Am I in the Way?

RANT ALERT!! RANT ALERT!! PLEASE REMAIN BEHIND THE SAFETY BARRIERS; CRASH HELMETS AND EARPLUGS HAVE BEEN PROVIDED FOR YOUR COMFORT AND HEALTH!!!

Excuse me, but am I in the way? I ask this only because whilst I was in the MIDDLE of teaching a Year 7 lesson this morning, a caretaker burst into my classroom wielding a sack barrow, onto which he proceeded to load a filing cabinet, before dragging it noisily from the vicinity, leaving a gaping hole, an old biro, a crisp packet and two dead spiders in its wake.

I stared, the children stared, our books poised mid-air. Casey, who was reading out loud at the time, paused. The caretaker disappeared. I looked at the children, they looked at me. I marched across the classroom, SLAMMED the door. Casey took this as her cue to continue reading.

This has been happening since last Friday. Last Friday, being the day OFSTED were officially off our backs for another three years, all sense of professional decorum flew from the window. I was informed I needed to clear my classroom by THIS Friday, as Modern Foreign Languages were moving onto my territory. 'Empty your cupboards, filing cabinets, shelves and walls,' I was told. 'And your desk. Here are some bin-bags.'

'Where will I be based for the last three days of term?' I asked.

Shrugged shoulders met my question. And, with three days to eviction, I still don't know.

I mean, I know I'm leaving the school. I know I've been there only two terms. But I do have standards, and I intended to maintain them until the last minute. But now I feel like saying 'Sod you all; if I'm in your way, I'll leave NOW shall I?'

I won't, though, because I am practising being Reiki about it all. ('Ha!' says Andy, who has been living with the fall-out for the last few days.) And, to be fair, the two MFL teachers are very embarrassed about the whole thing, feeling that the whole shift around could have waited until the afternoon of the last day when all the kiddiwinks had left for the summer.

RANT ALERT OVER! RANT ALERT OVER!!

I had a haircut at the weekend. A radical haircut. This was following on from Friday, when I got home from work, looked at myself in the mirror and was appalled to discover I had actually walked through town looking like a deranged and sweaty spaniel.
'Chop it all off!' I declared to my hairdresser the next morning, who lives for moments when I say things like that because there is nothing he likes better than giving someone a good cropping.

So Monday, I was met with comments like,' Oooooh, Tinkerbell!!' and 'Love the pixie look!' and 'Very elfin. Nice do!' If I had a pound for every time a child said, 'Have you had a haircut, ma'am?' (talk about stating the obvious), I would have £58. And once I had got over the shock of seeing my cropped reflection every time I passed a mirror/ shop window/ back of a spoon, and convinced myself my head didn't really look like a pea on a drum, I quite like it, too.

Of course, it's done nothing but rain every since. Trust me to miss the heatwave zeitgeist.

We have two pumpkins expanding in the garden. One is the size of a marble. One is the size of a fifty pence piece. On Saturday, the one that is the size of a fifty pence piece was only the size of a marble. I reckon that's doubling its size in 3 days. So by October, when we are destitute because I am not earning and Andy is still part time, at least we shall be able to camp in a pumpkin when the house is repossessed! Heather can have the slightly smaller one.

That's all for today. I am off to cultivate my elfin Tinkerbell look by attempting to shrink by five feet and loose 95% of my total bodyweight.

And please, whatever you do, keep on believing in fairies...