138. And on the pink cards: Downing Street, number ten…
I’ve been invited to take part in other research study.
Long-term readers – those who haven’t left me in a huff because I missed last weekend’s blog – what can I say? – I was in bed a-coughing and a-sneezing and a-feeling vastly sorry for myself – you wouldn’t have wanted to read it, anyway; it was probably infectious – tell you what, I’ll get a note from my Ma who kept sending around lemons – anyway, those readers who are still with me, despite my punctuation and tendency to digress – those readers might remember that last year, I had a very expensive brain scan.
134. Four legs bad…
“So your first task is to design a classroom – something you’ll be doing for real before you know it!”
We glance nervously at each other; the thought of actually having our own classrooms is both awe-inspiring and terrifying in equal measure. Us? Teachers? Cripes!
129. Daisy, Daisy, put some wellie into it…
I’ve told you before about my Great Uncle Stan. Mind, it was two years ago, and you’ve had a lot on, so let me jog your memory.
Great Uncle Stan kept a fruit and veg barrow on the Northcote Road. During the war, he spent a lot of time at my Nan’s; once managing to sleep right through an air-raid and waking up to find himself covered in glass from the shattered window beside him. He had a glass eye which he used to take out at night and put in a jar besides his bed, terrifying my Ma – a child at the time.
Equally terrifying is my memory of him, sitting in the corner of a mental institution in the 1970s. He shook uncontrollably; had no idea who we were; couldn’t communicate. He has Parkinson’s, the nurses told us.
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.
109. In the morning, when I rise…
It used to be the sight of a dalek-shaped hole in a wobbly set which would send me scuttling behind the sofa. Then came the weeping angels; harmless stone while you’re looking at them, but as soon as you look away…
Weeping Angel Copyright BBC
So don’t blink.
96. First, catch your Parkie…
Last Friday, ActorLaddie and I went to a conference organised by the Cure Parkinson’s Trust Conference. The theme was ‘Curing Parkinson’s’, which sounds a pretty good idea to me. Half a dozen experts came from across the globe to explain what is going on at the moment in the way of research.
It was inspirational.
95. How charmingly sweet you sing…
We had our own little Glee Club at Liverpool Street station yesterday evening. A dozen youngsters from the Music and Dance Academy donned Parkinson’s UK t-shirts and sang their hearts out for two hours, bless them, to raise funds for PUK. They could belt it out, those kids; a great attention-grabber even down at the other end of the concourse where I was rattling a bucket.
89. Running through the open door Part 2… this time it’s personal…
The Agricultural Correspondent has been wheeled out again. Just as we get to an exciting bit in the storyline – has Helen Archer finally seen through Rotten Rob? – we are kept on tenterhooks by some bit of farming nonsense. So Tony and David Archer mooch around the cattle market discussing the merits of buying organic suckler cows and we are made to wait for the resolution of the TunaGate affair.
What’s good enough for The Archers is good enough for you lot. So before I tell you what was in the letter from Hammersmith Hospital, I’m going to share some gardening news. If by any chance you didn’t read Wednesday’s blog – number eighty eight – now would be a good time to nip off and do so; otherwise what follows will make no sense. We’ll wait for you by discussing fencing.
88. I see me running through that open door…
I don’t remember anything about the film itself, though of course I have seen Dumbo again since then. The only memory of my first trip to the pictures is Pa trying to hurry me off the double-decker bus while I’m busy being travel sick over the conductor. So perhaps not the magical night he’d intended.
If only I’d had Dumbo’s feather, we could have flown home.
87. Always something there to remind me…
Thursday afternoon saw me tucked away in the non-contact room, ploughing through assessment results. Depressingly, half the children still remain below the class average, despite Mr Gove’s exhortations. I fear for my salary.
Entering results onto a spreadsheet is a mundane job, so I switched on the wireless; partly to drown out the sound of children in the playground – they do keep turning up at school – but also because I knew that Clare Balding was going to be talking to Tom Isaacs as part of her ‘Ramblings’ series on Radio 4.
The Jelly Chronicles 