It takes two to mango
On Friday Witho and I had the cheek to order poppadoms and chutneys with our delivery of curry. Of course the people who had to put up with our audacity in this respect simply ignored the outrageous claim. Then when I phoned and asked where they were and could they send them round they tried to fob me off with a twenty percent discount next time but either we would have to go without this time or we would have to go round and get them from the curry house. After all we had just ordered it for delivery so we were clearly very keen on going out to pick up errant curry-based products at the time and definitely not on eating them either there or then, because that would have been just plain ridiculous. After all, who wants to eat poppadoms without chutneys? Service, schmervice, that is what I say. So, like goons, we rushed down to the curry house to get them. I really wanted to give them a piece of my mind (though obviously not my chutneys, what with not having any and all that) but held back. After all I wouldn't want to promise to withhold our future custom from a curry house we had not yet sampled. Just as well, as it was actually quite nice, if a touch cooler than we wanted when we actually got back to our rapidly cooling poppadoms. So, if that was the question these so called curry service providers were asking...
...this was the answer!
Witho and I decided that some emergency chutney would be in order. Yee-hah!
Can you tell what it is yet? I wish I could tell you whether you are right or not but answers on a postcard to....
Results day for A-levels
It was results day for A-levels today and I was in the unusual position of not being able to see the people whose results I really wanted to know as I am in Taunton now and they are in Bexley. All I know is that I am glad they did well. Most of them texted me today, so I know that they are going to be able to do what they want to do. I actually got double today, well partly last night because a mate at Bexley sent them to me, whenI got to peer at the Taunton results too, which was the first experience I have had of most of the pupils I will be teaching this year. The thing that winds me up is the annual bullshit of the news either whining about the results being too bad or, mostly, complaining that standards are falling because more people are getting better results. Can we ever win? Bastards! Isn't it time the wanker journalists got judged like we do? Would the government kindly leave education alone and stop playing with it? I would vote tomorrow for a government which left education alone for five years.
It seems to have become more and more the case that kids go into school to get their results with their friends and it's a big deal. I got mine by post and my Mum cycled round to the place where I was doing my work experience, reroofing a house in Urmston and nobody made a big deal about it. Is this all part of the same process as the one in the national news on a smaller scale, all part of the build them up and knock them down cycle? I certainly don't remember journalists coming to school to take pictures of the most successful pupils when I was there or seeing such pictures. Then again, I suppose we make it easier for the journalists by publicising the pupils to them.
...and finally, I have been listening to Alice in Hell by Annihilator, one of the CDs I bought with the very small amount I made by selling the vast majority of my two hundred slices of vinyl. Good old evil!
A tale of two evils
What an idiot I am - I start a programme of a bit of music per day for the blog and promptly don't listen to any for a few days. D'oh! Anyway today's effort relates to an argument a couple of mates and I were recently having at a barbecue about which of Slayer's Reign in Blood and South of Heaven is the best. I used to think that South of Heaven was the best and that Reign in Blood was just a row, but now I am convinced that it is a masterpiece, better even than South of Heaven. Anyway, J agreed with me and S believed what I used to think. That album rules, not a wasted note on it. Yee-hah! I have just been listening to RIB today - may give SOH a go tomorrow.
A film today but no music
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which we went to see in Wellngton at a very large but old and non-multiplicious cinema. I think we'll be going back - it was very nice. A beautifully shot, weird film in which Carrey and Winslet were good, especially Carrey who was not the parody of himself he has been for most of his career and was surprisingly good in this seriousish role.
Finding new mistakes from which to learn
One of my Dad's favourite sayings was that you should learn from your own mistakes. With this in mind, I wanted to learn from the mistakes I made when I last moved. When I moved to my previous school I did it all in a mess at the end of the school holidays, moving out of rented accommodation into the flat I had bought in South East London. Little did I know that I would not actually get into that flat till mid-October. Fortunately I had an aunt who had a flat in Catford which she was happy for me to stay in and from where I could easily get to my school . That meant that those six weeks felt very unsettled because of the living-out-of-box-ness of it all and I felt largely unprepared for the job I was going to be starting.
I wanted things to be different this time, which was why I really wanted this job to be different and to be here nice and early. That is how it is and I feel like I will already know the area relatively well by the time I start work at the start of September. What I hadn't allowed for is that fact that I don't really know anyone here and will not have much in the way of ties until I do start work, leaving me feeling a bit out on a limb here, a feeling which is not helped by the fact that we are likely to be moving again in a relatively short space of time when we find somewhere we want to buy. I suppose we asked for that but it does mean that we didn't have to add to the stress of selling my flat by buying another one and somehow trying to coordinate that so the dates met up. It also means that we will have no chain when we come to buy, so it's going to be worth it, but there's this slight disadvantage to it. What experiences have you had of moving house?
In a new series, I am going to name two things I have listened to recently, though in future it will probably be just one if I can be bothered enough to do it every day. I have been listening to Keeper of the Seven Keys Part One by Helloween, which was largely because K's wedding featured the pant-wettingly funny playing of a fifteen year old tape of him singing I'm Alive from that album, including him sort of singing along with the guitar solos. It was so funny because it is exactly the sort of thing I do and so far I believe there is no evidence of it. Phew! I would die! I have also just started arranging to get rid of my record collection and in the course of it I found a copy of a CD by Return to Forever for which I had been looking for ages. The main reason for that is the playing of Al di Meola, who I reckon is about the second best guitarist in the entire world behind Joe Satriani. While I have only just started with Return to Forever and can't judge it fairly, di Meola's Electric Rendez-vous is a masterpiece and any guitar listener should own it.
Aren't I a clever boy?
One year ago today
I started going out with Witho a year ago today. A year well spent and living together is far better than having to put up with endless travelling and horrid Sunday nights. I love you, Witho!
Holidays
I've not been here for a bit but life has been busy and I have chosen to do other things. In the time since I last posted I have
- moved out of the Mound (see moblog for evidence)
- moved into a rented place in Taunton
- gone on holiday to sunny Manchester
It made me realise that since this time last year I have hardly stopped, what with catching up on stuff for OFSTED, which started at the beginning of the holidays last summer, OFSTED itself in October and the evil ploys of the dynamic leadership (OFSTED's words not mine) of the school to make us push on even harder after OFSTED, not to mention meeting Witho and realising that my career was not the most important thing in my life and all the various moves and upheavals dictated by the decisions we made to get together and more together.
So that is why I have not done much recently - I am having a real break from work for a bit before next week comes and I start working out how little I have done for this new job. What have you all been up to in the last two weeks? Just name two things or more or less, depending on whether you can be bothered or not.
