Endings and beginnings

It was a nice sunny day as I walked from the car park towards the main building, glancing across at the sports department.

Up the steps and through the revolving doors for my last day at work.

Up the stairs.

The door of the workroom, with my name on it, among those of my colleagues. Later in the day, I made a new notice, without my name, for the first day back in August.

Some of the stuff on the filing cabinets is mine, mid-clear. Most of it isn't.

Here's my desk, almost ready for me to leave it. My colleague is going to have it next semester because it's beside the window.

She's in Zambia at the moment, on the Book Bus. Do check out her blog - http://deborah-buscatcher.blogspot.com/

Then my colleagues and I came home and had lunch here.

And now I'm retired. Gosh.

Peter and Benjamin

I was walking through the grounds of the college on my way home today. In front of me on the path were five youngish chaps who looked vaguely Middle Eastern. They were smartly dressed in shirts and ties, unlike our typical students. They suddenly all stopped, whipped out their mobile phones and gazed intently at these.

I overtook the young men and heard them conversing busily in their own language. I have to admit that I did wonder what they were discussing, so a little further down the path, I turned my head to see what they were doing.

Big smiles on their faces, they were tiptoeing over the lawn, phone cameras held aloft, taking pictures of some of the many rabbits that spend their lives munching away at the grass in the college grounds.

Robert Browning

We have correspondence courses at college, including a literature one which I wrote a few years ago. I've never had any problems with it till this session. Students enrol all through the year and are at different stages at different times. Recently I'm finding that they email me their work and all goes well until suddenly they stop contacting me. I email them to enquire what's happened and they reply, aggrieved, that they've sent me work to which I haven't responded. But I've never received this work.

I got our computer services team on to the problem.

The solution was found today.

I hadn't noticed, but my nice computer chap did, that it's Study Section 5 that causes the problem. Students put the title of the Robert Browning poem they're studying - "Porphyria's Lover" - as the subject of the email. And our spam filter has taken to deleting the email, thinking I'm being offered naughty stuff.

Problem solved. From now on, we'll be referring electronically to "Porphyria's Bloke".

A very very very sad post

This is a post that I publish most reluctantly, because I don't want to fall further in the affections of one of my most admired bloggers: Fran of Being Me. She said that I was one of her least favourite people. Sob. My shortcoming? Being the beneficiary of two days - Monday and Tuesday - when the college was closed because of the snow.

Sigh. Alas, alack, eheu, o me miserum, quel dommage and similar expressions of sorrow. Because... well, we did go in today - that's the good news, Fran. I had a grand total of two students in my first, two-hour class. The corridors echoed as the few hardy, keen students squelched to classes, their jeans flapping soddenly around their ankles, their boots leaving a trail of little lumps of compressed snow - Hansel and Gretel, the Arctic version. And then the longed-for email came: the college is closed till Monday. I am doomed as far as Fran's opinion of me goes.

Sniff.

Or, to put it another way, HURRAY!!!!

I did suffer a bit, though, Fran. I trudged a mile and a bit to the supermarket through - I'm not exaggerating - slush that came up to the tops of my wellies. I then overestimated the amount of shopping that I could carry through more slush to the bus stop. Still, it's amazing how you find that little extra bit of strength when the alternative is putting your canvas Tesco bag down in ten inches of khaki goo.

While at Tesco, I bought a hat. See above. I did this because I don't possess such a thing, the reason being that I've never needed one in recent decades. Persiflage asked if it's true if the British, when snow falls, always react as if it's a great surprise, and the answer is yes, sort of. Because we really get very little snow - or at least we did before global warming set in (there's a misnomer for you...). Councils can't have huge workforces just sitting around in snowploughs waiting for the two days of slight sleet that we tend to get. So it's not surprising that they get into a bit of a stooshie when something unprecedented like the current weather hits us. I have never seen snow so deep.


I haven't actually worn the hat yet, but I'm confident that it'll make me almost indistinguishable from the gnome line-up of two posts ago.

Sorry, Fran. As I sit drinking coffee and reading Kate Atkinson tomorrow, I'll spare you a thought. Is that ok? Do you like me again now?

Guest post from Fifi: "Rockcliffe" - Episode 2

I thought Fifi's comment on my previous post deserved more prominence (hope this is all right, Fifi):

fifi said... On "Rockcliffe" this week, young Dr D finds that making soup is almost as hard as convincing wee auld Mrs McLatchey to take her heart medication. In his usual endearing manner he ineptly stirs pieces of vegetable forlornly around in his broth.Luckily for him, it's Isabelle to the rescue: turning up just in the nick of time with a big bunch of dahlias, a cauldron of hot soup and a package of....Gorgonzola!As usual the beautiful landscape is the real star of the show, though,luckily for Mrs Mclatchey, Dr D is a far better physician than chef.

Above, a pot at our front door, still blooming away in October - though the first frost will cut down the flowers.

Below, having enjoyed a nice combing session, Sirius relaxes on Mr Life's legs.

In our college we teach towards exams in English language and literature but we also teach vocationally-appropriate, practical English, to people doing all sorts of courses such as beauty therapy, preparation for nursing, business studies, computing and so on. My preparation for nursing students - all young and jolly but not necessarily academic giants - were doing an assessment. ("Hollyoaks", by the way, mentioned below, is a soap opera, which I myself don't watch.)

Student 1 [looking up from the article she was reading]: What's schizophrenia?

Me: Well, it's a psychiatric mental condition -

Student 2: It's what Newt's got in "Hollyoaks".

Student 1 [completely satisfied]: Oh, right.

Student 2 [nodding conspiratorially to me]: Talk to them at their own level.