Diets and Boilers and Another Blog

Word Verification of the Day: Gully - like, or appertaining to, a gull e.g 'That pigeon looks very gully.'

'Doesn't 'gully' mean, 'a channel cut by deep running water?' says Mrs Pumphrey who is consulting her large edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

'Don't spoil my game,' I say.

'She just dropped that on my foot,' says Mrs Slocombe, who is hopping in pain and not Irish dancing, as I thought.

Anyway, this week I have discovered a new diet. It's called 'The Academy Diet.' Basically, the school you work in becomes an Academy and reduces its lunchtime to half an hour. By the time you've cleared up after pre-lunch class, and set up for post-lunch class, and dashed to the loo which is as far away from your classroom as you can possibly get, and been waylaid on the way by students wanting you to explain the homework AGAIN, or a member of staff wanting to know if you could possibly complete the data to do with the number of students who arrive at class every second Wednesday without a pencil, then there is simply no time left to eat.

As a consequence, I have this week lost three pounds.

So, that's 39 school weeks x 3lbs a week = 117lbs = 8st 5lbs lost = by next July I shall dead.

And whilst we are crunching numbers, the boiler man came to mend the boiler this week. In the blue corner was Andy - 'We'll have to have a new boiler. It'll cost a fortune.' In the red corner was me - 'It'll be a little gizmo that'll cost a few quid.'

And the winner was - ME!!!

The gizmo switch thingummy doo-dah was indeed a few pounds. The plumber, Matthew, was in the house for about half an hour and the bill came to £40! The plumber said that given its age, the boiler was doing well and had a few years left in her left yet. ('Was he talking about the boiler or was he talking about you?' says Mrs Slocombe. 'How rude,' I say.) We like the plumber. When the boiler does need replacing, Matthew will be our man.

Last week I set up a blog for my English Literature A level students. I've got a small group - seven girls and one boy - and they've got off to a flying start. I said, 'I'm going to set up a discussion and research blog for you. What do you want to call it?'

And after much deliberation, they decided 'Lit Geeks' was a good name. Hmmm...well, better than 'George and Lennie' which was one of the other short-listed runners. So I set up another e-mail account for them to use, used the new account to set up another blog, gave them completely the wrong log-in details on Monday, gave them the right log-in details on Tuesday using the excuse of a mush-for-brains moment, and they have taken their first steps into the land that is 'Blog.'

It may be a runaway success. It may fizzle like a...like a...well, like a teacher on the Academy diet. But you have to try these things. Sometimes trying things works. And sometimes it doesn't.

That's life.