Education and sleep and such matters

I don't think I have a lot to say. Life is pleasant enough on the whole but not full of thrills. But here is Grandson, this morning, looking at a German documentary with his dad (who has a degree in German. Discouragingly, though I did school German, the only word in this particular subtitle that I fully understand is "Menschen").

Granddaughter was unimpressed. But cute.

While we were in Wales, Son and Daughter-in-Law were catsitting and Son took a picture of Cassie on our relatively new garden seat. I hadn't thought of the sides as being a handy ladder, but she clearly does.

I had a dream last night which I remembered far more vividly than usual. I won't recite all the details but it concerned my having agreed to go back to teach for a month in the school where I worked from 1973-1979. The school had been evacuated from its normal building to temporary accommodation in a nearby small town. I got the bus (from the house we lived from 1975-1989), helped an old man pick up the groceries he'd dropped on the floor of the bus, asked the bus driver where to get off, asked for directions from a lady who was weeding her driveway in company with her small girl, walked up a hillside (which had a small shrine to Margaret Thatcher), got into the building and couldn't find anyone. It appeared to be deserted.

At this point, I woke up and was so relieved to find it was a dream. Not only do I not want to be a schoolteacher again (I didn't much want to even when I was one - further education was blissfully better) but I didn't know which classes I was to take, had done no preparation and was arriving at 12 noon to take an immediate class instead of - as I'd intended (but forgotten) to do, getting there at 8.30 am with time to get myself organised.

This is just the sort of anxiety dream I used to have when teaching, which was ridiculous because I always did plenty of preparation and would never have forgotten to turn up on time. I think this dream was caused by my having gone to the theatre yesterday evening with a friend who's still at the college, and hearing about all the stressful changes that are going on there.

Why the old chap with his dropped groceries, though? And the shrine to Margaret Thatcher? - it had a model of her head which got bigger and smaller in some magic way and was surrounded by toy vehicles (as you'd expect...).

Yes, well. As I said. Nothing much is happening. Which is all right, compared to the scenario of the dream.