Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Heroes and Idols
Lying here in the depths of non-sleep, I find myself constructing (for reasons not really clear even to me) a list of heroes and inspirational sorts... They are roughly as follows: (note this is not exhaustive, and that they are not in any particular order. Not here, anyway. I have some sort of vague mental ranking, and they are definitely not all equally heroic or idolised, but it would take far more brain power than I can muster at the moment to try and do that justice here...)
Real Life:
- Jesus
- Gareth Malone
- Ben Lovett
- Mr Spittle (my unfortunately named yet wonderful year 8 maths teacher)
- Adele
- Oliver Sacks
- Martin Freeman
- Stephen Fry
Fictional:
- Sherlock Holmes
- Amélie Poulain
- Captain Jack Sparrow
- Emma Morley
- Summer Finn (though she was a bit of a phase...)
- others that had sprung to mind before writing this, whom I have now forgotten...
There you have it. A rather narrow list of people for whom I have some respect.
There are others of course. But I'm splurging what is in my head in an attempt to get it out so I can sleep.
Also, I would just like to draw attention to the fact that NO items of clothing, jewellery or footwear have been purchased by me since the end of October. I have been given a few items, but that's allowed. I think...
I didn't even over-excess on something else in their place, which I sort of thought I might...
Except for today when I bought 6 LPs. But that's like an extension of my Christmas present, so therefore is allowed. Probably.
Anyway, I should try sleeping again. Yes please.
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Abandonment and The Weekend of Very Little Sleep
I have realised recently, I have a bit of a fear of abandonment.
I mean, I suppose no one really likes the idea, so in that sense let's not over-dramatise it, but my reactions to a couple of recent events (like my parents not being at home when I was expecting them to be, so we could drive to Nottingham together, and my immediate reaction being combined panic and deep hurt at the immediate assumption they must have left without me) have suggested to me that there's something in me that is really quite scared of it.
Which is ironic, considering how stubbornly self-sufficient I can be.
Anyway, that's by the by.
This weekend has been ACE.
It went a little something like this:
- Thursday (I know not technically the weekend, but hey. Technically not ace either...): off school with aching limbs and flu-like symptoms. Spent the day sleeping and watching three different films, back to back (Sherlock Holmes (in preparation for the new one), X-men Origins (Wolverine), and Once)
- Thursday night: Hums faculty dinner in Rothwell. Mm-mm. Loved the food, loved the party hats, and secret Santa was a success.
- Friday: still somewhat zoned out, but in school for choirs, assemblies, Christmas fayres and panto. A jolly day all round.
- Friday night: staff social in Corby. Was massively fun. Much food, dancing and jollity was had, culminating in a 2:30am bedtime.
- Saturday: spent the day clearing, cleaning and sorting out the house. Much needed, and is now much nicer.
- Saturday night: Christmas house party in Tufnell Park, which was lush. I loved catching up with people I have known for a while, and people I have been getting to know over the past couple of years. Again, much fun was had, and this culminated in a 4:30 bedtime.
- Sunday: woke up disgustingly late, went for lunch at my friend's mother's house, sang carols a capella, with voices that were not quite working, and then came home again.
What a beautiful end to the term. And now, I'm about to watch last night's episode of Merlin, and have just eaten 9 liqueur chocolates. I feel a bit sick.
Roll on tomorrow, with NO ALARM and the imminent return to Parentsville. Delicious food, real fire and family on tap. Yesss...
Right, Merlin o'clock it is, shortly followed by loooooooooooooong sleep time.
Bring it.
I mean, I suppose no one really likes the idea, so in that sense let's not over-dramatise it, but my reactions to a couple of recent events (like my parents not being at home when I was expecting them to be, so we could drive to Nottingham together, and my immediate reaction being combined panic and deep hurt at the immediate assumption they must have left without me) have suggested to me that there's something in me that is really quite scared of it.
Which is ironic, considering how stubbornly self-sufficient I can be.
Anyway, that's by the by.
This weekend has been ACE.
It went a little something like this:
- Thursday (I know not technically the weekend, but hey. Technically not ace either...): off school with aching limbs and flu-like symptoms. Spent the day sleeping and watching three different films, back to back (Sherlock Holmes (in preparation for the new one), X-men Origins (Wolverine), and Once)
- Thursday night: Hums faculty dinner in Rothwell. Mm-mm. Loved the food, loved the party hats, and secret Santa was a success.
- Friday: still somewhat zoned out, but in school for choirs, assemblies, Christmas fayres and panto. A jolly day all round.
- Friday night: staff social in Corby. Was massively fun. Much food, dancing and jollity was had, culminating in a 2:30am bedtime.
- Saturday: spent the day clearing, cleaning and sorting out the house. Much needed, and is now much nicer.
- Saturday night: Christmas house party in Tufnell Park, which was lush. I loved catching up with people I have known for a while, and people I have been getting to know over the past couple of years. Again, much fun was had, and this culminated in a 4:30 bedtime.
- Sunday: woke up disgustingly late, went for lunch at my friend's mother's house, sang carols a capella, with voices that were not quite working, and then came home again.
What a beautiful end to the term. And now, I'm about to watch last night's episode of Merlin, and have just eaten 9 liqueur chocolates. I feel a bit sick.
Roll on tomorrow, with NO ALARM and the imminent return to Parentsville. Delicious food, real fire and family on tap. Yesss...
Right, Merlin o'clock it is, shortly followed by loooooooooooooong sleep time.
Bring it.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
The Milka Father Christmas, and other stories...
I'm sitting in my bed, with three candles burning, and the sounds of traditional carols streaming into my ears.
A small milka Father Christmas is winking at me from my bookcase, my nails are tinted a shade of burgundy and my feet are snuggled in their red woollen socks.
I am feeling remarkably festive.
This weekend was the Marlborough Street Massive's Christmas Weekend. We spent Saturday bustling about beautiful little shops, buying trinkets and toffees and hot chestnuts. It was ridiculously lovely. There was a nativity play, with real live animals and people dressed up in excellent costumes, speaking beautiful words and singing Little Donkey and Away in a Manger and other delightfully festive songs.
Then we went back to a bungalow filled with Christmas tree and DIY and tea, and sat about catching up and sitting and hearing about each others' lives.
After an evening of preparing, partying, cooking, changing, tasting, mulling, baking, and brewing, we ate the best meal of the year, and shared Buck's fizz and rosé wine, and ate until we shouldn't have. With bellies bursting and dresses a little too tight, we lounged beside the log fire (I'm not making any of this up - this is how perfect the weekend was), passing round parcels and presents and opening cards, until the fire had burnt down, and Kate Bush had finished serenading us with her fifty names for snow, and all the wrapping paper was no longer keeping secrets, but had been demoted to fire fuel or recycling scraps.
At this point, we crawled into our respective beds and slept until our body clocks woke each other up the next morning.
I flipping loved it.
A small milka Father Christmas is winking at me from my bookcase, my nails are tinted a shade of burgundy and my feet are snuggled in their red woollen socks.
I am feeling remarkably festive.
This weekend was the Marlborough Street Massive's Christmas Weekend. We spent Saturday bustling about beautiful little shops, buying trinkets and toffees and hot chestnuts. It was ridiculously lovely. There was a nativity play, with real live animals and people dressed up in excellent costumes, speaking beautiful words and singing Little Donkey and Away in a Manger and other delightfully festive songs.
Then we went back to a bungalow filled with Christmas tree and DIY and tea, and sat about catching up and sitting and hearing about each others' lives.
After an evening of preparing, partying, cooking, changing, tasting, mulling, baking, and brewing, we ate the best meal of the year, and shared Buck's fizz and rosé wine, and ate until we shouldn't have. With bellies bursting and dresses a little too tight, we lounged beside the log fire (I'm not making any of this up - this is how perfect the weekend was), passing round parcels and presents and opening cards, until the fire had burnt down, and Kate Bush had finished serenading us with her fifty names for snow, and all the wrapping paper was no longer keeping secrets, but had been demoted to fire fuel or recycling scraps.
At this point, we crawled into our respective beds and slept until our body clocks woke each other up the next morning.
I flipping loved it.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Sunday, 20 November 2011
A Few Nice Things
I had something deep and meaningful to share...
I thought of it when I was doing the washing up earlier.
It was some sort of metaphorical thought - terribly profound, that sort of thing.
But I've forgotten it...
Oh well.
Today I went on a walk. On my own. In the fog.
I loved it.
I went to Brixworth Park, which is well equipped with play area, café and reservoir, amongst other attractions. It was chilly, but beautiful - all the slightly clichéd sights, like gently bobbing sailing boats, and misty water-laden spider webs, and the distant hills rising from the mist above a still stretch of water, and tiny water droplets suspended from red berried bushes... Clichéd, perhaps; beautiful, definitely.
It made me feel very peaceful and also a bit happy, and also a bit sad.
But mostly peaceful, which was nice.
Then I watched possibly my new favourite film. It's called (I think) "Nativity", and stars Martin Freeman as a primary school teacher in Coventry. There are some farcical moments (one of the main themes of the film is an ongoing feud between two ex-best-friend teachers in two different schools in the same area, trying to out-do each other with their respective nativities, which inevitably leads to some hilarious mishaps and japes and shenanigans etc etc...), but there are some really lovely moments, and some really real moments too.
I think my favourite scene is just after a 'naughty boy' auditions for Joseph - he really wants to get the part, but gets into a fight with another boy, when the other boy says he'll never be Joseph because he's not good enough, and he'll only let the school down. I won't go into it too much, but the favourite scene bit is when Martin Freeman explains to the boy that if he carries on behaving like a naughty boy, people will treat him like a naughty boy, and he'll be expected to be a naughty boy, instead of the not-naughty boy he could be (and wants to be, really).
Anyway, it was more effective in the film.
But it was so great, and the dedication at the end read something like "to all inspirational teachers", which made me smile probably a bit more than was necessary.
Anyway! This is a long post about not very much, really. Just a few nice things that happened today.
Other nice things include:
- meeting a new(-ish) girl at church this morning
- being reminded of Zephaniah 3:17, and the fact He rejoices over ME with singing
- drinking hot chocolate after my walk
- lunching chez parentals
- driving home in the fog, and noticing how fairyland-ish the lights on the A14 become when it's foggy
- finally getting round to dyeing my faded work trousers black, so they're smart again
And now it's time for me to sleep. My lessons tomorrow are all planned, as they are re-workings of lessons previously taught last week, and I think I even have a child-free lunchbreak tomorrow. Maybe. How exciting!
(I think the bit about the Nativity film was my profound washing-up thought. Not as profound as I remembered it being...)
I thought of it when I was doing the washing up earlier.
It was some sort of metaphorical thought - terribly profound, that sort of thing.
But I've forgotten it...
Oh well.
Today I went on a walk. On my own. In the fog.
I loved it.
I went to Brixworth Park, which is well equipped with play area, café and reservoir, amongst other attractions. It was chilly, but beautiful - all the slightly clichéd sights, like gently bobbing sailing boats, and misty water-laden spider webs, and the distant hills rising from the mist above a still stretch of water, and tiny water droplets suspended from red berried bushes... Clichéd, perhaps; beautiful, definitely.
It made me feel very peaceful and also a bit happy, and also a bit sad.
But mostly peaceful, which was nice.
Then I watched possibly my new favourite film. It's called (I think) "Nativity", and stars Martin Freeman as a primary school teacher in Coventry. There are some farcical moments (one of the main themes of the film is an ongoing feud between two ex-best-friend teachers in two different schools in the same area, trying to out-do each other with their respective nativities, which inevitably leads to some hilarious mishaps and japes and shenanigans etc etc...), but there are some really lovely moments, and some really real moments too.
I think my favourite scene is just after a 'naughty boy' auditions for Joseph - he really wants to get the part, but gets into a fight with another boy, when the other boy says he'll never be Joseph because he's not good enough, and he'll only let the school down. I won't go into it too much, but the favourite scene bit is when Martin Freeman explains to the boy that if he carries on behaving like a naughty boy, people will treat him like a naughty boy, and he'll be expected to be a naughty boy, instead of the not-naughty boy he could be (and wants to be, really).
Anyway, it was more effective in the film.
But it was so great, and the dedication at the end read something like "to all inspirational teachers", which made me smile probably a bit more than was necessary.
Anyway! This is a long post about not very much, really. Just a few nice things that happened today.
Other nice things include:
- meeting a new(-ish) girl at church this morning
- being reminded of Zephaniah 3:17, and the fact He rejoices over ME with singing
- drinking hot chocolate after my walk
- lunching chez parentals
- driving home in the fog, and noticing how fairyland-ish the lights on the A14 become when it's foggy
- finally getting round to dyeing my faded work trousers black, so they're smart again
And now it's time for me to sleep. My lessons tomorrow are all planned, as they are re-workings of lessons previously taught last week, and I think I even have a child-free lunchbreak tomorrow. Maybe. How exciting!
(I think the bit about the Nativity film was my profound washing-up thought. Not as profound as I remembered it being...)
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Temptations and Revelations
This weekend I have learnt:
- I am able to resist buying beautiful cashmere jumpers from Cath Kidston. This was made far easier by the £105 price tag.
- Effectively maintaining one's car leads to a better functioning vehicle. Who knew?! (I added oil to my angry-sounding engine, and now it purrs like a satisfied tabby)
- Cambridge still feels familiar and homely, even though I haven't lived there since 2009, and only really lived there for 9 months. Weird. But nice weird.
- "Flight of the Conchords" makes me laugh.
- Singing ridiculously loudly in my car is hugely satisfying.
- Adding a few ground almonds, mixed spices and an extra ounce of butter creates quite a delicious mince pie pastry.
- People are complex and occasionally unfathomable. And that's ok. I don't have to fathom them all the time.
Also: so far, I have bought no items of clothing, jewellery or shoes. Cambridge market had a LOT to tempt me (for example the Banksy balloon girl on a t-shirt, and beautiful ceramic jewellery imprinted with images of dragonflies and/or flowers), but I was not tempted. Well, I was, but I didn't give in to the temptation.
Also (also): someone read out this verse this morning. I needed to hear it, and consequently wrote a song based on it. So, thanks, Someone:
"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord"
Psalm 27:14
- I am able to resist buying beautiful cashmere jumpers from Cath Kidston. This was made far easier by the £105 price tag.
- Effectively maintaining one's car leads to a better functioning vehicle. Who knew?! (I added oil to my angry-sounding engine, and now it purrs like a satisfied tabby)
- Cambridge still feels familiar and homely, even though I haven't lived there since 2009, and only really lived there for 9 months. Weird. But nice weird.
- "Flight of the Conchords" makes me laugh.
- Singing ridiculously loudly in my car is hugely satisfying.
- Adding a few ground almonds, mixed spices and an extra ounce of butter creates quite a delicious mince pie pastry.
- People are complex and occasionally unfathomable. And that's ok. I don't have to fathom them all the time.
Also: so far, I have bought no items of clothing, jewellery or shoes. Cambridge market had a LOT to tempt me (for example the Banksy balloon girl on a t-shirt, and beautiful ceramic jewellery imprinted with images of dragonflies and/or flowers), but I was not tempted. Well, I was, but I didn't give in to the temptation.
Also (also): someone read out this verse this morning. I needed to hear it, and consequently wrote a song based on it. So, thanks, Someone:
"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord"
Psalm 27:14
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