plan was that I would wander Salisbury until she was done, and then we would grab lunch and I would hit the train station.
Monday - Tracy dropped me off in town, and went off to school. I wandered around the cathedral and the shopping district, had pancakes for bfast (pancakes are slightly different here :P), and did some window shopping. Tracy arrived, and asked if I wanted to stay another day (which I of course agreed to!) ... we decided to grab some lunch at a cafe in Salisbury and then another film in Southampton (Die Hard 4.0 -- very well done. A bit unbelievable in parts but great tie-ins with the earlier films). After that Tracy picked up some fish'n'chips and we returned to the hotel ... which was unfortunately fully booked. Southampton was having grad that week - figures, eh? After much driving around, Tracy managed to find us a B&B in Salisbury (b/c she IS that good!)
Tuesday - Tracy left early for school (hers didn't break up until Wed - and I thought *my* school broke up late!), I had bfast and then started my walk up to the train station. Missed my first turn-off, but fixed my mistake and made it to the train with 5 minutes to spare :) All the train connections went well, and I got back home at a decent time, which was nice - especially considering my experiences with rail service the past week!
Wednesday - a group of my Sixth Form students took me out for dinner and drinks. We went to a buffet Chinese restaurant for dinner, then started hitting pubs and clubs. The first place we went to, we were actually kicked out of -- I was the only one with ID, and because it was Canadian, they rejected it! Like it's my fault that I don't have a British driving license??? Sigh -- but hey, I was kicked out of a club for suspicion of using a fake ID at the age of 28! Go me :) The next place served us ... next place didn't even want to see my ID - just kicked the majority of the group out (including me), and the last place was so dead I don't think they really cared! Yay for the middle of the week during non-term time :P By then, however, I was starting to be in quite a bit of pain. Note to self: hooker boots are not good for hips!!!
Wednesday night - was in a heck of a lot of pain. Hips hurt; I was massaging my knees to keep them from seizing however I missed -- it was my ankles that went next. I was having difficulty walking by the time I reached my front door :( I got upstairs, took off my boots, and pretty much collapsed ... then the shakes, heat waves, and headaches hit. Right. Never good signs...
Thursday - spent the vast majority of the day in bed. I did go into town for just under 2 hours (had stuff due at the library), and pretty much collapsed when I got home. Couldn't keep food in, joints still aching, sweating, shivering ... thinking this was not a good thing. What was a good thing, however, was that Louisa called to find out what I was up to on Sat and whether I wanted to do some gaming (but of course, assuming that I'm not still ill) :)
Friday - spent again a good portion of the day in bed. I got up and had a shower at one point, which made me feel a bit clearer in the head. Louisa called and said she had come down with a bug, so suggested that we meet in town for a game instead of coming to my place, which was cool by me, seeing as I hadn't finished cleaning up my house yet.
Saturday (today? yeah, today) - Got a text from Louisa. Andy has decreed that she is too ill to come into town, so there goes our gaming session ... at least for a little while. I went into town, returned more stuff to the library, discovered that I have next to no voice when I stopped by Michelle's booth to say hi :( Grabbed a milkshake (I seem to be able to keep that down, which is a pleasant sign) ... picked up a treat for the boys (honey fruit stick), and some bday gifts. Now I just need to figure out how to deliver them!
So yeah, to sum up: busy, busy, busy, sick.
Right, let's back it up a few days, so you've got an idea of how on-the-go I've been lately. Venture all the way back to ... the end of the week before last.
Wednesday - went out to a pub in Bitchburn for a goodbye dinner for Dorothy. I'm having mixed feelings about this because there's a huge to-do for her leaving, and people are *still* just finding out about me. I mean, yes, she's retiring, as opposed to me, so I shouldn't be jealous of the attention, but still ... :shakes head at own childishness: Anyways, good food, life is good.
Thursday - Parents' evening is tonight (for the incoming kids), so I end up spending 13.5 hours out of my house. I'm seriously ready to melt into bed, but first I need to check on the boys ... and I notice that Jerry is acting very oddly. An hour and a half later, Jerry is dead. I call Tracy. Tracy is very very upset (to put it mildly).
Friday - Tracy is still very upset with me, which is making me very upset, of course. I actually had one of my students ask me who had pee'd in my cornflakes that morning, which made me laugh, as that was one of grandpa's sayings, and it was the first time I'd heard anyone in this country use it :P
Saturday - Tracy arrives for the weekend. It's Louisa's bday so we had made plans to meet in Newcastle for a meal and a movie. Because H still has my spare key, I asked Tracy to get her train to Newcastle, and I would give her my key, then she could retrace to Durham and crash. That plan lasted until I mentioned that the movie we were going to see was HP ... so we prodded the zombie Tracy (who had been up for hours numbering into the 30s at that point) along for the day, and generally had a good time.
Sunday - Tracy headed back down to the South to get ready to fly to Barcelona on Monday. I try to brace myself for my final week at Wolsie.
Monday - our sports day. I threw my first discus (11.3m -- not too shabby!) and, after spending all day trying to coach students on how to maximise their throws (b/c yes, I am that good at faking it), I threw my second discus and reached 12.75m :) Yay :D As soon as school is finished, Sam and I book it outta there (as in the first bus hadn't even left yet! We hit a downed power line on the way to Durham, and have to detour. Doesn't take long, but gets me to the train station at 4.05 ... which means the next train isn't for another 44 minutes. Okay, no worries - I get a chance to catch my breath.
The journey (yes, this needs it's own paragraph!) - Now there are two basic routes to get to Luton (the closest train station to Dunstable - where I'm working next year) -- you can either take a direct train to London and then walk to Thames Link where you take a direct train to Luton, or, for £15 cheaper, you go via x-country (otherwise known as Sheffield). It takes about a half hour longer. Right, so I decide for the half hour difference, I'll take the cheaper route. BIG MISTAKE. For the last 40 min of the approach to Sheffield, we get announcements saying that there is a signalling problem between Sheffield and Darby, so everyone will have to disembark at Sheffield. No skin off my nose, as that's where I'm supposedly getting off anyway. We wait a good 10 minutes outside the station cueing for a platform. As we're finally pulling in to the station, they announce that this train will actually be continuing on its journey, so to please return to your seats ... meaning everyone in front of me in the queue for the doors is now trying to jostle past me to return to their seats. Great. Anyways, get off the train and realise I have no idea which train will take me to the next leg of the journey (the lovely gentleman in Durham not having been thoughtful enough to give me a printout of my connections). So I ask an attendant which train -- he cuts me off with a harrassed look and tells me the information booth is over that way. Right. So I go and join a queue of 6 or so people ... standing at an empty booth. Bloody heck! As people are giving up and leaving, I'm busy calling H, hoping she can sign onto the National Rail website and look up which train I need next. Which she tries to do, but the website is down. Typical. Finally I reach the front of the queue, and I ask the nice gentleman how I get to Luton from here. Where? Luton. Where? Luton. I'm sorry, where are you going? LOO-TON! Oh, Luton - why didn't you say so? *Amy smacks forehead, H giggles on other end of phone* I think I'm supposed to go via Leichester, but I don't know which train will take me there... Leichester? Yes. No, you don't want to go THAT way! No, no, no! You want to go to Darby, then transfer to (at this point my brain is sticking on Darby -- wasn't that where all the signalling problems were?) So I turn to the nice gentleman, who is now pointing me in the direction of the train from whence I came, and asked "sir, are the trains actually running to Darby?" He nods and says that he bloody well hopes so, then hops out of his box to escort me back to the guy who had sent me over to the info booth in the first place. "This young lady would like to go to Darby - is the train going to go there?" (Still looking highly harrassed) YES! Older guy leaves me, and I'm stood there looking at now two trains buttressed up to each other on the track. So I ask which train I'm supposed to board. Harrassed guy tells me the back one. Okay, sure - I had come off the front one, so no worries. As I'm updating H on this (and asking her to find out where I'm going from Derby), an attendant from the front train comes onto the back train and tells us all to move to the front train. I said that I had just been told to get onto this one, and he replied "look, I'm not going to argue. Just move to the other train, b/c we haven't enough staff for this one!" Righto, that's me told. So we all cram onto the front train (for those of you trying to keep count, this would be my original train). After another 20 minute wait (during which time, more and more people keep piling onto the train from all directions), we finally pull out of the station. By the time we get to Darby, I'm sore and tired and just want to be there ... I climb the stairs to go find the info booth and join a queue of a dozen or so also very tired looking travellers. I finally reach the front of the queue, and ask how I get to Luton from here. Where? Luton. I'm sorry, where? L-U-T-O-N. Ah, Luton! *insert more smacking of forehead* She tells me I need to get onto a train to London, which caused me some consternation as my ticket says that I specifically can't go via London ... As I'm getting onto my next train -- my phone dies. Greatness. Fastforward another couple hours, a very late cab, and my generally increasing exhaustion ... I finally get to Carmel's place!
Tuesday - on one hand this seemed like a bit of a waste of time. On the other hand I finished filling out all my medical and financial forms, as well as gave them the final details for my work permit application. Nicky (my head of English) agreed to drop me at the train station in Luton if I didn't mind stopping with her at the stables first, as she had a vet coming to look at her horse. So I got to spend almost 2 hours meeting 2 horses and 2 ponies (who were very very pretty) ... and then getting on the train back up to Durham. Thankfully that trip wasn't quite as crazy as the trip down, but yeah, still exhausted when I got back home again.
Wednesday - back to 'regular' classes again ... dinner with Christina and Debbie at the Black Boar in Wolsie (very good food) and then off to see FAME! in Newcastle. Good music, good dancing ... but it was a bit odd being the only one in the group who was at all familiar with both the movie and the telly series. In fact, most of the kids weren't familiar with the storylines at all!
Thursday - last day of 'regular' classes. I managed to get one class to do actual work. By the end of the day, I gave up. Andrew recommended that I find one of the other teachers who had a young class and play a game of rounders (similiar to baseball), so I did.
Friday - very bittersweet day. I got 3 bouquets of flowers and two boxes of chocolate and 2 bottles of wine and many cards and even more hugs ... I almost broke into tears twice, but managed to hold them in both times, so it was all good.ish. Yeah - totally emotional day, to put it mildly :(
Friday night - I got on a train to Salisbury. Well, technically I got on a train to London ... this would be a good time to mention to all the readership out there currently not situated in England that we've been having rain for weeks ... and lots of flooding. This is relevant because I got to spend over an hour sat just North of Grantham due to a tunnel being flooded. As in we were starting to discuss sleeping arrangements in the car of the train :P Finally got to London, having missed my connection. Made my way from X-Cross to Waterloo ... and waited. Poor Tracy had arrived from Barcelona back into the country earlier on Friday, and had been trying to find out what time I was due in so she could crash ... so we were both waiting. And waiting. Finally my train appeared on the board, but without a platform. I shortly discovered that was because it was delayed (no explanation). And delayed .... and delayed .... finally got into the station almost 40 minutes late. Found the right platform, got on, crashed. Luckily the final stop was Salisbury, b/c otherwise I probably would have slept right through it! Disembarked, found Tracy, she drove us back to the hotel, and sleeeeeeeeeeeep was good..........
Saturday/Sunday - Tracy bought me a copy of HP & the DH and herself an umbrella (yes, it was still raining...). We went to Salisbury to see what we could see, including the tallest cathedral spire in England!, and as we wandered decided that we both wanted to catch the movie Hairspray. The local cinema wasn't carrying it, so off to Southampton for us. On the way she showed me her school as well as the drive she takes daily ... turned out that the matinee was sold out, so we grabbed dinner at the Frankie and Benny's (our neighbours were incredibly RUDE!!!) and then off for ice cream and then the flick. A bit Disneyfied look at racial issues and personal image, but good music, good dancing, and fairly good acting. Headed back to the hotel for HP time! Finished HP, packed up, got ready to head back. Tracy only had to work a half day on Monday, so the plan was that I would wander Salisbury until she was done, and then we would grab lunch and I would hit the train station.
Monday - Tracy dropped me off in town, and went off to school. I wandered around the cathedral and the shopping district, had pancakes for bfast (pancakes are slightly different here :P), and did some window shopping. Tracy arrived, and asked if I wanted to stay another day (which I of course agreed to!) ... we decided to grab some lunch at a cafe in Salisbury and then another film in Southampton (Die Hard 4.0 -- very well done. A bit unbelievable in parts but great tie-ins with the earlier films). After that Tracy picked up some fish'n'chips and we returned to the hotel ... which was unfortunately fully booked. Southampton was having grad that week - figures, eh? After much driving around, Tracy managed to find us a B&B in Salisbury (b/c she IS that good!)
Tuesday - Tracy left early for school (hers didn't break up until Wed - and I thought *my* school broke up late!), I had bfast and then started my walk up to the train station. Missed my first turn-off, but fixed my mistake and made it to the train with 5 minutes to spare :) All the train connections went well, and I got back home at a decent time, which was nice - especially considering my experiences with rail service the past week!
Wednesday - a group of my Sixth Form students took me out for dinner and drinks. We went to a buffet Chinese restaurant for dinner, then started hitting pubs and clubs. The first place we went to, we were actually kicked out of -- I was the only one with ID, and because it was Canadian, they rejected it! Like it's my fault that I don't have a British driving license??? Sigh -- but hey, I was kicked out of a club for suspicion of using a fake ID at the age of 28! Go me :) The next place served us ... next place didn't even want to see my ID - just kicked the majority of the group out (including me), and the last place was so dead I don't think they really cared! Yay for the middle of the week during non-term time :P By then, however, I was starting to be in quite a bit of pain. Note to self: hooker boots are not good for hips!!!
Wednesday night - was in a heck of a lot of pain. Hips hurt; I was massaging my knees to keep them from seizing however I missed -- it was my ankles that went next. I was having difficulty walking by the time I reached my front door :( I got upstairs, took off my boots, and pretty much collapsed ... then the shakes, heat waves, and headaches hit. Right. Never good signs...
Thursday - spent the vast majority of the day in bed. I did go into town for just under 2 hours (had stuff due at the library), and pretty much collapsed when I got home. Couldn't keep food in, joints still aching, sweating, shivering ... thinking this was not a good thing. What was a good thing, however, was that Louisa called to find out what I was up to on Sat and whether I wanted to do some gaming (but of course, assuming that I'm not still ill) :)
Friday - spent again a good portion of the day in bed. I got up and had a shower at one point, which made me feel a bit clearer in the head. Louisa called and said she had come down with a bug, so suggested that we meet in town for a game instead of coming to my place, which was cool by me, seeing as I hadn't finished cleaning up my house yet.
Saturday (today? yeah, today) - Got a text from Louisa. Andy has decreed that she is too ill to come into town, so there goes our gaming session ... at least for a little while. I went into town, returned more stuff to the library, discovered that I have next to no voice when I stopped by Michelle's booth to say hi :( Grabbed a milkshake (I seem to be able to keep that down, which is a pleasant sign) ... picked up a treat for the boys (honey fruit stick), and some bday gifts. Now I just need to figure out how to deliver them!
So yeah, to sum up: busy, busy, busy, sick.