Half term - what we did on Thursday

We got two days off for half-term - Thursday and Friday. Mr Life took them off too. This is what we did on Thursday. First, you should know that the building above...

... and above this, is where Mr Life used to work. It's a couple of minutes from our house - a building dating from the early 80s, quite impressive (we think) from the outside and beautifully finished inside. After he left, the company moved out to a building further out of town. Another firm moved in but then moved out again, and for - five? six? - years, the building has been empty and up for sale. Various companies considered buying it and turning it into flats, but it wasn't really suitable.

Yesterday morning, I passed it and saw this. It was horrible to stand and watch this quite famous building being destroyed. We've lived in our current house for 21 years and have passed it virtually every day.

I stuck my camera through a gap in the gate and got told off by a chap in a hard hat.

Then the day improved. The girls always have lunch together on Thursdays, so Mr Life and I joined them. Here is Mr Life, unaccountably without the top of his head, having a post-lunch cup of coffee and biscuit.

Here is Daughter 2 stealing a bite of his biscuit.

Daughter 1 improved the shining hour by knitting a headband...

... which will look like this. And we all wrote a card to Son, wishing he was with us.

Then the girls returned to work - well, someone has to - while Mr Life and I went to the Museum of Scotland, where among other things we looked at the train section. Mr Life likes trains.

Afterwards, on the way down to Princes Street, we passed this lawyers' office, which struck us as worth remembering about if we ever get into trouble with the police.

Half way down the Mound is the little Writers' Museum.

Here's a bit of the Bank of Scotland. It too has a little museum, which we visited.

Its money used to be kept in this iron chest. Pity it still isn't, what with the recent shenanigans.

Down the Mound steps, here's the Art Gallery beside the bus stop.

Getting off the bus, we wandered past the office again. Hmm.

Still, as my mum said, she saw sights like that all the time when she was working in London during the Blitz and it was much worse because people had been in them at the time.

The trouble with my iPod

Twice a week, usually, I get the bus into work instead of driving. And then I walk home; my gesture towards the environment and fitness. It’s a distance of about three miles and I vary my route so that I don’t get particularly bored (lots of people’s front windows to look into). However, sometimes I remember to bring along further entertainment in the form of my iPod. My taste in music is almost exclusively classical and I often listen to the piece my choir is currently learning, to fix it into my head. I try not to sing as I walk (mad old lady in trainers and with rucksack, carolling as she marches).

Our students are keen iPod wearers. Whenever I see a lone student in the lifts or making for the bus stop, he/she is invariably plugged in. The music isn’t precisely audible but there’s what Garrison Keillor describes as “the sound of distant chainsaws” emitting from their headphones. Luckily I won’t be around when this generation suffers from the deafness that I’m sure they’re inflicting on themselves - lots of old people going “You’re mumbling!” and fiddling with their hearing aids. (Then they’ll be sorry.)

And possibly I will too, especially as a result of listening to our choir’s current piece, “Carmina Burana”. I’m not a natural with technology, and find that walking, plugging in earphones (L in the left ear, R in the right) and getting the device to work - simultaneously - is a bit too much multi-tasking for me. But I’m always in a tearing hurry to get home – having stayed too long at work – so I set out briskly, fiddling with the controls as I forge through groups of ambling young people.

I don’t know if you know “Carmina Burana” but it starts VERY LOUDLY, with the words “OHHHH FORTUNAAAAAAAA!!!”. And no matter how much I think I’ve turned the volume down before it begins – it’s never down enough. I shoot into the air like a startled cat – AARRGGHH - and my ears fly off my head, landing in little pink shattered pieces on the grass. Or so it feels.

By the time I’ve adjusted the controls and my heart’s returned to a normal rate, I’ve reached the road. Now the traffic is roaring and the choir has moved on to a quiet bit, currently inaudible to me. I have my iPod on a string round my neck (which is probably not a cool look) so that I don’t drop it, so I stuff it inside my jacket to stop it swinging around as I walk. But this means that whenever I want to adjust the volume – which is all the time – I have to fish in an unladylike fashion down my front. The timing of this particular piece ensures that by the time the singing is forte again, I’ve reached the next quiet bit of my walk and have to readjust it once more. And so it continues.

Maybe this is the reason why today’s popular music – I use this vague term because I don’t know the differences between garage and rock and dance and so on – is all loud. Yes, it’s deafening. But at least it’s consistently deafening and you don’t have to feel in your clothing to adjust it.

Next week

1) Work is busy; and I'm feeling a bit forlorn. However, we get two days off next week for midterm.

2) My young(ish) Irish colleague stood in the workroom last Thursday and said dreamily, "Next Thursday I'll be in the West of Ireland. I'll just have finished a big meal and I'll be saying, 'No, really, I couldn't eat another bite,' and my two aunts will be saying, 'Oh, go on, go on, sure you could have another little slice.'"

And he nodded contentedly.

3) What are you planning to do next Thursday? My day will involve the dentist... .

4) P.S. Mr Life has just found this on YouTube. Watch it - if you haven't seen it before, it will bring a smile to your face:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V34htoIg_F8

Life and death

Today would have been my father’s 90th birthday. But he died nearly three years ago.

When he was in his 80s he was seen by a heart specialist who told him that his heart was in good condition. “You’ll live till you’re 90,” the doctor rather unwisely predicted. And therefore my dad, half-seriously, believed that he would do so, “- though, “ he added ruefully, “when you’re 83, that doesn’t sound such a good deal.”

That feeling that the dead are just in the next room is such a potent one. My father was a brilliant man with a forceful personality. Where have all that intelligence and fire gone? Surely not into the heap of dust that we scattered under a tree in Perthshire?

Paradoxically, when the “children” aren’t here, I almost feel as if I’d dreamt them. It was a wonderful dream, filled with love and purpose: I created these lovely young people from my imagination; and now they’ve vanished into the air. I suppose that maybe my dad is so real to me because he was around forever, whereas the children came along half-way through my life. They arrived and now they’ve gone. It seems that they were with us for such a short time.

To combat this illusion, Mr Life and I went to Glasgow on Saturday to spend time with our son. Here he is wearing a Santa hat in the kitchen of his (rented) flat. Not sure why he keeps it there but I’m bidding for the record of posting the first picture this year of someone wearing Christmas fancy dress.

Here’s the view from his sitting room over a bowling green.

We walked to the Botanic Gardens (nice enough but not up to Edinburgh’s standard…) and wandered round it and into the Kibble Palace. This would sound to American cats like a good place, I suppose. ( It’s a very large glasshouse donated by a Mr Kibble.) Then we had lunch and walked back to the flat, stopping for coffee on the way. He regaled us with interesting stories about bowel operations (he’s on Urology at the moment). It was lovely to see him. But where is he now?

On Sunday, the rest of us all went to Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law’s house to have dinner. There’s something very soothing about being fed by one’s children. I suppose it’s like returning to childhood oneself – being nurtured – with the added satisfaction of watching one’s child being efficient and able to provide for itself. Daughter 2 was there too, so at least we had the reality of two offspring. And they’re not in Australia or anything. (Not that I’m suggesting that Australia is a bad place, you understand. It’s just a bit far away. From here.)

Anyway, happy birthday Dad. We’re not forgetting you.

Gosh, life is brief. (Yes, I like to end with an original remark.)

What people said

This picture is just here to remind me of last August. The winter will end. Summer will come again. Won't it?

I don't have time to blog but will just post unconnected two quotes. One was (I think) from David Attenborough, who said on the radio last Saturday, "We can only ever be as happy as the least happy of our children" - which I think is very true. I had never thought of David Attenborough being unhappy, but I suppose everyone is sometimes.

And one of my students wrote last week that if she was given £1000 she would buy a canapé bed.

For midnight feasts, presumably.

Got to go and mark. Sigh.

I feel like dancing for joy

I just cannot tell you how often a student who has missed a class will meet me in the corridor and say, "Did I miss anything on Friday?" or "Did you do anything last class?"

Of course I immediately want to say, "No, we just went to the pub."

Rosemary Riveter (http://painfullyfluffy.blogspot.com/) gave me this link in her comment on my previous post. If you didn't click on it then, I would recommend you do so now. Especially if you're a teacher. But even if you aren't.

I would die happy if I'd written this poem. It's called "Did I miss anything?"

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/013.html

Not a post about work

Well, I must say one gets far more comments when one posts pictures of cats than when one moans about one's paid employment. So I shall stop complaining.

Here are some photos of last Sunday afternoon when, among other things, Daughter 2 and I went for a brisk walk. It was brisk because the weather, though sunny, was absolutely freezing; also we were having the rest of the family (minus Doctor Son, alas) to dinner.

Here's Daughter 2 marching along. She doesn't hang about, Daughter 2, and since she's taller than I am and has longer legs, I have to scurry a bit to keep up.

She had come home for the weekend, thus brightening our dull, middle-aged lives.

Not a leaf on the trees either by the road or on Corstorphine Hill in the background.

Back home, I had cheated by planting primroses from a garden centre in a pot, giving a false impression of spring. What a cheerful sight for winter-jaded eyes.

Here are my winter-flowering pansies, still blooming after eighteen months in that pot. A bit weedy, but colourful compared to the rest of the garden. I must dead-head them.

Meanwhile Mr Life had hauled the pink blanket out of the cupboard so that he and Sirius could have a nice nap on the sofa. This is the blanket that I had on my bed when I was a girl, years before downies. It was very long and I used to wrap the top of it round my head on cold nights. No central heating then; the windows used to ice up on the inside, the condensation freezing into star-like crystals.

A little bit of spring inside too.

The days are getting longer, the first snowdrops and crocuses are forcing their way through the hard ground and soon, surely, winter will draw to a close in our little island. Sending it your way, Australia.

Our new college semester started this week. Yes, the last week in January, just when you’re at your lowest ebb. The winter chill still has us in its grip; we still waken to darkness; the Christmas jollities are all over; and the New Year resolutions – well, let’s not talk about them. And the garden is a horrible heap of brown goo.

Five of my classes ended last week. But every group has some tail-end-Charlies who somehow didn’t get themselves to college enough to finish one or more assessments. Or they did, but they didn’t quite complete them or didn’t pass or lost various relevant bits of paper or... And I can’t finish filling in my resulting documents till I’ve established if these t-e-Cs are actually going to come good.

So this week I have five new classes – 125 new names to learn and five programmes of study to make up. And five new registers to fill out and lots of marking to do for the 125 new students, who are at the honeymoon stage of their college careers and, having convinced themselves that they’re going to work hard this time, are still doing their homework and attending class assiduously. And five new rooms to teach in, all with subtly different variations on the equipment: interactive whiteboards and computers and projectors and DVD players. This is tough for a not-very-technical person who signed up to be a teacher in the days of paper and pens. And of course the very people you don’t want to look an idiot in front of, by failing to get the equipment to function, are these new students whom you’re trying to impress with your competence and wit.

And at the same time you can’t properly tidy away last semester’s stuff because the tail-end-Charlies keep drifting in, wanting to do the work that they didn’t get round to last semester.

And then there are the six classes who’re continuing from last semester who don’t realise that you have any particular reasons for being a collapsed heap.

Memo to self: next time, be a cat.

But it's the weekend!

Why I like cats

1. I like cats because they’re furry. Our two cats’ coats feel quite different from each other: Cassie’s is utterly soft and fluffy – like fairy thistledown – while Sirius’s is smooth and silky. Stroking them is soothing and comforting. Feline security blankets.

2. I like cats because they’re quiet. I can quite see the attraction of dogs also – though I’ve never had one or known one very well – but the one thing I don’t like about them is their barking. Cats just sit peacefully there looking elegant and saying very little. Mostly.

3. I like cats because they’re beautiful. Ours are particularly beautiful, of course, which you don’t really see because black cats don’t photograph well. In photos they tend to look either featureless or rather sleek and evil. But they’re actually sootily glossy and also slender and dainty and streamlined. Unlike me.

4. I like cats because they’re sweet. Yes, I know this is an even sillier reason than some of my others. Yet when they unfurl and offer their fluffy tummies to be stroked – well, they’re cute. I’m vulnerable to cuteness because it’s such a long time since my children were babies and (sigh) I have no grandchildren.

5. I like cats because they’re calm. This is a slight bending of the truth because they actually jump even at not-very-loud noises; and, if a burglar arrived, he would never know they existed because they’d be panicking silently behind the sofa. There are also skittish times when they chase each other up and down the stairs and from chair to chair to table. But most of the time they sit and gaze around placidly or go to sleep. So relaxing to watch.

6. I like cats because they don’t worry. I would love not to do so. I know, oh how I know, that there’s no point in chewing over the past or agonising about the future. But it’s hard not to. Cats just exist in the present. They don’t like it when the window-cleaner arrives outside the living room with his clanking bucket – but they don’t sit counting the days till he comes back again. And do they search their consciences about that little mousey murder or those scratches on the kitchen cupboards? I think not.

7. I like cats because they purr. What a lovely sound.

8. I like cats because they allow themselves to be picked up and dandled like a baby or carried around or just fluffed as they pass by on some business or other. Burying one’s face in their velvety tummies is immensely pleasurable – ah, the smell of warm cat! And then they’re quite happy to be put down again. It’s a very tactile way of passing a few moments. And it’s touching how a creature will accept human contact and will trust us not to hurt it.

9. I like the individual bits of cats. Their little heads fit so nicely in a palm. Their tails are satisfying to twiddle between the fingers, like worry beads. Their small feet with those claws that could scratch you, but don’t. Their furry trousers, straight out of Beatrix Potter. Their mouths – from the front they look solemn and judicious but if you look at them from the side, they have a secret smile.

10. I like cats because they’re so easily made happy; so uncomplicated. They like warmth, food – particularly prawns – and a bit of stroking. That’s it. They’re not ambitious or jealous or clingy or proud or avaricious. They’re just themselves.

Comings and goings

Son came home for a few days, which was nice,

and had some cat time

while Daughter 2 organised us into a game of Articulate

which Son-in-Law won despite spending quite a lot of his time reading. Daughter 1 combined playing the game and knitting socks. She is a sock-knitting machine.

Cassie decided that the chair occupied by Son's girlfriend was the one she wanted, so she climbed up on it and gradually nudged S's gf out of the way. The queen leans over her balcony. Wave wave.

And now it's just Mr Life and I. And these nice hyacinths. I love the scent of hyacinths, which always transports me back to primary school. Primary teachers tended to have hyacinths growing on window-shelves in spring time to teach us about the wonders of nature. Which it did.

Not that I particularly liked school. But I do like hyacinths.

And so life goes on.

Mouse

I came home from teaching my evening class last week - 12-hour day, cue violins - to find Mr Life sitting on the sofa in a relaxed frame of mind, watching television.

The cats were also relaxed. I couldn't swear that they were paying much attention to the programme but they certainly seemed like cats with totally clear consciences as they lay snoozing in their baskets.

Even more relaxed was the mouse that I immediately noticed on the floor just inside the doorway. It was lying near the cats, who were studiously paying it no attention. It was not watching television; alas, I fear its watching days were over.

It seemed unlikely that none of the three of them - Mr Life, Cassie and Sirius - had noticed this unfortunate former mouse. However, they all claimed that this was so. Injured innocence was the expression on all three faces.

The expression on my face wasn't quite like that. Mr Life leapt up and removed the mouse.

The cats don't do this sort of thing much but when they do, they're his cats.

Of course, they deny responsibility. Have you ever seen two cats pointing at each other? - "It must have been him/her."

The mouse was saying nothing.

Chocolate

At the supermarket today I passed a mother with a shopping list and a small boy of maybe about seven or eight.

"You know how I used to be a baddie?" said the boy.

His mother looked briefly startled and then returned to concentrating on her list. "Mmm."

"Well, I'm a goodie now."

"That's nice. Now... bread ..."

"So can I have chocolate?"

(And you thought virtue was its own reward.)


Which somehow made me remember the lovely Polish young man at our local shop where I buy a morning paper. He's always cheerful even though he's been sorting newspapers and unloading bread since six o'clock in the morning and this clearly puts his customers in a good mood - people leave the shop smiling. When he started, about two years ago, he had very little English, but now he talks fluently with a fine Scottish/Polish accent.

Before Christmas, I saw him putting out a box of Cadbury's Creme (Easter) eggs.

"So it's Easter, is it?" I enquired pompously.

He beamed his lovely smile, waved a hand dramatically over the box and without missing a beat said, "Chrrrrreeeeestmas eggs!"

Blaise Pascal

My computing students (I don't teach them Computing, but Communication) were to choose a subject, research it and give a presentation. Any subject. They mostly chose football teams or computer games. But one student decided, surprisingly, to give his presentation on Blaise Pascal.

I knew about as much about Blaise Pascal (French, dead for some considerable time, writer and philosopher) as I do about Britney Spears (American, alive, singer and Celebrity). So it was interesting.

"Then," said the lad, "he became a Gee-Soot."

Gee-Soot? I thought.

Ah, a Je-Suit. Jesuit. Gotcha.

A tale of two shawls

In 1973 I was 23 and engaged to be married. I thought that bedjackets were a bit frumpy, so I crocheted myself a shawl to wear when sittting up in bed, reading. We didn't do the modern living-together thing so sitting up in bed together was a new phenomenon and I was anxious to look all right.

Thirty-six years later, the shawl is still on the go. I've used it every night. It and I have become middle-aged together and we both sag a bit. And over the last couple of years it's become even more scruffy because Sirius joins me in bed in the mornings and luxuriously kneads it with his claws.

For Christmas this year, Daughter 1 knitted me this shawl. It's immeasurably more beautiful than mine ever was: soft and lacy and warm.

I love it. Isn't it pretty? Thank you so much, Daughter 1!

I'm not going to wear it in bed, though, and Sirius isn't getting to exercise his claws on it.

Can you tell that it's a bit chilly at the moment? Could they be tied in tighter knots? How wonderful not to worry about the size of one's bottom. The cats often copy each other's body language, either symmetrically

or in a mirror-image kind of way.

So you didn't think Tim Vine was funny? Ah well, it must be the British sense of humour, I suppose.

Tim Vine

It's still very cold. Very snowy. I met a presumably very hungry rabbit in the lane beside our house yesterday. I felt so sorry for it and almost offered to go and get it some lettuce. But I really don't want a tame rabbit in my garden and anyway, it ran away.

On a lighter note, if you have 5 minutes to spare, you might like to watch Tim Vine trying to catch a pencil behind his ear - sorry that I don't know how to make the wee telly screen appear on the page:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pwbQvJDFzQ


and then, if you have another 2 minutes, possibly this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j_Sp2FMeIc&NR=1


Very silly but somehow funny. Well, I think so, anyway.

Today

I had my class of computer boys this morning. C had a big plaster [ie Band Aid] on the outside of his forearm. I glanced at it and raised my eyebrows.

He grinned sheepishly. "I got stabbed on New Year's Eve. I stopped him stabbing me in the chest, though."

"Stabbed! Who stabbed you?"

"Just some random guy."

"Why?"

"Oh, I probably said something cheeky."

"Did you go to hospital and get it stitched?"

"No. It was New Year's Eve. I was partying."

"Did you go the next day?"

"No, I got lifted [ie arrested] and they didn't let me out till the 2nd. And then I went to hospital. But it was too late to stitch it. They put a bandage on it, though."

"You got lifted? What did you do?"

He shrugged. "To be honest with you, I cannie remember. I was too drunk. I was quite pleased, though. It was the first time I got lifted for a year. I used to get lifted every couple of weeks."

And this is a nice laddie. A big, daft laddie, smiling and good-natured. When he's not drunk.

So many of our students think that getting drunk is a good night out. Young folk who you'd think were pleasant, sensible kids - who are pleasant, sensible kids, really. Most of the time.

It's pretty, but...

Hmph. I am now officially fed up with this snow. We're not used to more than the occasional, mildly diverting fall - "Oooh, look! It's snowing!" - which causes a bit of a nuisance for a day or two and then melts. But it's now been around for the best part of a week and we are NOT AMUSED.

Part of the trouble is that we're not geared up for it. As you can see from the pictures of Daughter 2 valiantly trying to clear a way out of our drive and up the hill, the council don't see our little street as a priority for gritting. (Gritting, whoever it was that asked, is when the council drive a lorry along which leaks salt and grit on to the snow, melting it and giving something for tyres to grip on to.) We live in a cul-de-sac with only five houses in it, so you can see why we might not be top of their gritting list. The street is on a hill, steeper than it looks in the picture, and unless you get your car up the hill before the snow, that's you more or less stuck till the snow melts. The street at right angles to ours is also ungritted and also on a hill. After Daughter 2's efforts yesterday we managed to get the car up to this street, where it now languishes at the mercy of any other car which may skid into ours as it passes. But at least I can get to the supermarket, my mother's house and so on.

Of course, no one has snow tyres or chains or anything because we never need them. Or so we thought!

The cats are EXTREMELY FED UP! They're bouncing stir-crazily around the place, galloping up and down the stairs and risking their lives by tight-rope-walking along the banisters. They keep deciding to go out and then coming in again pronto, shaking their paws disgustedly and looking pleadingly at us: make it go away!

Even Cassie, who normally has a bit of dignity about such things, submits to being held like a baby and cuddled. Might as well. What else is there to do around here?

Daughter 2, who stayed with us really quite a lot over the holiday season, has gone back to her flat. She and Mr Life started work today. And I'm back to work tomorrow.

And I don't like January. It's dark and cold and ... mutter mutter mutter...