Every day on the way to work I pass a blue plaque on a mock tudor block of flats proclaiming that Amy Johnson (aviator) lived here.

I am not the worlds biggest expert on Amy Johnson (aviator), although I have heard of her and dimly recall seeing her smiling face in one of my history text books. But I feel like I understand her because as the bus goes around the corner of her building you realise that you are on a hill and below you is the North… there is so much sky, and London has so little. Probably when Amy (first name terms now) lived in this flat the view was better and greener still.

If I was a girl obsessed with flying then Amy Johnsons flat, despite its mock tudor facade, would be exactly where I want to be.

…and I think of her every morning, looking to the sky, filled with excitement and hope. Becoming determined to show the world how strong a woman could be as she gazed out of her window. She would watch the birds and the clouds and mentally break back the boundaries of her day. Amy would have been one of my friends.

Amy Johnson died in 1941 ferrying an RAF plane from one side of the country to another. The sky claimed her as she flew for her country, which I think – knowing her as I do, is exactly what she would have wanted.

They have salted the playground of my school… It’s bad enough that my boys have nowhere to run compared to my childhoods acres of field, but now they can’t even wound each other in the head with rock hard snowballs filled with glass (or was that just in Liverpool?). Still, my year 7 boys inform me that it won’t snow anyway.

 I’ve been getting all muddled up with freedom of speech and choice recently. A number of events of significance have happened around me… from a boy graffitiing my classrrom with a desire to kill a particular sector of society, to Mr Balir stopping me from enjoying a life destroying fag in a pub to long political disussions with the 6th form about Holocaust denial and satirical cartoons… It seems that my sheltered life is opening and narrowing all at the same time… A slightly painful process to all accounts.

Now off to patrol the corridors.

More freedom denied, for peoples own good.

Naturally

The boy and I made a big mistake last night and let my kitten sleep with us.

He is worse that a baby (the cat that is)… crying, burrowing, licking my hair, kicking things… Eventually the boy lost the will to live and carried the little shit downstairs ‘wahing’ all the way (the cat that is).

Add to this the fact that we had just been out for wine and curry and I am not a happy teacher today!!

HOWEVER… on the plus side… one of my lessons has just been cancelled and the 6th form aren’t in on Monday…

Happy days.

After a week of entertaining and cuddling, and making things and not doing any work (ha). I’m back in my grotty staff room after inflicting a test on my history boys.

…and I have to face the fact that it is 7 weeks until my next break. 7 WEEKS!! Thats 35 days, about 165 lessons… Shoot me. Go on. Just shoot me!

I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to put your holiday pictures into a beautifully sticky, gluey, decorated page!!

Cornwall was fattening and valentines day was soppy. I think that is just about all you have missed…

I have a new obsession  – slightly embarassing for a girl who could spend weekends off her head on champagne… still life is a rich tapestry… and I’m sure that card making and scap booking are just as noble as pursuits…

When did I get so grown up??

4 lessons to go until half term. 1 year 9, 1 year 8 and two sixth form…

I can almost smell it.

I can’t wait to go to bed and sleep and sleep and sleep…

Oh yes, and go to Cornwall with the boy and friends too I guess…!

I was just jumped on in the corridor by three 11 year old boys asking if I could be their history teacher because they had heard I was really good. They told me that ‘everybody’ said that I was a really good teacher and a proper history expert. They told me that they had heard I ‘even’ taught the sixth form and that I knew about politics.

I explained that I couldn’t teach them because of my time-table, and I only had one year 7 class, but maybe I could teach them next year. They said that they wouldn’t be lucky enough for that but they were keeping their fingers crossed.

I’ve had a shitty day today and this was possibly the nicest thing that has ever happened to me. Ever.

…it’s probably because my year 7’s spent two weeks making real cardboard seige weapons to storm the cardboard castle the boy made me and then we all had a big fight…!

The maths teacher at my school believes that women who are beten up by their partners are weak for leaving them and should be punished because the divorce will mess up their children. I’m sure that watching their mother (or father) being beaten daily will have no such effect!

Agggghhh – why are there so many small minded people in this world, incapable of empathising and putting themselves in another persons shoes…?

Perhaps we are all stretched to the limit of our empathy though. After all when mankind evolved/ was created he was only supposed to have to deal with the suffering he saw around him, that he could relate to and was part of… Now we are bombarded by messages and disasters and hatred from every angle. We can see the world everyday and the suffering within it. I’m a huge believer of freedom of speech, expression and of course of the technology I mention… but maybe its too much for some people to ever accept the views of other people in the world…. and now, of course, they can’t even pretend that they don’t exist!!

When I got home yesterday I went straight to bed. I ate my supper in bed, played with the cat in bed, had a glass of wine in bed and it was lovely.

I got up about 8ish to greet my flatmate and make a cup of tea and then wound myself round the sofa watching a programme about a man who weighed half a tonne (all through hormones – not food he claimed!! As my mother used to say… you don’t get obese people where there is famine now do you? Perhaps they all have high metabolisms though…). I was really supposed to plan todays lessons and prepare for tonights parents evening, but honestly I couldn’t raise my game. So I decided it made more sense to get up at 6 and come to school early… for a 12 hour day.

Curse my lazy ass, I’ve never been so reluctant to wake up in my life. And now I blog, rather than plan and mark.

Fool.