Deadline Deadhead

Well....we did it! Andy and I worked like mad things on Sunday, and with five and a half hours to go, we completed the Much Malarkey Manual 2012. It has been uploaded to Lulu, copies have been ordered and a discount secured. It was touch 'n' go, and for a week or two we thought we'd have to abandon our publishing project because of stupid things getting in the way, like being a teacher and a vet, but once I had secured the services of Dr Millicent Funderbust to write the Foreword, it was all systems go and we did it!!

After school today, I had to 'tolerate' (and boy did I tolerate) a 'training' session (and I use the word 'training' with a heavy side serving of sarcasm) about...well, actually I don't know what about because the session was delivered by a man who was a cross between David Brent and Alan Partridge (aha!) and I was completely transfixed by the whole idiocy of him and it.

He kept saying things like, 'You need to listen to the little voice inside your head,' and 'you need to develop your identity so it's okay to say that you choose not to feel bad/ sad/ hacked off about things.' And 'You don't have to live by your script.' (What????)

I said that if I got home and found one of my cats had died, then actually, I would want to feel sad. The little voice inside my head said, 'Be a writer, you moron.' It also said, 'how about trying to get a job in a grammar school? That's a good idea.' The other voice inside my head said, 'Don't forget about the mortgage and paying Dave the Plumber for the bathroom.'

My script has gone to Lulu and is currently being printed.

This man was also very egocentric. He had A LOT to say about himself. And he also came across as being very bitter about his first wife. I guess he didn't mean to, but he did. He had issues. That's when he started sounding like Alan Partridge.

And halfway through whatever it was he was talking about, the little voice in my head was saying,' Don't forget you have 44 GCSE mock exams to mark by Friday.'

So I brought the essays home with me, fully intending to cancel something like, well, sleeping tonight in order to get some of them marked. And then I remembered what Alan David Partridge Brent said about having choices and developing the feeling of being comfortable with the choices we make so I made the choice NOT to mark the essays tonight and if they aren't done by Friday it will be fine to say to SMT, 'It's okay, I chose not to mark them by your deadline and I am comfortable with my decision, and I'm allowed to because Alan David Partridge Brent said so.'

What SMT will say I daren't guess.

And as for my identity...well, yes, I AM Dr Millicent Funderbust, but don't tell Andy or he'll claim back my expenses.