An Uncrabby Update

'Look for the positives in every day,' they say.

Who 'they' are exactly, I do not know. If I find out, I shall invite them to come and spend time with my horrid Year 8 class, and then tell me to find something positive. But today I am willing to take the advice of 'they' so here goes.

1) The asparagus is coming up. I thought I had killed it before it had even started, with my random stab at trying to plant it properly with its little leggings draped over little trenches like little cowboys on little horses. But no! At the weekend I found a good dozen baby 'sparagi emerging from the bed. Hurrah!

2) There is an abundance of salad leaf product growing in the greenhouse so I am anticipating a lovely homegrown salad over Easter weekend.

3) Andy came home whistling last night and bearing a Black and Decker Workmate. If it floats his boat, I'm happy. He is already making wood working type plans for the remainder of the eucalyptus tree once it has been felled.

4) The man I telephoned to enquire about ordering a nucleus of bees kept calling me 'young lady' in a delightful Gloucestershire accent.

5) Two year 10 girls stopped me in the corridor today and said, 'Please don't ever leave the school, ma'am - you're the best English teacher we've ever had.' Poor things! I didn't have the heart to tell them...

6) My grand-daughter is lovely. And snuggly. And lovely. And I am so proud of the way Chris and Leane are coping as new parents.

7) I ignored school work planning last night and spent the evening sewing and reading about bees. Bliss!

8) I just had a hot cross bun with butter and it was delicious!

That's all I can muster for today, I'm afraid, because yet again I've had a crap day at work.

But hey! I am trying to end the day on an uncrabby note! I am planning, this evening, to do more sewing, and reading and NOTHING to do with school, and possibly to watch some rubbish TV, but mostly to do reading and sewing.

I hope your day ends with calm and peace and happiness. I hope it is more lobster than crab!

In an English country garden...

Andy has now decided he wants to build a potting shed. This is on the back of the bee-keeping course we attended yesterday.

I shall explain...

The bee-keeping course was very informative. It was a small course of three hours long; a sort of 'we'll tell you a bit about bee-keeping and see if it puts you off the idea altogether, or fires you with enthusiasm to learn more.' It was run by Scott and Geraldine, who have many hives in various situations, and there were 7 attendees, myself and Andy included. And by the end of the session, I was all fired to buy a hive or two on the way home, and see if we could find a stray swarm clinging to a tree somewhere, in need of an enthusiastic custodian. As is my wont.

Andy managed to get us safely home making only one stop to buy some chips, as all that learning makes one very hungry you know.

So this morning we were standing in the pitifully small space we call our back garden, trying to decide the best place to site a couple of hives. We've decided already that two hives is the best way to start. Now, when we moved into our house, five and a half years ago, the back garden seemed small, because it was overgrown with shrubs and dominated by a shed. We dug up all the shrubs and removed the shed. Then the garden seemed much bigger. And then we added a greenhouse, a storage box, a set of wooden garden furniture, a raised bed and a Cluckinghen Palace. And now it seems small again.

'The obvious place would be there,' said Andy, pointing to where the garden furniture is currently situated.

This was true. The area is surrounded by fence and wall, thereby encouraging the bees to take their flight path up and away out of the way as quickly as possible on leaving their hive, thus avoiding things like banging into people's faces. And it is sheltered and catches the early morning sun, thereby encouraging the bees to get up early in the morning and begin the day's work rather than lounging around in their brood box (that's techni-talk, that is), and also staying relatively warm in the winter, thereby avoiding dying.

'But where would we put the garden furniture?' said I.
'There,' said Andy, pointing to its original space under the kitchen window.
That's where I put my seedlings to harden off, I think. But I don't say anything.

'Or we could put one hive there and another there,' said Andy, pointing to the storage box he made from the remnants of the old shed. 'But we'd have to get rid of the box because it is too long, and swap it for a taller, but thinner shed.'
'I see,' I said. 'And the hive would go next to it?'
'Yes,' said Andy.

Things become very complicated when considering the flight paths of bees in relation to the siting of hives. Especially when space is a squeeze and you don't want them pooping on your washing. If you have more than one hive (which is advisable as a pre-emptive measure to deal with potential swarming), you have to off-set each entrance so the bees develop their own flight paths and don't end up getting confused and going home to the wrong pad. And so they don't bump heads and get angry and end up stinging someone (probably me).

Hence Andy heading for Google to do an intensive search into sheds, and then deciding he might like to build his own shed. And then getting diverted to Amazon to look for a book on how to build a shed.

'You've got a carpentry book,' I said. 'It might have shed building instructions in there.'
'I do not,' said Andy.
'You do,' I said. 'I saw you reading it once.'
'I don't remember,' said Andy. 'Are you sure?'
'Positive,' I said.
'Well, I don't remember having a carpentry book,' said Andy. And this is his subtle way of saying, 'I probably have got such a book somewhere in amongst the gazillions of books in this house, but if I deny its existence for long enough, Denise will get furious and go and find it.'

Which is what happened. Except Andy realised (as I was trying to mark some stupid exam papers at the time) that I was probably slightly more furious than usual and so he'd better make an effort to find said book himself. Which he did.

'Are you sure this is my book?' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'And not your book?'
'Why would I want a book on carpentry?' I said.
'Perhaps you bought it for Chris?' said Andy.
'No, I did not,' I said, because I know bloomin' well I didn't.
'Or perhaps it belonged to your Dad?' persisted Andy.
'My Dad was a Master Carpenter and Builder of 40 years, apprenticed from the age of 15. Why on earth would he want the 'Reader's Digest Companion to Simple Carpentry Projects?' I screeched, I mean said.

At this point, Andy sensibly retreated to his Google search for plans to build one's own potting shed, and I returned, huffing, to my exam paper marking. Which, in my defence, is enough to put anyone in a bad mood.

So there we are. And to add to the issues, we need to get the eucalyptus tree cut down before the hives are sited because the only exit from back garden to front drive with bits of massacred tree will be passed one of the potential hive sites, and although I am now a member of the British Bee Keeper Association (or BBKA) and have public liability and death of bee colony insurance, I don't want to alarm the neighbours by having an anaphylactic tree surgeon writhing in agony from multiple bee stings on the driveway.

Tidying up the loose ends

I feel this week needs tidying up and packing away. Preferably in a drawer with a hefty lock upon 't, and a warning on the outside saying 'ON NO ACCOUNT OPEN THIS DRAWER, THEREIN LIES A BLOOMIN' AWFUL WEEK, TIDIED AWAY FOR POSTERITY (AND A WARNING TO OTHERS ABOUT THE DANGERS OF TEACHING.)

So, I had ANOTHER lesson observation by the Witch Finder General; this time though, she got short shrift from me when she interrupted my lunch break (ha! there's a laugh in itself - class full of Year 10 girls wanting assistance with their Of Mice and Men coursework - 'So, Lennie's a bit of a div, is he?' 'No, I think the better term would be that he has learning difficulties.)

'So,' said the Witch Finder General, 'do you think those two little girls sitting near the back in your lesson would have made better progress if you'd put them to work with other partners?'
'No,' I said.
'Oh,' said she. 'Why?'
'Because they would have sulked,' I said. 'I find it better to let them work who they want to work with rather than who I want them to work with.'
'Oh, but it's all training isn't it?' said WFG.
'I don't have time to do training,' I said. 'I am under pressure to squeeze ANOTHER assessment out of them by the middle of next week. I don't need them wasting time by sulking.'
'Do you think you could try moving them?' persisted WFG (because she just wasn't getting the subtle undertones of my looking daggers scowl).
'No,' I said.
'Do you think they would do better in their assessment if they worked with different partners?' she said.
'No,' I said.

And with that, the WFG gave me a bit of a look, stood up and shot out of my classroom like a cat with its tail on fire. I don't think she liked my rejection of her stupid ideas. I don't care. The first time she did a lesson observation on me, her 'feedback' reduced me to tears. This time, I stood up and did a little in-yer-face victory dance.

The Year 10 girls were very impressed. With my dance. The whole experience was very grown up.

And today I had a fab afternoon playing murder role plays with my Year Sevens. I see my Year Sevens every day. We are getting to know each other very well and they give me no aggravation. Well, relatively little. Fraser still tends to poke me in the arm when he wants my attention. Fraser has ADHD if you believe in such things. He is 12, but you'd think he was 8.

'Please don't poke me, Fraser,' I said, when once again I found myself on the end of a persistent prod or three.
'Am I getting in your personal body space, ma'am,' said Fraser.
'Yes,' I said. Fraser and I have had more than one conversation vis a vis watching personal body space, especially mine.
'Sorry, ma'am,' said Fraser (and bear in mind this conversation was held with him whizzing around like a loon.)

He isn't sorry though. I suspect he'll keep on prodding people until the day when someone prods him back with the sharp end of their fist in his face. But that won't be me.

And since about 11 this morning, when I remembered that we are going on a bee-keeping course tomorrow, I have been feeling very excited about bees. I met a bee on my walk home, in fact, when I was dawdling and admiring the new buds on the hedges and trees. An enormous bumble bee (which would be a pregnant female at this time of year), flew across my path and disappeared into a pile of old leaves, presumably looking for a place to lay her eggs.

So, let's shut the drawer, shall we?

Mind your fingers!

Chicken Psychology

'What's up with her, then?' says Mrs Slocombe, who, now the Spring sap is rising, is once more on a mission to goose as many feathers from the Miggins and Pumphrey bottoms as she can.
'Who her?' says Mrs Miggins. 'And can I say that if you do that again, I shall doink you on the head. It's still too cold to be going commando in the nethers.'

Mrs Slocombe makes a last peck at Mrs Miggins' fluffage and dashes for the North Wing gardens of Cluckinghen Palace where she continues to conduct the conversation through a megaphone.

'HER INDOORS,' she shouts. 'WITH THE WELLIES AND THE INTERESTING RANGE OF KNITWEAR.'
'Oh...her?' says Mrs Miggins. 'Well, I think in human parlance she's having what's called a 'mid-life crisis.'
'WHAT'S THAT THEN?' shouts Mrs S.
'It's a time in one's life when one takes stock of life already passed and life to come and realises that one is half way through one's allotted time and one is not sure what to do with it,' says Miggins.
'BUT SHE MIGHT BE MORE THAT HALF WAY THROUGH HER LIFE,' shouts Mrs S.
'Don't say that,' says Mrs Miggins. 'You'll throw her into an even worse mood, and you know she'll only be out flinging more white cabbage at us if that happens.'
'BUT WE HAVEN'T FINISHED THE LAST LOT YET,' says Mrs Slocombe.
'Tell me about it,' sighs Miggins. 'There's only so much cabbage a hen of my age can cope with before consequences start occuring.'

Mrs Pumphrey emerges from the kitchen door. She is arrayed in her Madame Arcati outfit, except the hat is new, the last having been sat upon by a particularly hefty poltergeist.

'How is she?' says Mrs Miggins.

Mrs Pumphrey sighs, and arranges her oriental silk house coat in artful folds.

'Well, she was all right until we drew the 'Chicken of the Golden Bell,' she says.
'The Chicken of the Golden Bell?' says Mrs Miggins. 'But I thought that was supposed to be lucky?'
'It is,' says Mrs Pumphrey, 'but not when it follows the Cock of Doom.'
'Oh blimey,' says Mrs Miggins.
'Indeed,' says Mrs Pumphrey.
'DID SHE SAY THE COCK OF DOOM?' shouts Mrs Slocombe from the other end of the garden.
'Yes,' says Mrs Miggins.
'Why is she down there shouting up here?' says Mrs Pumphrey.
'Oh, ignore her,' says Miggo. 'Too many feathers in her brain, that's all. Now tell me, what else did the cards show?'
'I'm afraid I cannot divulge such personal information about my clients,' sniffs Mrs Pumphrey.
'Bag of Monster Munch and copy of Hens At Home, April issue?' says Miggins.
'Pickled onion flavour?' says Mrs Pumphrey.
'Whatever, ' says Mrs Miggins.
'There seems to be a period of transition arising in her fifth zenith of the emerging corn,' says Mrs Pumphrey.
'Meaning?' says Mrs Miggins, who, as you know, cannot be doing with all this esoteric techno-talk.
'Meaning,' says Mrs Pumphrey, 'that she is very hacked off at the mo and is seeking a new pathway.'
'This one is a bit muddy,' agrees Mrs Miggins, giving the ground an experimental stomp.
'WHAT'S GOING ON?' shouts Mrs Slocombe. 'WHY ARE YOU BOTH WHISPERING?'

Mrs Pumphrey sighs. This always happens when she tries to explain the hidden mysteries of life to those who still think it's funny to dress up in a bed sheet and jump out off the airing cupboard shouting 'BOO!'

'There comes a time in a person's life,' she begins, with all the patience she can muster, 'when you realise life is but a fleeting breath of existence that all too easily can be snuffed out with the stop of a heartbeat.'
'OR A DOUBLE DECKER BUS DOING 40 MILES AN HOUR,' shouts Mrs S.
'SHUT UP!!' shouts back Mrs Miggins, who unlike Pumphrey, doesn't mind telling it how it is.

'And when that time happens,' comtinues Mrs Pumphrey because she is stoical like that, 'things that seemed important are no more so, and you start to feel infinitely less tolerant at the rubbish people, especially educational advisors, throw at you.'
'I see,' says Mrs Miggins, because she didn't like to admit defeat on the cognitive learning front at this point. 'So what does that mean? New job?'
'In a nutshell,' nods Mrs Pumphrey.
'NUTS?' shouts Mrs Slocombe. 'WHO'S NUTS?'

Mrs Miggins looks at Mrs Pumphrey.

'Shall you tell her, or shall I?' she says.

Hide and Peace

There is peace missing from my life. I didn't realise how much I valued peace until it went missing. Last year, when I was writing, I had peace. Little pockets of it, punctuating my day. Little drifts of quiet when there was me and calm, and calm and me. And a cat maybe, passing through on their way to partake of the food bowl, or to bring me an offering of a half-chewed cat toy, or a scrunched up paper ball.

And now, peace has gone.

Sometimes I try and find it. I get up with the sun, but this is mostly to let the chickens out of their pod before their clucking reaches a dawn crescendo greater than that provided by the garden birds and the neighbours start huffin' and puffin' about 'er next door with 'er bloomin' Good Life ways.' But even then the early morning peace is tainted with the anticipation of the day of teaching that lies ahead of me. Fretting about my horrendous Year 8 group, who form part of the Headteachers 'innovative teaching plan,' but which leaves me drained, exhausted, often tearful and frustrated, because the psychological and physical effort of teaching a class of 29 children, 25 of whom have emotional, behavioural and learning difficulties, each and every day is too much for me. They defeat me, these children. They are driving me from the job.

'Take one day at a time,' senior management tell me.
'What, until I have a nervous breakdown?' I say.
'Ahahahahahaha!' they say.

They don't realise I am serious. I think they do not care, as long as they have a baby sitter for their innovative experiment.

So it's goodbye to teaching, I'm afraid. An inauspicious end to an inauspicious career.

Which leaves me job hunting again.

Is it possible to find a way of work that incorporates peace?

We're going bee-keeping at the weekend. You have to be peaceful to be a bee-keeper. Baking is a peaceful activity. So is gardening.

But it's oh so frustrating, being middle-aged, half way through one's life, and STILL not knowing where you are supposed to be going with your life. I can find peace in writing, but I've learnt that writing won't pay the bills.

Shall I consult my Tarot cards? Have I told you I used to read Tarot? I even earned some money through this during my early post-divorce years when I was a single parent. But it's not a peaceful job. People can be very demanding, especially when you fail to predict the next day delivery of their Prince Charming or the imminent arrival of a massive Lottery win. I haven't read for myself for a long while now. If I can find a quiet and peaceful hour or so, I'll give it a go and maybe some divine inspiration will come my way.

Today's blog was brought to you by Comfort Eaters R Me, fuelled by junk food purchased on way home because I was too tired to cook properly, having spent 2 hours after school today trying to catch up with my marking.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as I get my sense of humour back.

Sometime around the Easter holidays...

Landscape Gardening

Recently, I have been ploughing my way through a series of books written by Monty Don, the gardening man. I do this; I find a person I would like to find out more about (last year it was Hugh F-W) and then I buy all associated books on said person, mostly in search of inspiration.

And I have to say that Monty Don has been, thus far, inspirational. So much so in fact, that today I had a go at a piece of landscape gardening.

Now, you need to have in mind that the words 'landscape gardening' can cover a wide variety of architectural features within a garden. I thought I'd hang fire on the wall building, pergola construction, water feature of a miniature Niagara Falls plummenting 'neath an oriental bridge etc etc, and base my efforts around six bags of shiny white gravel and four rather lovely blue shiny pots in various sizes. And some pansies and violas. (I was looking for primulas and primroses but they can't be had for love nor money at the mo - well, not in Homebase anyway; I believe I may have missed the window of opportunity vis a vis primulas.)

Anyway, back home I got out my hook 'n' hoe hand tool. It's brill! Everyone should have one. It can even double up as a prop should one ever find oneself playing Captain Hook in a Christmas Pantomime. Basically, it is a hand held gardening implement with a hoe on one side and hook on the other (but you probably guessed that anyway.) And then I set about weeding the gravelly area just outside our front door, to the left hand side. You start off hacking at weeds with the hook, which brings up most of them, and then, if some weeds prove a little reluctant to leave their bed, you can flip the tool over and hack at them with the hoe bit. Either way, you end up with a weed-free space and an enormous release of any pent up anger.

And then, in a terribly artful way, Andy tipped the bags of lovely shiny white gravel onto the weed free area and I, also in a terribly artful way, spread the gravel out to form a lovely shiny white gravel bed on which to place, in an artful way, the four shiny blue pots.

I said, 'I expect all the local cats will use this as a toilet.'
'Yes,' said Andy. 'But at least you'll be able to see it to clear it up.'

And this is where the art of landscape gardening skill came into play; for at the garden centre there was also choice of shiny green gravel and shiny orangey-yellow gravel, and when I was making my colour choice I thought, 'better not choose the green or orangey-yellow option. I won't stand a snowball's chance of seeing cat poo against that.'

You see! Inspiration in action!!

Anyway, I potted up the pansies and violas in an artistic way. I also found an embryonic lupin from last year, still in its pot and throwing up this year's growth, so that got planted, too.

And then I arranged the pots on the gravel and stood back and admired.

Our friend Jean paid a flying visit, to drop off a card and present for new parents, Chris and Leane.
'I like what you've done to your front garden,' she said.

And when Heather came home from work, she said, 'I like the way the shiny blueness of the pots has been complemented by the shiny whiteness of the gravel.'

Job done!

Poor Andy and Driving in My Car

Andy has been afflicted with a bug. One of those winter vomiting norovirus jobbies. He actually had a day off work yesterday which is only the second day he's been off sick in the eight and a bit years I've known him. And the other time was when he got bitten by a dog and he was operating the next day (Andy, not the dog; that would be stupid) and couldn't because his hand was all done up in bandages like the Mummy's Revenge.

So because Andy was confined to barracks yesterday, I got to take the car to work. I said, 'I'll take the car and pop into Sainsbugs on the way home and pick up some shopping.'

'Bleuch,' said Andy, or words to that effect.

Anyway, I left him to sleep, and drove to work.

At this point I need to tell you about my relationship with driving. I actually learnt the basics when I was 14 in an old transit van that my brother and I used to bomb around the farm in. We were allowed to take the van up the fruit fields during the summer and collect the raspberries, gooseberries, blackberries and redcurrants that had been picked during the day, and bring them back to the packhouse to be weighed and prepared for market. Of course, we never managed to get beyond second or third gear, but it was all practice and we tried our best not to send trays of fruit ricocheting hither and thither.

And about the same time our Mum became a driving instructor. So we also got to practise changing gear and working clutches and brakes using the dual controls in her driving school car, albeit back to front from the passenger seat. As Mum drove along she would shout, 'NOW!' and we got to depress the clutch and change gear.

Then, as soon as I was 17, Mum took me out every evening for a driving lesson. I learnt to drive in the dark, being a November baby. And seven months and three diving tests later, I earned my full licence and was presented with a clapped out Mini 850 which managed to blow its head gasket on its first trip out. (I also have embarrassing memories of being overtaken in that Mini by a group of cyclists when negotiating a particularly steep hill and forgetting to change down gear soon after passing my test.)

After that it was a black Mini Metro which I bought (without taking for a test drive) purely on the basis that it was black. And then there was yellow Astra estate which I hated with all my heart, a blue Rover 400 which took to cutting out at 40 + miles per hour due to some weird electrical fault, then a brand new Toyota Corolla (white) which was fab. Chris was 7 years old when I had that car; the first time I took him and Heather out for a drive in it, he managed to vomit most of his Weetabix breakfast up on the back seat.

Then came my divorce and I swapped the Corolla for a metallic blue Fiat Bravo, purely because it was metallic blue and the ex-husband said one must NEVER buy a car with metallic paint. I think I also went a bit mad with red shoes at the same time for much the same reason.

The Fiat was eventually traded in to get money to buy the Eglu and the chickens. We had a Citroen Picasso by then, and we still have, and at 6 years old it is starting to show signs of strain but has been a darned good motor especially since we became allotmenteers and have needed a substantial vehicle in which to transport vast quantities of veg, seedlings and manure.

And all through the 27 years of my driving career, I have hated every moment of driving. I drive because I can and because I sometimes need to get from A to B. I don't understand people who say, 'Oooh, I love driving, me.' I don't understand people who say, 'Let's go out for a drive, just for the sheer hell of it. ' My Dad was a great one for doing this, but then he loved cars.

But yesterday, when poor Andy was being poorly, and I had the car, I quite enjoyed pootling through town and stopping off for a spot of shopping. P'raps it's time to get a little runaround, I thought.

Or perhaps I just enjoyed coming home from work without being rained on for once.