A bit of grump

The main thing that people in Britain are talking about at the moment is the weather, which has been dire since the beginning of the year. Not especially cold - in fact, it's been relatively mild compared to winters when I was young. We've barely had any frost, let alone snow. But it's been damp and grey and depressing - not that I suffer from depression, but even I have found it a bit gloomy. Hence the photo of one of the few patches of blue sky that we've seen. Down south in England, there have been quite serious floods. Here, it's just been dank, with drizzle - very much not gardening weather. I think I've done four short lots of tidying up outside this year, and the garden is very much in need of more. But it's been chilly or raining or both; not tempting. It was faintly sunny yesterday for a bit, and I got out there and did some weeding, but then it rained - not hard, but enough to be discouraging - and I came in again. 

How lovely to find out about Virginia - thank you so much for replying! And also Maureen, who doesn't appear to have a blog when I click on her name in the comments, but who actually does. 

Nothing has been happening here apart from some more cutting out of shirt. And quite a bit of socialising, which is nice but not newsworthy. Although on Saturday I met up with a former student, someone from - maybe twenty or more? - years ago. I must have taught thousands of students in my time. We had 10 or 11 different classes every year, some of them for only 13-week semesters, but some - like the one this student was in - for most of the academic year. She was studying Higher English with the aim of qualifying for going to college to become a primary, ie junior school, teacher. She was at the time a classroom assistant in primary, and felt she was doing much the same work as a teacher for half the pay. I think that she probably wasn't, in that the teacher has to do all the planning and, I assume, most of the marking, and also has much of the responsibility. 

However, this youngish woman was divorced, with two children, and I admired her attitude. Anyway, when the class was over she was keen to keep in touch, which was slightly odd, since she must have known that I had lots and lots of students and couldn't possibly keep up with even a fraction of them. We met for coffee a few times and I rather hoped that it would all die a death. She was nice enough but ... you know. I have friends. When she did qualify as a teacher, she was busy - and at the time, so was I, with work and with the offspring still at home - so the years passed, but she continued to send me Christmas cards, latterly with her mobile phone number and the suggestion that we should meet again. Eventually, I caved in and sent her mine, and we met up. She's still perfectly nice, but she told me everything that had happened in her (somewhat chequered) teaching career from beginning to end, without ever pausing, from 10.30 till 11.45. I was exhausted just nodding and saying, "Oh dear" and "How difficult" and "Well, that was good". After that we had another cup of coffee and there was a bit of a conversation. At the end of our meeting, she said, "We should do this again." Hmm. Not very soon!

There's a lot of winter Olympics on television at the moment. I'm not remotely interested, but am intrigued by the introductory music on the BBC, which is the "Dies Irae" from the Mozart Requiem. "The Wrath of God" - why? I'm mildly irritated by sport, but not that much... .

Right. Better do something more useful. Have a nice week, Virginia, Maureen, Margaret, Jablog and anyone else reading this.