168. What I did in my summer holidays…
1. This summer, I wittered on a bit…
“I’ve got this clear memory of being at school – it must have been more than 65 years ago – and our teacher said something about Parkinson’s. I went home and asked my mum what it was. She frowned a little, then told me it was a brand of cigarettes. So when the teacher asked the next day what we remembered about Parkinson’s…”
There is a chortle across the room from the thirty-odd Rotarians who are listening to Colin thanking me for my first ‘after-lunch’ speech. They seem an affable bunch of chaps – they are all chaps, so just me and the waitress holding up the distaff side of things. Which is a slightly strange experience, vaguely reminiscent of taking Physics A Level.
167. Blue, blue, my Elsan’s blue…
“Is Mrs Vestibule coming to camp?” asks an Elfin, over the washing-up.
I’m at the other end of the trestle tables, in arm to arm combat with a hefty pan which is coated with industrial quantities of baked bean sauce. So the question is picked up by Brian’s mate, Graham, who has taken a week’s leave from pen-pushing at the Civic Centre to be here, washing dishes in a cold, wet field with the Woodcraft Folk.
“No, she’s afraid of camping.” The entire rota group stops to gawp at this news. As does Sheila.
157. I know a bank where the wild thyme blows…
Or, at least, I know a girl who does. 
Rebecca also shows us Stone Pines – the source of pine-nuts, for the making of the besto pesto; a strawberry tree whose fruits are allegedly so disgusting that the Italian name translates as ‘eat once’; and a herb which smells intriguingly of curry.
156. We’re going to hunt focaccia …
We’re going to hunt focaccia
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127. Lemons under the sun…
The situation was ripe 
for murder. A dozen or so disparate individuals, randomly drawn together in a foreign hotel, under the cover of being on a Walking Holiday around the Sorrento peninsular. There seemed little chance that we would all survive the week.
126. Nervous? Yes. First time? No, I’ve been nervous lots of times…
To begin at the end.
We landed at Stansted in the early hours and finally tottered through our front door at about two thirty this morning.
I’m a very poor flier, as you know, and was in a horrible panic all the way out to Naples, despite my valiant attempts to ‘man up’. Coming home was much better, partly due to the application of a large glass of red wine just before embarkation, but mostly because, by keeping my eyes fixed on a book, I managed to fool myself into believing that I was actually on a train.
118. The Final Countdown…
I’ve got it cornered.
The In-tray
The Still-to-do List is down to one sheet of paper; the accumulated detritus of my years at Thrush Woods has been herded into a corner of the ICT room and sits tamely waiting to be sorted. I’ve found no untaught children stacked away in boxes, so it looks like I’ve got away with it again.
113. And I’d like to thank my hairdresser…
In the sliver of time between waving off the last child for their summer holidays, and coming back for the ‘do’, it occurred to me that I should have prepared a speech.
Last time I left Thrush Woods, I’d given quite a lot of thought to what I was going to say. A neat little speech at the Leavers’ Service in the afternoon. The last eight years have been very special, the school is very special, the staff are very special but I need a new challenge. So long and thanks for all the fish.
110. The Prologue
Don’t expect any sense from me: I barely know which way up I am.
Replacing Wordsworth’s poems last night – don’t be overly impressed, we were looking up a crossword clue – I chanced upon my copy of The Waste Land. It made no sense at A-Level – all those disjointed fragments and random voices – hurry up please, it’s time. However, light has now dawned. Clearly Eliot was also in the process of – or poetically anticipating, if you want to be fussy about the chronology – a jolly eventful retirement do. He, too, was clearly having problems putting one thought in front of another.
103. “Romeo met Juliet by the fish-tank.”
The Marker’s Lament
June brings assessments,
reports, progress data. Where
are the strawberries?
Having a screw loose, Pa needed some bits from Screwfix this week. Instead of just driving down there, he ordered on-line with their Click and Collect service first, thus bagging £1.35 towards a cure, costing him narry a penny. The link to GiveAsYouLive is here.
The Jelly Chronicles 