Back to normal?

So college opened today after our two snow days. We were one of only three institutions in the district to open, apparently. We need every lesson we can get, as the lower sixth students start their exams on Monday. About a third of the Sociology students made it in - and, fair play to them, for some of them it took almost 3 hours, what with the ice - and about two-thirds of the Psychology students made it in. Which just about sums up the difference between the two groups...

A 3 day work week seems just about ideal to me. Enough to keep busy, not enough to get stressed.

I am still liking the snow - though I am starting to get a bit frustrated at not being able to drive anywhere as the novelty factor begins to wear off.


I still found the walk home magical, though...

Christmas is coming!

I love all the Christmas lights. The trees along the road opposite the college are all white and sparkly, as are the fir trees next to the park. It makes leaving college in the dark (the sun sets ridiculously early at the moment; it's pitch dark before I've even finished teaching every afternoon) a pleasure instead of a chore.

The other nice thing about the insanely short days is that you can get up very late and still be in time for the sunrise. On Saturday we went for an early morning run - left home at 6.45 - and were able to run by moonlight. Beautiful, specially running round the duck pond in the park. It was a good run - except that it clouded over and started to pour with rain when we were about half a k from home. Nothing quite like slodging through a muddy field in the pouring rain, and having your trainer literally get stuck in the mud! I'm very grateful for hot showers.

Work is going well at the moment; I am feeling organised and (touch wood) on top of things. I have really nice students in all my classes this year, which helps too! And I'm starting to look forward to Christmas. I think all the Christmas shopping is done. I did mine online which was completely painless. Soph needed me to take her shopping, though, so we went to creepy-Crawley on Saturday morning. She is a very thoughtful gift buyer - I was impressed by the things she's chosen. And we had a fun girly morning together.


Christmas itself should be good. We're going to this cottage on the Cornish coast with my parents - I can't wait for long windy walks along the cliff tops! And then warm nights in front of the fire, with the kids, and board games, and books, and hot chocolate.... Only 11 more days! And only 8 of those are work days!

Not everyone seems to be feeling the festive spirit, though - poor Emily routinely has to deal with angry customers on the evenings when she works at the local Chinese take-away. People get annoyed when the wait times are long - fair enough, but why take it out on the two teenage girls behind the counter? One of the teachers from her old high school was in there on Friday night; Millie says this woman got really angry when she had to wait for her order, and then, as they were leaving, her boyfriend grabbed a prawn cracker from the bowl on the counter, threw it on the ground, and snarled "I'll be back"! Seriously, what kind of an idiot behaves like that? Emily and Claire (the other student who works there) both thought it was funny; it sounds a bit upsetting to me, though. You'd think the teacher would want to set a good example to former students - presumably she didn't recognise Emily ...

Rainy Days (and Sundays)

Grey windy darkness today. It's dreary, and depressing.

Yesterday was busy - it was a surprise family celebration for my uncle, and my cousins had flown in from France and Switzerland for the weekend. So we got to hang out with all the baby cousins - well, the cousins' babies - who were multi-lingually adorable. Between them, they - or at least, the ones who have got to the verbal stage - speak Swiss-German, French, Italian and English. So that was lovely, and reminded me of how sweet toddlers and babies are. Sweet, and noisy. I loved that stage when mine were in it, but I wouldn't like to go back to it.

Sadly, though, we hardly saw Bobby this weekend; he worked flat-out. He's home now, though, and the implementation went really well, so he is (justifiably) proud. I like the fact that he's good at what he does.

After my parents left today I sorted out my lessons for tomorrow. I am ready for the week, but am feeling distinctly uninspired. I enjoyed my week off, but it didn't feel quite long enough. Hopefully the adrenaline of facing my classes will make me more enthusiastic (specially as I am teaching all 8 periods tomorrow); right now, the prospect of the next seven weeks seems rather bleak. I think it's the post-PGCE "what-now" feeling - I have the permanent job I wanted - but what's the next goal?

A ghost? A monster?





No, it's Bobby, changing the duvet cover. It's his own method. Can't think why more people don't use it.

There's been much toing and froing this weekend - various kids have had parties to go to, sleep-overs to not sleep at, and friends to visit. So, busy, in a pleasant but not-very-interesting kind of way.

I didn't get nearly as much work done this half-term as I'd planned to. I feel a bit guilty about that, but on the other hand I really did need the break, and it's been wonderful to have this time to relax with the kids. I may pay for my relaxation this coming week, though... I made the mistake of checking my work email earlier this afternoon, and it made me really anxious. So many things to take care of - none of them unmanageable on their own, but taken together quite daunting. I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow morning. Ugh.

Bobby and I went for a walk in the fields five minutes south of our house this afternoon, though, which helped with the anxiety.





These past two days it's felt like Spring is coming. There are so many more birds around, and it's been so much warmer. This afternoon we saw pheasants, and rabbits... And the snowdrops are out.





And this was the sunset when we walked home.





I really like living where we do.

Snow Day!!

It was bliss waking up this morning to a snowy world and the realisation that today was a holiday.

Sophie was meeting up with her friends to go tobogganing in the park, so Emily and I went for a long walk. It was gorgeous; sunny and snowy both.





Weirdly, the snow reminded me of the sand on the beach at Fort de Soto in Florida. They both look like icing sugar, and they both make the same squeak when you walk on them.





Having the unexpected holiday days made me feel like a child again; I think I was at least as excited as the kids were!





Back to normal tomorrow... Shame the fun can't go on forever, but it was great while it lasted!

Hard Frost

It's so beautiful outside; we went for a bike ride this morning and were amazed by how magical everything looked. Amazed, and also cold. Very, very cold.






The pond in the park is frozen right over. That's Bobby in the pictures, out in the middle of it. It got all the way down to minus 7 last night and didn't get any warmer than minus 2 all day today. It hasn't really got above freezing all week; there's still snow around from the little snowfall we had on Monday. Very unusual for our part of the world.





I have loved the cold dry weather we've had these past couple of weeks. Sadly, though, according to the weather forecast it'll be back to our normal, wetter, weather as of tomorrow.

More pictures here...

Winter Wonderland

So cruel, that we had to go back to work and school on the day we woke up to a magical snowy world!

I walked the long way round to work; it was so beautiful outdoors.







The weather's been cold and sunny for almost the whole break, and it's predicted to stay that way for the next week or so. Gorgeous! (Albeit chilly; it's supposed to get down to minus 6 tonight). Apparently there's a high pressure system that's stopping our normal warmer, wetter, weather from arriving. Long may it last! I love this weather; bright cold is infinitely more enjoyable than grey sogginess.

It felt quite odd being back at work after the break. Unfamiliar and strange, and also rather exhausting. First days are generally hard for me - I came home with a splitting headache. We cooked a really yummy supper though (stir-fried veggies and rice and satay sauce) and it was so nice to sit at the table and unwind with the family. I missed them all today; we've all been together for most of the past sixteen days and today we all had to go our separate ways.

Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm properly into the swing of things at work again. I hope my studentss are all revising madly right this second; they write their first AS exams on Thursday and Friday and most of them seem far too relaxed for my liking. I am pretty sure that I'm a lot more wound up about these exams than they are!

Sweet Sixteen

Sixteen years ago, on a hot, humid, cloudy Pietermaritzburg summer afternoon, Emily was born. It was a beautiful, completely natural, labour and birth, with a fantastic midwife and our family doctor, who was so excited to have (literally) caught a baby that he dashed home to fetch his daughter so she could meet Emily. Emily was a peaceful, contented baby, and she has turned into a wonderful young woman. We are so lucky to have her in our lives.

Her sixteenth birthday began with hot chocolate in bed, followed by her paper round. It's a measure of her tenacity that she does her round every single morning, no matter how dark, cold and generally grim the weather may be.





I went with her this morning, and it was icy - but beautiful. Frosty holly...





... and an icy churchyard.





She opened her presents when we got home.





Roly couldn't stop himself from pouncing on the necklace...





At around 11, Bobby scraped the car (which, by the way, has recently developed a horrible squeak, which is going to be seen to on Friday, doubtless at vast expense), and we set out.





Stephen looked happy at this point in the back of the car; by the time we got to the restaurant, though, he was feeling queasy.





He has always been a horrible car traveller; lucky for him we don't need to use the car much these days. Fortunately he recovered in time for lunch at Jimmy Spice's, where we ate a totally delicious meal. Here we are, happy but faintly nauseous after having eaten quite a bit too much.





Then we walked down the street to see Twilight. I was not expecting to enjoy this movie in the least, but actually it was pretty good. I still have more than a few feminist issues with it, mind you. But I've told Em I'll read the second book as soon as she's done with it (she started it this evening) so we can talk about it.

And this evening we hung out, played a bit of Wii fit, and watched Juno (because we've been meaning to watch it for ages, and it's the latest of our Lovefilm movies to arrive.) Sweet and funny, though again, I have a few feminist issues with it.

It's just about midnight now, and Emily has just gone up to bed. She likes to get the maximum mileage out of each birthday, which makes sense, seeing as she only gets one a year. She enjoyed her day, and we enjoyed sharing it with her. We are so lucky to have our sunny-natured, kind-hearted, super-organised Emmy; I can't help wishing that she wasn't growing up quite so fast.

Winter

One of the things I dislike about our short winter days is the way that the darkness makes me think that it's later than it really is. Often we end up eating ridiculously early, as I think that, because it's been dark for a while, it must be dinnertime. And that seems to compress the short day even further, since, if it's an overcast day, it can be dark by 3.30. Conversely, in summer when the days are gloriously long, we end up not eating until ten...

I'm actually looking forward to cooking dinner tonight, though, because it's going to involve lots of garlic which means that I can use the nifty garlic-peeling device that my folks brought back from Canada.




It's a dishwasher-proof silicon pot-holder that also works as a trivet, a jar-opener and - weirdly - as a garlic peeler. Just roll it around the garlic clove and rub firmly, and the skin peels off like magic. Even more fun than the whack-the-clove-with-the-back-of-the-knife method.

We're going to watch Gaslight tonight after dinner - one advantage of dark winter evenings is that they're far better for scary movies than sunny summer ones!

Camping, eh?

This is what we woke up to on Sunday morning.





Glad we'd brought the washing in!

We went for a walk on Reigate Hill...





... turned into more of a battle than walk after a while, though.





I pleaded journalistic immunity.





We're off to Cornwall early tomorrow. Have decided that camping may be unpleasantly chilly, so we will be staying in the Tintagel Youth Hostel instead. Can't wait!

Lovely and unlovely...

The weather has been stunningly beautiful these past few days. Cold and frosty and blue. We've been on a couple of fun bike rides - it always amazes me how close we are to the countryside here. Just a few blocks south of our house and you're in farmland. The rest of the pictures - some of a 25km bike ride we did on Sunday morning,and some from that afternoon, of a stroll through the woods near Bobby's work - are here.

Other good things - our late Valentine's Day celebration. We went to the Gurkha Kitchen in Reigate (Nepalese food) on Friday night, and it was a lovely evening. Also lovely is the fact that it's half-term so the kids and I have this week free. Thank goodness, I was getting near the end of my tether.

Less lovely is the staggeringly ridiculous sum I just handed over to have our rattly horrible car serviced. I wish we could get rid of the stupid thing altogether and go car-free, but it'd make things like going camping, or visiting my parents, too awkward.

Also unlovely is the letter I got from the breast consultant, saying that since I missed an appointment they're removing me from their patient list. I'm upset, because I've never received any request for an appointment, either by phone or post. So I certainly haven't knowingly missed one. I'm betting it's going to take me ages to sort out the mess that they've created, especially as the consultant's secretary is apparently on holiday till the 26th.

Even though Emily and Stephen think it's a desperately bad idea (but mom, what if someone sees you?) and I too have slight qualms about helmet-hair, I have signed up for the cycle-to-work scheme which the college has offered us. It's a really cool system - if you buy a bicycle through cyclescheme, you take a salary sacrifice that allows you to pay the loan back over the course of a year from your gross, rather than your net, salary. And because you don't pay tax on the bicycle, you save about 43% of the cost of the bike. So you can get £300 worth of bike and accessories for well under £20 a month. The guidelines say that at least 50% of your use of the bike should be in getting to and from work, but that you can use it for leisure purposes as well. (Practically speaking, though, I don't really see that they can check up on how you often you actually end up riding to work.) I'm quite excited about it; went and chose a bicycle today and emailed the details off to the cyclescheme people, so now all I have to do is wait for them to send me the voucher than means I can go and collect my bike from the shop!

Other good things from today were the movie we just watched - Akeelah and the Bee, which all five of us enjoyed very much, and my new book, which arrived this morning, courtesy of an amazon gift voucher. I plan to spend a good chunk of tomorrow with it. I hope it rains (rather a safe hope, in England in January), so that I can listen to rain on the windows while I read. And I hope it's really chilly, so we can light the fire with a clear conscience.

I'm so glad that the days are already starting to get longer. The sun was just setting when I left work at 4.30 today - a huge improvement from the gloomy November/December days when it's pitch-dark before 4.

I'm feeling unsettled and restless at the moment. In the mood for change... Bobby's department has been outsourced to an India-based company. His conditions of service and salary will remain the same (and he'll still be working here in England) but I can't deny that, if we were offered it, I'd be tempted by the opportunity of spending a couple of years in India. Almost certainly not an option for us at the moment (house, kids' schooling, my job, the course I'm doing) but the thought is awfully tempting ...

We went to Stonehenge today. The sky was grey, the wind was howling, and it was absolutely freezing, but, happily (if weirdly), Bobby's mum seemed to love the experience. To the extent that she walked around the stones a second time, and hasn't stopped talking about Stonehenge since. (The rest of us dutifully walked around once, then lurked in the gift shop till she was done. In our defence, we have listened to the audio-guides before...and today our fingers were too numb to work them anyway.)

Bobby's mum will be leaving on Tuesday evening. In some ways it feels as though she's only just arrived; in other ways it feels as though she's been here forever. We'll miss her when she goes, but it will be restful to have the house to ourselves again. We seem to have had family staying with us for ages; before Bobby's mum arrived at the beginning of December we'd had his nephew and wife for a couple of weeks, plus my parents on and off. So some time to ourselves will be good.

I'll be taking Ems to the endocrinologist tomorrow afternoon; just a check-up. It'll be interesting to get proper height and weight measurements - I think she's now almost as tall as I am. Pretty cool, considering that without GH she was predicted a height of 4ft6 or 7.

Stephen turned 18 today.

It's truly bewildering, how fast time flies. Seems like just a moment ago that he was a toddler. Now he's pretty much a grown man. Though watching him chucking a ball at my nice clean livingroom walls a moment ago, that seemed particularly hard to believe...





Here he is with his sister, united in a temporary teenagery truce; they both got laptops as a combined birthday/Christmas gift.

We went to the Natural History museum this morning, to see the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

I love the look of the Natural History Museum, especially at this time of the year.






The exhbition was excellent; the pictures were truly amazing. And it was interesting reading about the lengths that people went to get those great shots.

A few more pictures from our day...

Sophie waiting on the station...





Pigeon outside the Natural History museum...



And the Tardis at London Victoria.





Happy new year, everyone!

I love the softness that the light has in winter here. That honey-like quality the sun has...

I went to the flying field with Bobby yesterday. More for a bit of peace and quiet than to share in his hobby - though I'm not admitting that to his mother, who thinks I am a bit lacking in the Tender Wife department.




We went for a walk along the river (beautiful) and then I sat in the car and read for a couple of hours while he and the rest of the club members played with their planes. Bliss.

38 feels pretty good.





Better than 37 did, oddly.

My birthday celebration on Saturday was lovely. Bobby cooked us all pancakes before we took the train to the Tower of London.





Steve very sweetly took my mum-in-law around the tower (those two have such a close bond, it is wonderful...) while the rest of us skated on the moat.





The fog made the river look just like a Monet print, we thought.





And from Monet to monkeys...





And then we ate a totally delicious lunch at Wagamama - though people still had room for extra goodies afterwards.





Aaargh! You shouldn't have pushed it!





All of these pictures (and there are more here were taken with my birthday present from Bobby - a tiny, beautiful, pink camera. It's perfect - has really good resolution, yet is small enough to fit in my purse. And I wasn't expecting it at all, since I happen to know what I'm getting for Christmas, and we'd agreed that it would count as a combined Christmas/birthday present... I'm very lucky.

And in the evening I forced the family to watch Elf with me. No-one ever believes me, since it's really not my usual style, but I love that movie. So there. The other thing people seem to have a hard time getting to grips with is our family's habit of relocating birthdays to more convenient days. If I'd celebrated my birthday on its real date, I would have had a full day at work - with my less pleasant teaching groups at that - followed by a neurologist's appointment in the evening. So, not great. The normal solution for most people would be to open presents etc on the real birthday, and do something fun on the next free day. But I think that just dilutes both days, because then you just get two half-hearted birthday celebrations. Whereas if you simply pretend that your birthday falls on a different (convenient) day, you can make sure that you have a wonderful day all day long. I know most of you are probably still making that "huh, she really is crazy" face that I see every time I tell someone about this method, but seriously. Think about it. I'm right!

The neurologist's appointment was sort of unsatisfactory. The really good news is that the MRI and all the blood tests came back perfectly normal. The bad news is that I still have my weird symptoms, and am likely to have them for the foreseeable future. The neurologist thinks (guesses, since the MRI didn't pick up any visible signs of damage) that the symptoms first arrived as a part of viral infection which has affected my brain stem, leaving some residual inflammation. This inflammation is responsible for the numb feeling on the right hand side of my face, and the pins and needles I keep getting in my hands and feet. And for the off-balance sensations that still bother me. Sadly, he says that since it hasn't cleared up in 6 months, it's probably not going to. But, it won't get worse. So, not the end of the world, but a bit frustrating.

Today is going to involve getting the house ready - my parents arrive this afternoon, and will be spending the next few days with us - and the board game Sophie gave me for my birthday. Chocolate and Doctor Who, what could be a more perfect combination?

/a>


I spent today at the Royal Observatory.

Very enjoyable, but hard work, since I was there to support a student who has Asperger's Syndrome. He's very capable indeed when it comes to physics (the trip was organised by the Physics department and forms part of the students' coursework) but not so capable when it comes to coping with things like buses and cafeterias and events that don't run exactly according to the printed schedule.

So I am good and tired tonight.

Nevertheless, we are thinking of going back to IKEA this evening to get the dining-room table we had planned to buy on Monday night. Don't know if I can quite face it, but it would be really nice to have a decent-sized table...

It's still cold here, which makes the idea of going out again even less appealing. (We woke up on Thursday to more snow; a bit over two inches this time, which is a lot for here. Really beautiful, though Ems found it made her paper-round a lot more challenging!) Though at least we finally have a new car window - it took the RAC until 9pm on Wednesday night to replace it, and even then, they made us drive to their fitting centre instead of coming to our house (which is what they'd previously said they'd do), because, they said, it was too cold for their technicians to go out! When I asked if that didn't mean if it wasn't too cold for me to drive to them, especially considering that I had a missing window, they just repeated that it was too cold for their technicians to go out. Nice that they look after their employees so well, shame that their customers need to fend for themselves.

We woke up to a fairy-tale street on Wednesday morning - it had been snowing the night before and for once the snow had actually stuck. Walking the girls to school, and then on to work, was quite magical. This was what our morning looked like ...

Our house, from outside ...



Snowy street near Sophie's school ...



My walk to work takes me through the park.





The playing field was full of people making snowmen and playing before work and school.



It hardly ever snows here in the south-east of England, so when it does, it is a real event. The kids at work were thrilled too; lots of snowball play and snow-people being built. It was quite endearing, seeing those great big seventeen and eighteen year olds reverting to childhood proper.

It snowed on and off until this afternoon, when it changed to our more usual rain. And, sadly, that is probably it for snowy weather for us until next winter.