Thursday, May 28, 2009

Silly people



At this time of year I’m mired in marking Higher English, our university-entrance level English exam. 210 scripts from all over Scotland sit on our dining room table. I do not have time to blog. Or garden. Meanwhile the weeds sprout liberally in the balmy air.

I’ve also been editing the church magazine and adding some little pictures here and there. They were in colour on my screen, so I printed them out to see what they’d look like in the magazine in black and white. It didn’t occur to me that since my printer is a colour one, this wouldn’t help much. (Should this woman be allowed to mark the nation’s children’s exams?)

A man at the exam board rang me up at work today to ask me to do an extra 13 scripts. My mind said “NO!” and I heard my voice saying “Yes”. Stupid voice.

“Where do you want to collect them?” asked the chap.


“At the parcel depot in – I think it’s in a street called Bankhead Crossway,” I said.

There was a pause while the chap consulted his list of depots. “Ah,” he said triumphantly, “that would be the postal depot in Russell Road.”

??

Must return to my toil. I’ll be reading you all at lunch times but won’t have time to comment much for the next two-and-a-bit weeks. Groan.

(In response to comments: yes, the shrub is a ceanothus. It's a wonderful blue, isn't it? I can see it from my position at the kitchen table as I plough through the scripts. Except that I'm not supposed to be looking out of the window, of course.)

10 comments:

  1. Oh, horrors.
    the thing is trying to maintain focus...I find I can only do about six at a time, after that I find myself daydreaming and making things up in my head whilst maintaining the pose...

    I have all my marking waiting for me. I'm not looking forward to it AT ALL.

    I used to have that lovely shrub in my backyard, but sadly it never really flourished. Cyanothus (?) Pacific blue: not the sort of thing I would have expected to be blooning away there in Edinburgh, but there you are, what would I know?

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  2. NO is such a wonderful and underutilized word.

    Hang in there.

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  3. Good Luck Isabelle. Just think of the get-away reward waiting on the other end of all your work. Hopefully we'll have a few howlers from your experience???

    Those blue flowers are beautiful -- just what I would picture to bloom in the garden of a lover of blue!

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  4. Happy marking - hope all the papers are brilliant and the sort which bring tears of joy to a teacher/examiner's eyes.

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  5. That plant looks like ceanothus to me? Am I right? I've loved that since I was a child.

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  6. Have Fun Marking papers I will be thinking of you. I love the blue flowers.
    Hugs Mary.

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  7. I could never plough through so many papers. Probably that is one more reason why I could never have become a teacher!

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  8. Ceanothus always reminds me of licorice allsorts - the blue bobbly ones.

    Poor you, marking away in such lovely weather. Hope you get out into the garden every now and then?

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  9. You made me laugh with your colour printer mistake! Good luck with the marking.

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  10. You poor thing, and the Edinburgh weather is doing its level best to taunt you too! I'll think about you and your scripts as I pull bits of velcro off sweaty people's legs all day. I'm off to marshall at the Marathon. See, it could be worse, you could be running 26 miles before lunchtime!

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