Worry Doll

Meet Morge our new hamster!

2011-12-11T19:03:00.003Z

This is Morge. We adopted him from Pets at Home. In general I don't like Pets at Home as they get their animals from breeder farms and the animals are prone to diseases because of this. They also sell animals to obviously irresponsible owners and I hate when they sell all the gerbils, for example, in one tank but leave one on it's own. Gerbils should never be sold or kept on their own if it can be avoided. I could go on but I would rant for ages! Anyway, the little card next to Morge's home while he was waiting to be adopted said he was a she, called Tilly and he was around 3 months old. Well, Morge is a boy they always seem to get this bit wrong! We are not used to big hamsters, we have always had the dwarf variety. Love Morge already, he's really tame and funny to watch. Miss my little dwarf hammies though!

My favourite xmas decoration :-)

2011-12-11T19:00:00.002Z

Mum bought this for me when we went on a trip to Winchester Christmas market.

Hedgehog eating dinner

2011-11-13T17:34:00.001Z

Here is a photo of our biggest hedgehog eating its dinner.

Hedgehog in our garden making its nest

2011-09-12T18:30:00.005+01:00

It lives under the shed in our garden and yesterday we watched it spend ages going out to get leaves for its nest. We bought it some hay and left it by its door today so hopefully it will enjoy that. Might start leaving some food for it. Might even give it a name, not sure if it's a boy or girl though. Here is a short clip of it collecting nest material.

The hedgehog that lives in our garden

2011-09-08T01:00:00.000+01:00

I'm glad I'm vegetarian

2011-07-29T21:15:00.004+01:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020151/Abattoir-staffs-shocking-animal-cruelty-filmed-WONT-prosecuted.html

I don't normally write or talk about my beliefs because I don't see the point, you can't change people. Well, not usually anyway. So this is not why I am posting it but I was so angry I just wanted to get it off my chest.

WARNING: The above link is from an article that is not nice to read or see because it is about the nasty truth about abattoirs. The headline of the article is Revealed: Shocking cruelty at massive abattoir... but those responsible WON'T be prosecuted.

To me, the article isn't even shocking because I'm aware of what happens at slaughterhouses, but it never fails to sicken me. You must have to be a certain kind of evil sadistic person to work in an abattoir and I really don't care who disagrees with me. I still can't believe it is allowed, this awful, inhumane treatment of animals. They are tortured and mocked and see their friends die in front of them and they know what is coming. Those people at the very least should be sacked. Urgh people disgust me.

There was another story recently that has even put me off chocolate and I didn't think anything could do that! It was a story about the male little baby calfs being shot at the milk producers for Dairy Milk bars because they are 'of no use.' I knew that in meat production the baby male livestock are often killed soon after birth because they don't fatten up like the females. I hadn't twigged that they might do the same at dairy farms :-(

Walk in the woods and out stumbles a deer!

2011-06-20T22:37:00.003+01:00

Cupcakes

2011-06-18T17:10:00.001+01:00

Birthday Cake

2011-01-09T22:43:00.003Z

Another experiment with decorating cakes - chocolate shavings with mocha butter icing this time.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-27T21:22:00.005Z

Christmas was a quiet one this year with just the two of us, plus six small furry animals (Horace, Jazz, Mr Tumnus, Aslan, Totoro, Muta). Despite a few nice little things happpening here and there it's been a rubbish year again and a tiny part of me felt like the Grinch. However, this thought only disturbed me for a short while as I really do love Christmas and was determined to enjoy it, so I did! We really enjoyed our Christmas and had all the traditional things that we like - roasting chestnuts, decorating a tree, making a vegetarian roast dinner (see picture, it was extremely tasty and far better than eating dead animal) and there was even some left over snow. It snowed heavily just before Christmas so even though it did not snow on Christmas day, happily there was still a white covering outside. I watched Christmas films all day, ate waaaay too much food and played on a new Wii game called Raving Rabbids which is brilliant!!!

The best Christmas present of all has to be that while we have sadly lost two of our dearest gerbil friends this year, Hermes (Horace's brother) and baby Bumblebee (Jazz's sister), Horace survived his operation and is now in good spirits and fully healed. He enjoyed his Christmas instead of suffering from a nasty scent gland tumour he had, as we had it removed for him just before Christmas and he made an immediate recovery. See a very happy Horace in the picture above. Merry Christmas Horace!

More forest pictures.....

2010-06-09T21:41:00.002+01:00

Enchanted Forest

2010-06-09T20:44:00.002+01:00

The entire forest has good paths for cycling.

It even has a large lake.

What is this purple plant? Rhododendron? Can't spell.

One of the secret entrances to our very own private forest back garden!!!! More pics to follow...
We are lucky enough to have discovered a HUGE forest behind our house which is like having Centre Parks as your back garden, for free! What a find!!

baby mice

2010-04-14T16:22:00.004+01:00

Saw these baby mice in the local pet shop. They also had terapins, tortoises, snakes, lizards, spiders, kittens............. I resisted all but had to take a sneaky pic of the mice. Luckily I didn't actually see the scary spiders.

fairy cakes

2010-04-10T20:48:00.002+01:00

Snowman - no I didn't make him but he's worth a picture

2010-01-14T09:44:00.003Z

Happy eggs

2010-01-11T00:39:00.005Z

I thought I would do a small blog to help promote free range eggs, not that anyone other than family or friends usually reads this and I think everyone I know has free range. I don't use my blog to blog anymore, I usually just update it with photos to keep in touch with people. It may seem strange but I was very happy to see the new brand of free range eggs, happy eggs. I know that if I buy a box, I help support the company even if only in a small way and I know that their chickens are well cared for from the leaflet that comes inside each box, the website and I guess the clue is in the name! I'm happy to buy any free range eggs (true free range not fake free range where the hens are actually just stuffed into small barns with no room to move and no outdoor life) but it's just I like the happy egg company, the hens are given toys and proper care and attention. The farmers want the chickens to have good lives. I scowl or make comments when I see someone picking up eggs from caged chickens because it's so cruel. I hate the thought of all those poor chickens trapped in a cage, unable to move and breathe fresh air. I am glad that supermarkets are starting to have more free range eggs in stock than battery but I wish battery was banned. There is no excuse for buying eggs from caged hens, the small price difference shouldn't matter.

Snow walking

2010-01-06T16:58:00.003Z

It finally snowed where I live today and it snowed heavily! There are a lot of snowmen outside and I particularly like a snowman with cat ears and eyes that I saw - a snowcat? We went on a long walk down a slippery hill to the village and then round a park where there were a lot of robins and several ducks enjoying the snow. Everyone here copes well with the snow, many taking the day off work to go sledging and snowball fighting. Yeah ok the occasional person probably complains about the weather but the majority of people welcome it with a smile.

Snow in Ely and the Fenlands

2010-01-06T16:44:00.005Z

Over Christmas, I travelled a little around cambridgeshire. The pictures show Ely cathedral and a nearby Russian cannon. Then there is the snowy winter walk I went on in the Fenlands where I took the picture of the snow covered trees. It snowed several times in the Fenlands on my visit and once the snow flakes were the largest I think I've ever seen. I'm VERY happy it snowed so much :-)

The Perfect Christmas

2009-12-26T12:10:00.010Z

I have been lucky enough to have a perfect xmas because:

1) We had snow! It didn't snow on xmas day but a few days before we saw a nice heavy snowfall and the thick snow and ice stayed around for xmas day :-) Where I was staying before there was no snow so I am glad that I was visiting a different part of the country for xmas where I knew there was snow. Have to be ridiculously vague on a blog. English people look forward to snow because we don't get it very often. Snow is usually only a problem if you desperately have to travel somewhere, but I drove to my christmas destination by car and quite enjoyed the snowy view beyond my windscreen and didn't mind taking the drive carefully. We also all like snow because it can mean schools close so if you are a kiddie, you get the day off to play in the snow and if you have a boring job to go to, you might not have to go after all! Snow also makes everything look xmassy and I have enjoyed going for walks in it.

2) I got to play with a little puppy jack russell called Bob and he's very cute and energetic, see picture. I do miss my own dog Sky very much though and missed giving her a cuddle.

3) Got to have a yummy scrummy veggie xmas roast dinner and large amounts of naughty treats.

4) We've all been having a laugh playing on the Wii and particularly enjoying the skiing games.

5) I didn't get to see some of the family, but Skype is good for keeping in touch in other countries.

Bless his cotton socks

2009-12-11T22:25:00.002Z

Aslan fell asleep the other day in the wheel, he was sat like Mr Tumnus in the picture at first but then he started rocking backwards until he started sliding backwards out of the wheel....but he didn't wake up! He stayed fast asleep and dreaming, his little paws were running. It's the funniest thing we've ever seen them do, created much amusement hee hee hee

Chocolate Rock Cakes

2009-12-11T22:21:00.003Z

The picture's a bit blurry but I made some chocolate rock cakes.

My TV choices

2009-12-03T00:23:00.002Z

In no particular order:

1) Misfits, Thursday 11pm E4 A bunch of youth offenders gain superpowers. I love this programme, I watched it on 4od online first because I was so bored I started searching 4od for shows to try watching. I thought Misfits would be rubbish but was pleasantly surprised and I'm now totally addicted! It's laugh out loud funny in a good way, well I think so.
2) The Family, Wednesday 8pm Channel 4, Cameras catch the everyday life of an Indian family. Again, I thought I would hate this series because the last one was so deadly boring but no, I am hooked to this aswell. I like the family dynamics and the relationship between the mum and dad has me in hysterics.
4) Eastenders Although some episodes and characters are dull, it's part of my comforting routine and I enjoy watching it
5) Hollyoaks I admit Hollyoaks is a pretty high standard of crap most of the time, but on and off I like watching it.
6) Garrows Law, 18th Century courtroom drama, the hero lawyer fights for the rights of the common people and rescues them from a hanging. Sadly it's finished now, might still be on iplayer
7) Paradox, Tuesday BBC 1 9pm Ok so it's been done before, but I've watched the first episode so far and found it addictive, a good mix of time travel and crime solving.
8) Merlin, Saturday 6.05 BBC1 One of my favourite shows at the moment, loving the banter between Merlin and Arthur, even Adrian has started watching it. I actually can't contain myself each week for the next episode!
9) X Factor ITV1 8pm Saturday/Sunday I don't really care who wins but it's good to watch. If I had to pick, I would say to win in this order: Joe, Stacey, Danyl, Olly I used to think Olly could win, but then I saw that he lives at home with his parents in a mansion and he has said a few arrogant comments, don't think he needs it as much as some of the others who seem to have more of a struggle in life. Joe is the only one consistently in tune so I guess it would be fair for him to win. I find Stacey has more stage presence and she sings well too.

I might have got some of the times and days wrong for the programmes, but I've had a guess just incase anyone wanted to try watching one.

Uh oh, I've been in the kitchen again!

2009-11-30T21:35:00.002Z

Ok, this time I haven't bothered to

put the cake on a nice clean white plate after I decorated it. I thought it looked kind of artistic with the mess of icing around the edge...well that's my excuse. Right, so this time I made a chocolate cake with a thick layer of chocolate butter icing in the middle, then strawberry and melted chocolate icing for the topping.

Wish I could be a cake designer for a living, it's fun experimenting!

Yum, chocolate cake!

2009-11-16T00:55:00.001Z

I baked this cake today and it has chocolate butter icing in the middle, chocolate sponge and melted chocolate covering....very me.

The weedy sea dragon

2009-11-05T15:23:00.003Z

One of my new favourite animals, it really does look like a little dragon! You can see what a weedy sea dragon is on the programme Life which is on iplayer at the moment, near the beginning of episode 4, Fish.

Halloween cake

2009-11-03T00:41:00.002Z

It's fun experimenting with colours and cakes!

Earth from the air

2009-10-16T15:49:00.002+01:00

I thought I might aswell prove it was the same exhibition for Frankofile :-)

Pond autumn walking

2009-10-16T15:39:00.003+01:00

Things seen and done on the walk:

1) Mr and Mrs Duck - they were very friendly as were all the ducks and there were a lot! They would have sat on my lap they were so tame. Ducks are one of my favourite animals, I want my own pond with ducks, so cute how can anyone eat them

2) Feeding the many many many birds, most of which were ducks, then we had several pigeons, a coot/moorhen (not sure), gulls and a swan.

3) I met a tame squirrel who reminded me of my pet gerbils, because I am sure he was saying "Is it treats?" I had already donated the bread to the birds, so I threw him a prawn cocktail skip which I'm sure isn't the best thing but he didn't like the smell and didn't eat it anyway.

Autumn walking

2009-10-07T19:08:00.003+01:00

Four Hamsters

2009-09-29T20:29:00.002+01:00

R.I.P Frog/Toad

2009-09-22T20:37:00.002+01:00

Sadly the toad/frog died this evening. A has buried him under a rose bush. We now think he was a frog because he was huge before he died, but oddly he shrunk massively in death and looked like a frog. After research we think he might have had a disease and been bloated, possibly due to a water imbalance :-(

Wind in the willows

2009-09-22T16:56:00.002+01:00

While cleaning the pond (the royal 'we') in our garden because the fish had no room to swim as the water lilies had taken over the whole pond, we found a toad. The toad watched A cleaning the pond, as did I, without moving. It sat at the edge of the pond watching until A decided to check it was ok by giving it a gentle prod. Toad didn't move and it wasn't until a lily was removed right next to him that he swam off into the depths of the murky pond. Later that evening toad was back, this time sitting on a stone and he stayed there all evening! That was yesterday, but today, toad is still sitting motionless. You might assume he was dead if wasn't for the fact that A keeps picking him up to make sure he's feeling ok.The toad sits quietly in A's hand (see picture) and he can even be rolled onto his back...to check for a cut or damage. Toad seems to be ok but it is odd how he is out in the open, cold air and doesn't move a muscle. We have now read up on toads and found out that toads can sit for hours without moving. I hope that this is normal behaviour because he's quite cute. Today he is leaning over a stone looking into the pond, but his eyes never blink and he has a white/blue bubble coming out of his mouth. I hope that's normal too, A thinks he is probably just dribbling because he has been leaning forward for so long!

The other picture you will notice is not a toad, but Aslan the hamster :-) I found him sleeping like this the other day and couldn't stop laughing especially because he was dreaming of running as all his little paws and mouth were moving. Incidentally, all four pet hamsters now have names. Aslan and Mr Tumnus in one home and Totoro and Muta in the other.

Sleeping bears

2009-05-23T01:14:00.002+01:00

I like quizzes!

2009-05-02T00:58:00.002+01:00

1. What are your current obsessions?

Starbucks / my pet hamsters and gerbils / Sky .....actually these are all permanent obsessions not just current!

2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often? Comfy joggers, although at the moment I have to wear horrible teachery clothes

3. Last dream you had? I have had a few recurring dreams about trying to get to France to see the parents and dog but something always goes horribly wrong like the plane crashes! Also dream about going to Starbucks...oh dear

4. Last thing you bought? A salad for lunch

5. What are you listening to? The hamsters running in the wheel and the gerbils chewing cardboard.

6. If you were a god/goddess who would you be? I don't know but I would like to be a goddess that gets to fly on either a dragon or a pegasus

7. Favourite holiday spots? Hmm it's been a while. France because I get to see Sky doggy!

8. Reading right now? Nothing, no time! I read through my lesson plans for school....yawn

9. Four words to describe yourself. At the moment: exhausted / amused / fattening / thirsty

10. Guilty pleasure? Starbucks

11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak? Cute things - example here Yep my own hamsters and gerbils have me in fits of giggles.

12. Favourite spring thing to do? smell freshly cut grass

13. Planning to travel to next? France

14. Best thing you ate or drank lately?Chocolate cookies

15. When did you last get tipsy? I don't know but I will need alcohol to get me through the last bit of the PGCE course!

16. Favorite ever film?Jurassic Park. Indiana Jones, The Holiday, Beauty and the Beast.........

17. Care to share some wisdom? I'd rather someone gave me some wisdom, like what an earth should I do for a career cuz I hate teaching

18. Song you can't get out of your head? Cry me a river..... think I got that from watching a blues/jazz pop idol episode

19. Thing you are looking forward to? Going to France and cuddling Sky and finishing the PGCE

20. If money were no object, where would you choose to live? Somewhere in America with my own swimming pool, or I would just buy myself a country mansion in England

Sugar Plum Fairy

2009-04-23T19:31:00.004+01:00

We only did this because hammie wanted to and it doesn't hurt him. Please never do it unless you know what you're doing and make sure the hamster is only a couple of cm from the ground.

Hamster Climb

2009-04-22T19:45:00.004+01:00

Put the sound on for this one :-)

How many hamsters can you fit in a wheel?

2009-04-16T19:57:00.003+01:00

Naming competition

2009-04-14T20:55:00.004+01:00

Well, I thought I would write my first proper blog post as it has been a long time and because I have something that I want to write about. Of course as usual it is animal related, I bought FOUR Roborovski hamsters today!!! Animals are always cheerful and entertaining to have around and these little guys were just too cute and hilarious to resist. I would never buy just one hamster because it would be lonely but with most hamsters they do have to sadly live on their own becasue they would kill each other. However, these tiny critters prefer to live in groups and we thought we would buy the whole group of brothers rather than leave one or two behind. They are all clearly very attached to each other. They are 8 weeks old apparently and they are the smallest of the dwarf hamster variety. The pictures don't show how tiny and sweet these things are! So far they have settled into their new home straight away and they are extremely curious and friendly. They also run around like lunatics and climb across the ceiling of their cage. I have also seen them sleeping and they sleep in a big pile one on top of the other. Awwww, bless. I will put better pictures up soon. Horace and Hermes our two gerbils will not be left out either, we love them just as much and we bought them a new toy today. They received a log cabin, which they seem to think is for eating rather than climbing inside but oh well!

Anyway we haven't named the four tiny hamsters yet so if you have any suggestions we would like to know.

I only had enough energy to post 2 pictures of gerbils.....don't do a PGCE it sucks

2009-03-30T22:19:00.000+01:00

I wasn't expecting to meet a GIANT eagle while doing a bit of Christmas shopping!

2008-11-22T22:48:00.005Z

Cows

2008-09-19T22:14:00.007+01:00

New photos! I might explain them later.

2008-09-19T22:14:00.006+01:00

Can you spot the hot air balloons?

Gerbil Bath Time!

2008-09-19T22:14:00.004+01:00

Note: It's not a good idea to bath small animals as they could easily drown or choke if you are not careful. We only bathed the gerbils because we knew what we were doing and we didn't actually put them in a bath, we just put them in a shallow pool of water so their feet could touch the bottom, with their heads still easily above water. We also dried them straight away in towels so that they didn't get ill from being cold and wet.

Roadworks

2008-08-17T13:08:00.007+01:00

Pictures of the all night and all day roadworks that irritated everyone in my sister's nearby flat when I visited recently. I never knew roadworks were allowed to make noise all day and night!

Uffington White Horse

2008-08-16T20:43:00.017+01:00

On my recent roadtrip I drove through Oxfordshire. He who maketh me many cups of coffee accompanied me on my travels as we were looking for somewhere new to live. We decided to make a slight detour to Uffington where there is a white chalk horse figure in the hillside. It is thought to be the most ancient of the hill figures in Britain, perhaps dating back to around 1000BC. When I was standing on the very high hill looking across the valley, I tried to imagine that I had travelled back in time. I felt I could almost imagine that I had stepped back in time, because countryside surrounded me and there was only small hints of modern civilisation. Currently I live somewhere very flat (sadly I can't give specific details over the internet) with barely any hills and the hills that are known as hills where I live are really nothing compared to the hills of the west country. It was great to be standing on the enormous hill in Uffington and being able to see for miles, right to the horizon. It has been a while since I have seen such stunning views.
As you can see I have labelled where the chalk horse is on the photo in big red letters, because unless I had an aerial photo it would be hard to see where the horse is as you can only see part of it on the photo. Just infront of the white horse is Dragon Hill. Legend has it that St. George fought the dragon on top of this hill and becasue the blood of the dragon spilled onto the hill, no grass can ever grow on it. I think Vraie Fiction might be as excited by that as I was. I love legends, particularly one's with dragons. Some people think that the horse figure is actually meant to represent the dragon.

I miss Sky

2008-08-16T00:20:00.002+01:00

I can't sleep because I miss Sky. I watched an episode of Eastenders of all things, and Wellard the dog had to be put down because he was ill. I thought if Sky was ill, I couldn't be there for her because she lives in a different country now. I think about her everyday and I'm particularly sad this month because instead of having the time to go and visit her which I had been looking forward to, I have to do a lot of organising in preparation for the start of my course in September, including move house. I worry Sky will wonder where I am and that she might think that I don't love her because I'm not around. I'm sure some people might find it silly to feel so strongly about a dog, but she is special to me. Sometimes people say if you can't sleep you should write your worries down on a piece of paper so that they don't weigh on your mind. Well, I decided to go one step further and put it on a blog. I do have a lot of happy things to write about which I will do soon. I've got some very good pictures of my recent travels that I want to post and of course new Horace and Hermes pics.

Back from the dead...temporarily

2008-07-31T23:13:00.009+01:00

You may be surprised to see a new blog entry here. The last blog entry I made was 5 weeks ago! I admit I have given up with blogging, I think because:

1) Nothing interesting has been happening in my life and I don't think it would make entertaining reading to write depressing grumbles all the time

2) Blogging makes me feel like I am talking to myself and heightens my already growing suspicions of madness, although I suppose it helps to show family and friends what I have been up to

3) I've been going through a pure lazy phase

4) I prefer reading other people's blogs and seeing the pictures rather than updating my own

5) I don't feel blogging really achieves anything for me personally, except for staying in touch and I have facebook and email for that

Am I getting into depressing rambling already? Ok, so here's some good stuff then:

1) I have been fighting all year to get on to a Teacher Training course (PGCE in Secondary Religious Studies) starting this September and finally, I am getting somewhere. Just maybe I am slowing crawling out of that dark place of unemployment and a peasant lifestyle...hope it's not too good to be true.

2) I attended both interviews, the first lasted FOUR GRUELLING HOURS !!!!! and was the worst interview you could imagine x 10. Although the two ladies doing the interviewing were really friendly and made jokes to relax us all - it was a group interview. The second interview, at a completely different University, lasted just under 2 hours but is still excrutiatingly long for an interview don't you think!

3) A few days after completing the first interview, I received an offer of a place! I actually did my second interview only today. Right after the interview, they offered me a place there and then! One of the ladies even gave me a hug and seemed really impressed with my performance. I have to be honest, I have truly shocked myself by what I can achieve when I put my mind to it. I have actually achieved the 3rd stepping stone to a career in teaching which is my end goal. The 1st stepping stone was that I managed after trying much harder than I thought I would have to, to get the school work exxperience I needed in order to apply. The 2nd stepping stone was being offered the interviews for the course and you guessed it, the 3rd stepping stone is that I got offered a place on the course I want, twice! I just hope I can make it through the course because it's definitely going to be no easy task. I'm happy I've got this far. You know what though, I'm a bit of a funny one. First I worried that I wouldn't get offered an interview in the first place, then I get an interview and I worry that I'm not going to be good enough. Then I get offered a place at two different Universities and still I panic, this time about which place to pick, if I'm strong enough and tough enough to make it through the course and can I catch up with my subject knowledge...since I didn't do my degree in R.E!!! I find it more interesting than Art in terms of teaching though, so I'm taking a risk and going for what I really want to do. Or am I doing what I really want to do?? Arghhhhh! My poor worrying brain. I should be excited, but I am freaking out aswell as being excited.

4) I will be finally leaving the city I live in now for somewhere much nicer, hurray. Only got a month to move and organise everything though, eek!

5) So, to finish on a good note, as I fear I may have managed to write some bad stuff in the good stuff section after all, here is some pictures of my travels lately:

P.S To add another happy thing to this rather long blog post, here are some pictures of the silly way my gerbils sleep :-)

I am NOT 17 years old!!!!

2008-06-20T22:22:00.005+01:00

I have been doing quite a bit of work experience in Secondary Schools recently because I am going to apply to a teacher training course. I have quite enjoyed my experience, but there is something bothering me about it all. I know that I look younger than I really am and normally that doesn't bother me, I take it as a compliment because when I am 40 I might look 30 so it's a good thing.

However, every single day that I went to visit one particular school, both staff and students commented on my age. I am 23 years old (24 in 2 months) and have done a degree and had several jobs since finishing that degree. For some frustrating reason, none of the teachers bothered to find out who I was or to get some background information on me. Every hour I moved classrooms to see a different teacher and a different year group. So, naturally I met a lot of teachers and these were the worst offenders with making assumptions about my age because they should have asked who I was or asked sensible questions if they were going to try and guess my age. They never gave me the chance to explain who I was and frankly, since I could have been anyone, they should have asked me who I was!

The first embarrassing age incident was when one of the teachers came to have a friendly chat with me about why I was doing the work experience. I felt quite sorry for him because he was just being polite and making conversation. I could see that and respect that because some teachers didn't feel a need to say anything at all to me. He said something along the lines of ''so are you studying religious studies at A-Level at the moment? '' This would make me about 17 or 18 years old. So I politely said ''no'' and expained that I had done a degree in Art and had since decided to look at doing a PGCE in either R.E or Art. So then he asked ''so you're about 20?'' So again I very awkwardly said ''no I'm 23.'' The poor guy was then so embarrassed he practically ran into the classroom store cupboard to hide!! I tried to tell him my age in a way that wouldn't make him look stupid but he shouldn't have assumed I was really young even if I look it!

Another teacher said ''are you just visiting this school to observe lessons to see if you might like to be a teacher when you finish school?'' Arghhhh! How awkward did I feel? It's so humiliating trying to explain that you're about 7 years older than they think you are! Why do they have to make silly guesses at my age??

My absolute favourite comment was from an Art teacher who was excellent at his job and really had the students paying attention and respecting him. At the end of one of my observation days he came over to talk to me about teaching art and he gave me some really useful tips. However, he then made an ill thought out joke after I asked ''How long have you been teaching?'' He said ''I've been teaching at this school since 1989. So that's longer than you've been alive.'' He chuckled to himself and gave me a look that was saying he was an adult showing off his superior knowledge of life to a small child. So I said ''Hehe, no I've been around a bit longer than that'' He looked a little shocked but then said ''Well I started my teaching career in 1984....'' The way he said it was meant to show that if he hadn't been teaching at that school for longer than I'd been alive then at least he'd been teaching as a career for longer than I'd been alive. Nope! He'd assumed totally wrong again so I interrupted him and smiled and said ''Oh yes that's the year I was born'.' Well, he shouldn't have assumed should he! After that he stopped speaking to me like a child but he didn't seem too embarrassed, but then I had tried to say my age politely because he is a good teacher and was just trying to help so I didn't want to be rude.

I do wish the receptionist who had organised my work experience had sent an email to all the teachers who I was going to spend time with explaining my age and background information. I also wish that some of the teachers weren't so rude because none of them introduced me to the students and I was just asked to sit at the back of the classroom. So, inevitably, the students asked me silly questions but I can't blame them because they weren't introduced to me and I am aware that I look young. I had so many of them say ''Miss, are you a Sixth Former?'' ''Miss, do you go to this school?'' I was pleased when some students asked ''Miss, are you a teacher?'' ''Miss, are you an inspector?'' I had made the effort to look smart and dress formally every day, but there's nothing you can do when you have a young face, you just can't change it! Ah well, it was all quite funny really but also a little insulting!

Thanks Mum and Dad

2008-06-11T12:20:00.003+01:00

Thank you Mum and Dad for my yummy, unique chocolates that came through the post this morning :-) They put a big smile on my face. They are too nice to eat! - though I'm sure I'll force myself to eat them :p xxx

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-05-28T23:27:00.004+01:00

Well I have finally seen the film that I have been dying to see since I first heard distant whispers of its being made. I have to put this blog post up because I am determined to defend this new interpretation of Indiana Jones. Being a HUGE fan of Indiana Jones from the original trilogy, my opinion could have swayed easily either way. I could have watched the new film and thought that it was rubbish and just couldn't compare to the originals. Or I could have come out thinking that it fits in well with the originals or is a good film in its own right. Happily for me I thought that the latter was true. I was gripped through the whole film and I praise it highly for sticking to the same style of filming. It was a lot of the little things that gave me a smile like the cobwebs floating around everywhere, which features so much in the originals. Or the way Indiana is still precious over his hat, or the way there were a lot of comedy references to the original trilogy, or the way the new film didnt't take itself too seriously. I felt a bit sad that Harrison Ford is much older now because it means watching his character Indiana be older, although they joke about that in the film too. I'm so glad they have made this fourth film and I thought it worked really well having a younger character to balance out the older Indy. I was also happy to see the character of Marion back too because she is my favourite of the women in all the films. I'm very tired now as it's past my bedtime as I have smelly work tomorrow so in all honesty I can't write my little film review properly but after reading people saying that they thought the Crystal Skull lacked plot blah blah blah I had to rush to its defense!!! :-) Overall, I thought it was very watchable and yes, while I could pick a few flaws, it was for the majority a lot of fun.

Belated birthday present for Vraie Fiction

2008-05-26T00:17:00.008+01:00

I decided to make Vraie Fiction a garden gnome for his birthday as he is quite a fan of little ornaments. On a recent group holiday to France he seemed quite taken with small model witches (they were rather scary looking and ugly!), fairies and gnomes. A fair few shops in France sold tourist trinkets and ornaments of such creatures and I have to admit I was intrigued by them myself, they had a certain charm, and I nearly bought a fairy figurine. However, they all had two flaws in my opinion. Flaw number 1: they were ugly! Flaw number 2: They were poorly crafted in the same tourist shop style. Well...I thought to myself, I could do a better job than that. I could build a prettier fairy or a craftily constructed gnome or a mesmerising witch. Ok, so I may not have all the materials and tools to make an art piece to perfection and my artistic talent may not be fully developed, but I still had the confidence that I could do better than the tourist shops. After all, if you had seen the fairytale efforts in the shops you may have agreed. So, from the materials I had around the house and with the help of a plant pot from a local garden centre, I constructed the happy-looking garden gnome below.

Last weekend's chocolate cake...wish it was still here

2008-05-24T01:44:00.008+01:00

I haven't found the motivation to write any long blogs lately, particularly ones that at least come close to sounding half way intelligent or philosophical. I can't quite figure out why that is but maybe it's a combination of tiredness from working and sometimes feeling like blogging is pointless. However, when ever I do get stuck into writing a 'proper' blog I do enjoy it and find I have a lot to say. Right now though, I am again feeling like I have mush for brains and I'm also very sleepy...well it is 2.03am! So I'm afraid it is another relatively short blog involving no wit or charm and in this case, it's about my chocolate cake that I baked from scratch last weekend. The cake turned out to be massive because it rose so much. I was worried it was going to sink because I hadn't baked in so long! It was rather tasty if I do say so myself, even though I used a runny icing in the middle which made it resemble slightly Vraie Fiction's catastrophe cake :p hehe

Animal Watch

2008-05-13T22:43:00.005+01:00

My pet gerbils, Horace and Hemes, love their new toy. We bought them a plant pot which they curl up in and peek over the top of. They also like to chew and naw through string but we only let them do it while we are watching to makesure it is safe. I love them to bits they are just so cute and funny to watch.

A gaggle of geese chased me across a field when I was out walking the other day. They scare me a bit because they can really pick up some waddle speed! I think they might have had baby geese nearby so they were protective.

Can you see the squirrel hiding in the tree?

My blog is having technical problems

2008-05-08T22:32:00.003+01:00

SORRY MY MY BLOG IS HAVING SOME TECHNICAL PROBLEMS. I CHANGED THE BACKGROUND TEMPLATE TO PINK AND NOW NEARLY ALL MY IMAGES SEEM TO HAVE BEEN LOST..... I'M HOPING IT WILL FIX ITSELF OTHERWISE I WILL HAVE TO SLOWLY SLOWLY SLOWLY PUT ALL THE PICTURES BACK IN AGAIN FROM SCRATCH!!!!! HOPEFULLY BY THE TIME ANY OF YOU READ THIS MY BLOG WILL BE FEELING BETTER :-)

ANTS!!!

2008-05-04T20:55:00.003+01:00

We have an infestation of ants in our kitchen. It started with a few and now there are hundreds...literally. They have been running around the food cupboards, window sill, kitchen tiles, floor and they cluster a lot around the window frame and washing machine. Just look how many ants are on the upside down Tesco card! I think the ants got in through the gaps in the window because as you can see from the photo, it hasn't been cared for by the landlord! I feel sad and mean killing the ants but it had to be done as there is too many and I'm getting that feeling all the time like they are crawling all over me because there are so many...yuk! I have cleaned the kitchen so many times and have left no food around but the ants are relentless. I hate sharing my home with them :-(

Horace and Hermes news

2008-05-03T18:56:00.003+01:00

We made them a maze out of toilet rolls and kitchen rolls...

<----- Horace and Hermes love to naw and shred pieces of cardboard

<------ We discovered that Hermes loves to be sung to! His favourite are whistling tunes but he likes anything with a tune. When he hears singing he stops whatever he's doing and stands on his hind legs to listen. We know he likes it because he is the more nervous of the two brothers and normally he runs around being a bit jumpy and scared....but when he hears singing he calms down.

Three different walks

2008-05-03T03:01:00.002+01:00

Ady and I went on three different walks recently and I really appreciated all of them. Fresh air and pretty countryside (there's not much to be found where I live) was just what I needed. Sometimes I desperately need to get out of the house and explore and be active!

How do I shape up as an interior designer?

2008-04-27T18:39:00.008+01:00

As I now have my own place (of sorts), I now have the freedom to express a bit of myself through the design of the house. I would paint the walls if I could but since I'm renting I had better not. So, I'm limited to picking what I think are good colours for bed throws, cushions, bath mats, shower curtains, towels and candles etc. All on a tight budget too! I have used a touch of Egyptian colour in that I have mostly stuck to browns, golds and blues. I went to Dunelm recently, which is a large home furnishings store, and they had a large range of beautiful cushions in every colour and style. I was well behaved though and didn't buy any cushions, even though I specifically drove to Dunelm in order to purchase cushions. I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on them in the end since I am a pauper with no job! Eek! So, as a compromise, I browsed their section of different coloured fake flowers and twigs and then I hand picked a few blue and brown ones to make the arrangement above. The flower shaped lampshade I bought from Ikea, and as with all Ikea things, it came flat-pack so I had to construct it myself which I am proud of. I think it looks beautiful.

Horace and Hermes pictures

2008-04-27T18:36:00.002+01:00

BEETLEJUICE O Day Banana Boat Song Harry Belafonte

2008-04-27T04:39:00.001+01:00

BEETLEJUICE O Day Banana Boat Song Harry Belafonte

2008-04-27T04:37:00.003+01:00

For some strange reason I love this scene and this song, even though I am not particularly bothered about the film. I used to watch it on repeat by rewinding a tape of it again and again...how sad!

Horace and Hermes

2008-04-26T23:42:00.001+01:00

We have decided to name the gerbils Horace and Hermes. Only trouble is we can't tell the gerbils apart yet because they both look exactly the same!!

French milk....

2008-04-26T14:52:00.003+01:00

...smells of rotten eggs. I'm not sure if it's the chemicals or packaging but yuk! Where's the milk that smells of milk?

Two Gerbils! They don't have names yet, any ideas?

2008-04-25T19:21:00.011+01:00

My blog has been abandoned for quite some time due to me not having the internet available. How I have missed the internet! I've got the internet back now hurray :-) I'm starting off my new wave of blog posts with the announcement of my two new pets - two baby gerbils. I have had a zoo of animals surrounding me while I was growing up because I love animals. For each animal that I had while growing up, at least several months, even years, of begging and nagging of the parents occured before I eventually wore them down and was allowed to build up my collection of beautiful and entertaining animals. If my parents were still in the country I doubt they would be happy about my two new best friends but since they are infact in another country, I feel I am safe from their wrath. Wahahaha. Ok so I know my parents will read this, so hello parents! What I am saying is that there is nothing you can do about it but don't worry, I will give the gerbils the best care they could get and they put a smile on my face.

Here is a list of all the types of pets that I have had that I can think of and some stories to match some of them:

Fish With the first fish that I had, I was not the best of owners. I admit it. I now believe that children should not have pets and that they shouldn't even be sold in pet shops. I was just a tiddler when I had those fish and at the time I had a very strange friend who also had a pet fish. She told me that fish like to be held and cuddled, thrown and played with. I didn't know she was wrong. So once, I picked my own fish up out of the water.....and threw it at the wall to see if it would stick. I am NOT proud of that and I feel sick thinking about the suffering I caused. The fish amazingly survived for a while after once back in the water. I guess I'm writing it down to admit my sin but I don't know that I deserve forgiving. Once I realised that this was a bad way to treat animals, I vowed to myself that I would never mistreat an animal again. I wouldn't ever want to cause pain and suffering to an animal.

Cat Her name was Tabatha. I still miss Tabby. She was a stray cat and I felt sorry for her and so I let her walk in to our house through the front door while Mum was talking on the phone and couldn't move to stop me. Originally Mum wanted the cat to leave, but I think it was winter so she said the cat could stay till it was a bit warmer. Mum got attached to Tabby though so happily Tabby lived with us permanently. She used to literally walk me to school and then when I came home she would be waiting under a bush to walk me back home. Perhaps she just saw me as the food bringer and tin opener though. I think she was an affectionate creature though. Not only that, towards the end of her days we discovered she was blind. We don't know how long she was blind for but you wouldn't have known because she was great at getting about.

Jirds Brilliant, athletic and friendly pets. We had x3 of them and they were brothers that we named Indy (after Indiana Jones), Thursday and Pip. We only bought x2 of the brothers at first but then we felt horribly guilty for leaving the third brother alone in the pet shop so we rushed back and bought the last jird brother home. The jirds never would bite and they could leap great distances across chairs and slide down the backs of them.There is one story that haunts me though. Once my sister dropped a jird in the bath, she rescued him straight away but he needed drying off. I don't know why because it was a STUPID idea but we used a hairdryer to dry him off. We stopped straight away because...oh it's just awful, it made his eyes bleed from the heat. It was an accident and if we had known it would hurt him we wouldn't have done it in a million years. I still feel very very guilty about it but there is sort of a happy ending, because those jird brothers lived a long and I think happy life, including this unfortunate hairdried jird.

Chinchilla Very fast runner and very fluffy! Brilliant because he was unusual.

Rat Very friendly, cuddly and clean. He used to sit on my shoulder and tickle my ears.

Stick insects A girl at school was giving baby ones away for free so I got one. He was interesting to watch because he danced around his tank. They sway from side to side a lot. Once I had him though I realised I was too afraid to touch him becasue I don't really like creepy crawlies but I looked after him well. They don't need handling to be happy.

Garden snails/ladybirds/frogs/tadpoles/slugs - I was very little when I 'rescued' these from the garden.

Degus I had two Degus and they surprised me because I was told they were boys but turned out one was a girl because there were some little baby degus in the cage one day! Very cute they were too. I feel guilty because I gave them away and I can't remember why. I remember running to tell Mum that they had babies and I was really worried because I thought Mum would be very angry because neither of my parents were ever happy about me getting animals even though I somehow ended up with a zoo. She laughed her head off though....after all it wasn't my fault that one had been infact a girl and I bet my scared face was a picture!

Quails I have to say these don't make good pets. They were constantly frightened. I couldn't find a way to tame them and they just ran about very quickly and hurt themselves a bit from running into things! We had to give them away to someone with a larger bird cage.

Dog She is called Sky and she is retired in France with my parents. She is just wonderful and there are too many funny stories to even fit in to a blog post. I love her more than everything and miss her very much.

Guinea pigs We started with x2 guinea pigs and they were cuddly and friendly and named Daisy and Venessa. Good pets they were. When they went to guinea pig heaven we bought x2 more guinea pigs and again, I don't know why but we gave them away to my brother. I think because I wasn't a good enough owner in a way because maybe I got lazy and didn't want to clean them out and just wanted to play with them. I remember Dad doing a lot of the cleaning! Sorry Dad! I'm not like that anymore though.

I have listed these pets in no particular order of when I had them. Getting back to the two pets and only pets that I now have to look after....my GERBILS!!! I just love them. They are so small at the moment but very ridiculously cute. They have big eyes and tiny paws. They are incredibly active and learn new things quickly. They are slowly getting used to me and Adrian and they crack us up all the time because they do the funniest things sometimes like standing on top of eachother and making eachother squeak or sleeping in the excercise wheel instead of the bed. Today we made a maze for them out of DVD's and they seemed to enjoy that. They also love their excercise ball and are really good at steering it. Here's a video of one gerbil in the maze:

My blog has been neglected :-( Even this blog entry is not well written because it is rushed!!

2008-04-06T18:59:00.010+01:00

Due to me moving homes recently, I have not had the internet for some time and so I'm afraid my blog has become neglected and is not up to date. Now I have so much to catch up on with my blog that I think I will just squash all the events since I lost the internet into one blog entry! Unfortunately, my blog will soon be abandoned again temporarily soon after this entry, because I am only able to write on my blog now because I am borrowing my parents internet as I am in France visiting them. Once I return to England on thursday, I will not have the internet again until I figure out how to get it set up. I have some brilliant pictures for this entry but I will add them in once I get back to England because I don't have my cable here for uploading the pictures.

So, as I said, I have been moving homes and everything is a bit chaotic. I've been slowly unpacking my stuff in the new house but it's difficult because the place came unfurnished and I have very few places to put things. The move happened just before I went on holiday with my other half to Brittany to see my parents and for that week I was sleeping on an airbed and with no sofa I was sitting on a director's chair which is OK but not for long periods of time. From sitting on the canvas chair and sleeping on an airbed I was in so much pain from being uncomfortable that I had to go to hospital the night before travelling to France! Everything was OK though, nothing too serious so I was ready to catch the Eurostar the next day. I have never been on the Eurostar before and I found it very fast and smooth. It also tilts quite a bit and goes up and down small hills which feels a bit weird. I had always thought that on the Eurostar you spend most of the time in a pitch black tunnel but it was quite varied between being in a tunnel and being outside.

My sister and her husband were already in France visiting my parents as we had arranged to go at a similar time to eachother. They stayed in France for a week and myself and Adrian for 2 weeks...so we are still in France at the mo, hurray! My parents took us all on several days out:

The forest of Broceliande
This is where the French claim to have links to the legend of Merlin and King Arthur and everything else associated with this - the knights of the round table, Morgan Le Fay, Vivien, Lady of the Lake etc. I was very intrigued to go on this particular trip because I have always been fascinated by legends and the legend of Merlin with all the magic that this entails is great for the imagination. The place itself was stunning. There were gorgeous variations in the trees, meandering rivers, lakes, hills and a beautiful waterfall. There is a trail you can follow around the forest to see different locations connected to the legend. We visited a striking golden tree, a lake said to be the mirror of the fairies, Merlin's tomb and the Fountain of Youth. Photos to follow when I get the internet back in England!

La Gacilly
A small village that we went to with only about 5 shops, most of which were closed even though it was a weekday. I still don't understand the opening times of French shops because no matter when I go to them, a lot of them will be closed so I don't know how they make a living but then maybe they don't need much out here. The pace of life seems a lot slower than England and it does not seem over-populated. Nearly everywhere is beautiful through either forest-filled countryside or cobbled, rustic villages.

Guer

A slightly larger village but somehow it still had hardly any shops open. Still, it was very pretty and I enjoyed exploring it with Mum because she is always good company and was very excited by a library at the top of the hill! We all got something tasty to eat from the bakery in the centre of the village.

Rochefort en Terre

I visited here today (6th April). My sister and her husband left for England on the 2nd April so it was just me, Adrian, Mum and Dad. Adrian and I have visited Rochefort once before at Christmas and it's still just as lovely. It's a small village on a steep hill with a castle at the top. There were several shops with fairy figurines in but they were all a bit ugly; if they were a bit nicer I would have bought one. There was also a leather shop, a biscuit shop and a shop with traditional Breton products. We stopped to have a chocolate crepe and a coffee and cider in a little restaurant.

..........................................................................................................................

The Mark of Cain

2008-03-17T01:39:00.004Z

The Mark of Cain
One-off drama about British soldiers in Iraq, focusing on two lifelong friends as they face complex situations and make instant moral judgements during their first tour of duty. Originally hoping to return home with tales of heroism, the men are permanently affected by what they see, and find their lives changed irrevocably. Starring Gerard Kearns, Matthew McNulty, Leo Gregory and Shaun Dooley

Description copied from TV Guide UK TV Listings. Channel 4

I watched the end half of this program and I was very disturbed by what I saw. I would put pictures up but it would be too graphic and they may be copywrite protected anyway. There were gruesome torture scenes and extreme violence but I was horrified and fascinated at the same time. I felt sickened watching the things that might have happened to prisoners in real life and no matter what crimes they may or may not have done, I just cannot justify such evil behaviour. Although obviously the program was only acting, it is in part based on truth. It even caused a heated debate between myself and the other half! We both have very different viewpoints even though we both strongly disagree that such treatment is acceptable of prisoners. I suppose it is hard to make a proper judgement since I have not myself been a soldier.

Having fun with photoshop

2008-03-17T01:29:00.003Z

New hair cut - well just a fringe and tidy up really! I MISS MY GHD STRAIGHTENER'S!!!

2008-03-16T00:51:00.005Z

I've been writing some quite long blogs recently, so here is a couple of short blogs about my hair and then a frog! After that there is another long blog of me whinging!!!

Frog on a blog!

2008-03-16T00:42:00.005Z

The strange fellow that lives with me (aka the other half) found a frog in the dark on Friday. It hopped across the road and stopped on the grass, so I took some pictures. The strange fellow told me off though because he said I must have blinded the poor frog with all the flashing and frightened it half to death. Not to worry though as it soon hopped off to enjoy a different patch of grass. I'm actually really pleased that he told me off because it shows he cares about animals a lot; he doesn't realise how much he likes animals. He is always commenting on animals and worries about the welfare of animals. Brilliant! :-)

What a bad day - BEWARE it is a long list of me just complaining!!!

2008-03-15T23:29:00.008Z

Yesterday, 14th March

I had a pretty RUBBISH day. I spent a lot of money going to London on a journey that was meant to be very informative and useful. At the Science Museum, in London, there was a TDA - Turn Your Talent To Teaching event. I was hoping to attend to get a lot of useful information about teaching as I want to become a teacher myself. When I got there, there were a few different stands representing different Universities, but none of them were where I wanted to go to. So that was pretty pointless, but there were seminars about teaching so I booked myself into one about how to make a successful GTTR application. Unfortunately, all the people in the room appeared to be morons and asked stupid questions, generally the same one, which was they didn't understand how to explain what they had done on their degree - as a section on the GTTR form asks you to explain what things your degree covered. At least 3 people asked how to do this section even though it had already been explained several times and was frankly obvious! These people shouldn't even be teachers. Worryingly though, I am sure some of them will get on courses. The seminar itself was catered towards morons, explaining the very basics of the GTTR form such as relate your personal statement to wanting to be a teacher and that to select answers, click on the drop down menus etc.

The 2 speakers holding the seminar handed round sheets with 3 different genuine personal statements on it. The first statement was from a person wanting to teach english, the second one history and the third was art. We were all asked to read the statements and then put up your hand for which statement was well written and should get an interview. Statement 1 was for an english teacher, but there were loads of spelling mistakes and poorly constructed sentences. It also had a childish writing style. The 2nd statement was ok but not brilliantly phrased. The 3rd statement said nothing about wanting to be a teacher. I said the people at the seminar were morons...they proved it again by quite a few of them putting up their hand for the first statement being the best one - an english teacher that can't spell! So I definitely think these morons should not be teachers. The rest picked the second statement including myself. The 2 speakers asked everyone to put up their hand if they could say why the other two statements were not as good as this one. The morons managed to notice that the language wasn't very articulate in the first statement, but they failed to notice the glaring spelling mistakes so I was brave and put my hand up to say there were spelling mistakes. Honestly, some people shouldn't teach. Anyway, basically the whole trip to London was a waste of time and money except for a pair of pretty pink leg warmers I bought from Primark for £1. Anyway, I've really spent too long talking about my wasted trip to London!

To make things's worse that evening though, when I drove home and parked the car, I discovered my front window wouldn't shut! It had falllen of its runner and was totally out of place and no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the window to go back up. So, not wanting to leave my window open all night, I called my car rescue service. After about an hour, they came out. The guy looked at it and said unfortunately there was nothing he could do. It was firmly out of place and needed a mechanic. By this time it was late at night and I was tired, so I thanked the rescue service man anyway and stuck a bin liner over the window (that was his advice to protect the car from the weather) and I left my car vunerable all night. Luckily, it was still there in the morning but also, apparently Corsa's are very difficult to steal.

Today, 15th March

This morning was horribly stressful. My good friend was coming to visit at about 11.30am which I was really excited about but I had to find a garage to fix my car at first. I rang around several and finally found one nearby. The only problem was that they could only fit me in at 11.30am which was when I was meant to be meeting my friend. So I let my friend know about the garage and as always, he was very kind and didn't mind waiting. The rescue service man from last night had told me that the job to fix the window should definitely not take a mechanic more than half an hour to fix and should not cost more than £50. So when I went to the garage today, I was very annoyed to see that the mechanic was a grumpy man that obviously thought that because I was a girl he could pull the wool over my eyes and before he had even looked at the car he told me I needed a very expensive part putting in, so I knew he was lying!!! I needed the car fixed though so I let him look at the car. The time ticked slowly by and I was getting later and later to pick my friend up from the station, which I felt really guilty about since he had made the effort to travel to visit. It took the mechanic's team of people an hour and a half to tell me that it still needed an expensive part, a regulator, because it was totally mashed up - apparently. So I said I didn't want to pay for the part and that I just wanted the window winding up to the top so that I can just permanently leave it closed rather than pay for the part. He was a really weird mechanic, very rude and grumpy with no manners and I could strangely also imagine him doing Elvis impersonations in his free time, he was middle-aged with a big quiff! I think he took longer to do the job because I said I didn't want to pay for the part. I also started getting irritated because I knew he was deliberately taking ages to bump up the labour costs, I could even see the team of mechanics just sitting around doing nothing through the back door!!!

In the end he charged me £20 for just doing nothing but it was still less than I imagined he would have charged so I just accepted it. My boyfriend had to pay though as my card has been cancelled or something as it's near it's expiry date, so a new one has been sent out but it hasn't arrived yet so I have no access to money :-( Another rubbish thing to add to the list. On the bright side, when I eventually picked up my friend I had a really good day and it was so nice to see a familiar face and have a good catch up.

7 things that I am greatful for

2008-03-11T17:39:00.003Z

Following on from what my sister's blog mentions - five things that you are greatful for - here are seven (7 because I can use the colours of the rainbow) of mine:

1.) Sky - my hilarious, ridiculous and friendly dog

2.) My parents and other family for supporting me when I need them

3.) The strange male that lives with me and makes me laugh every day and does all those little things that matter - like making me a drink every morning!

4.) That I am moving next week into my own place. I just can't wait to not have to share with messy housemates

5.) That I don't work in the horrible working environment of that bank I worked for for over a year (it is red and involves a squirrel - a clue)

6.) That I am not a chav and not one of those moron people that I have mentioned

7.) That I can enjoy computer games because so many girls don't which is a shame

Final day of Primary School work experience

2008-03-10T22:25:00.004Z

I have made it in one piece! I have completed my last day of work experience in the primary school. Today was my most challenging day I think. In the morning, I went to ask the lady (as I have done every morning) who first accepted me for work experience, what classes she wanted me to spend time with that day. She said she would leave it up to me, which was great although this meant that I had to awkwardly go and find some teachers that I had never met before to ask if I could observe some lessons. I could have chosen to stick with my favourite Year 3 class and looking back on it, I wish I had spent the day with them again because they are just so sweet and they really like me being there. I wanted to challenge myself though so I decided to find a Year 4 class to go to for the morning and a Year 6 class for the afternoon. I hunted down the Year 4 teacher who I had very briefly met previously because I was meant to be in her class last Friday but instead I opted to stay an extra day with the Year 3 class and so did not in the end go to her class. Today, she was not very amused when I asked if I could spend the day in her class because she said that she had already arranged stuff for me to do last Friday and I didn't turn up, but it wasn't my fault the kids in Year 3 really wanted me to stay an extra day and the general treatment of my work experience so far had been unstructured in that there have not been any tasks planned for me. I have always been able to go into any class I like as long as the teacher's haven't minded. I didn't know she had stuff planned for me; oh well, I apologised anyway and she seemed to cheer up. At that point though, I wanted to go back to the nice teacher of Year 3 and the kids that appreciated me but it would have looked rude to leave. This teacher luckily did cheer up when she saw that I got stuck in with helping. I went round each table of children while they were reading their books quietly. Something that I have surprised myself with is that I have never once been nervous when speaking to the kids and even to large groups of them at a time. The teacher (I hate saying 'the teacher' but it wouldn't be safe to use actual names I guess) said that whatever table I went to I could engage the children in any discussions that I liked while all the other tables had to remain silent. Naturally, none of the other tables did stay quiet and so there were lots of children being shouted at. I had some fun conversations with each table. This has been the only lesson where the teacher has allowed me to talk to the kids about general stuff, as normally I have to keep it strictly work related which I understand. I loved being able to ask them anything though. I learned that a lot of kids are very lucky and most of them have Nintendo Wii's I'm so jealous - I don't have one! Some kids talked to me about their parents being divorced and the new boyfriend/girlfriend of the parent which was really interesting to hear about and they were surprisingly mature and OK with it. I learned about all the different pets the children had. One girl told me she had a pet horse but it died in a cold winter :-( A couple of the kids lived on farms or had relatives with farms.

I watched the kids do some handwriting practice. I helped them to construct exciting sentences using made-up character's and bad weather conditions - one of their literacy lessons on nouns and time connectives i.e Today(time connective), Mr Smith was walking home from the shop in a good mood until a strong gust of wind swept him over backwards and he broke his leg. As with all the classes I have helped with, there was a wide range of ability levels. Only a very few of the children were able to write imaginative and well constructed sentences. The same ability differentiation happened in their Numeracy lesson. It was a lesson on how to tell the time. I was sat with a table of four boys who struggle the most with their work. I was given a plastic clock model with moving hands and I had to try and explain how to read the time. It seems like an easy thing to do, but not at all when they are all trying to shout over eachother and one boy even thought he could be the teacher and kept trying to tell me how I should be reading the clock and kept trying to snatch the clock and move the hands for me. To be honest it was quite funny because he had a big ego for someone so small, he kept patronising the other kids and telling me that he was very clever and that he knew more than everyone else. To be fair he was the best at the telling time compared to the other three boys who were not even listening very well because they were too busy mucking about, so in the end, my teacher voice came out and it worked. I managed to get them to listen and understand what quarter past, half past and quarter to meant. Then they had to write this all up in their books and they kept daydreaming or chatting and not copying down from the board the facts about time. They were writing really slowly and were waaaay behind the rest of the class. I don't think it's because they couldn't do the work but rather that they just wanted to mess about! One of the tasks was to think of actions you could do in 1 second i.e blink/clap/click your fingers and another was to think what could be done in 1 minute i.e play a game/tell a joke. The rest of the class found it easy but these guys were just not even trying. They were shouting ridiculous things out or if not they were repeating the same idea that I had already given them which was blink because they couldn't be bothered to think of their own. It was helpful to me to be faced with a particularly challenging group because it gives me the chance to work on my authority skills and regaining control of bad behaviour and also helping the kids in a positive way so that they feel more confident in their abilities. Generally I am very patient and I was with these kids, but I had to use my teacher voice because of the silly behaviour. Fair enough if they genuinely wanted help and were struggling because in that case I am more than willing to help and have a lot of patience. Assembly today was rather boring so I will leave out what happened...which was nothing much! I never did like assembly.

After lunch, I went to find a Year 6 teacher. Immediately I knew she wasn't one of the nicest teacher's I have met. I asked her if she would mind me observing her lesson for the afternoon and I asked if maybe I could help out. She replied by sarcastically saying 'well you certainly wont be observing I will be expecting you to help out and be very busy!' I'm sorry but that was a bit cheeky of her because I am volunteering my own free time to help and while my experience helps me get onto my course, I am still there to be helpful so it is quite rude to be so bossy. Obviously I hadn't meant that I wouldn't get stuck in and help, I was just being polite because some teacher's have preferred me to merely observe lessons rather than physically help out so I thought it best to ask her what she would mind me doing. She brought me into the classroom but didn't tell me where to sit and didn't introduce me to the class even though they were all looking at me because they wanted to know who I was. She seemed to just ignore me and get on with teaching but then finally she introduced me. The class was then split into groups of 3-4 children and told that they were going to have a special science afternoon. They were going to learn about Cantilevers - which I admit I couldn't for the life of me think what they were but the word sounded familiar. Turns out it's just a test to see how much weight a stick can take and how best to support the stick (ok so that's my simplified idea of it). I remembered doing it at school as soon as I saw the equipment. They were given 2 sheets of newspaper each and had to devise a way to make a pole out of it using only masking tape and scissors. They then had to tape one end of the pole to the table with 50cm of it sticking horizontally out in the air. I wandered round all the tables and gave a lot of them clues about the strongest method of making the pole - to roll the newspaper up tightly. Incidentally, something I forgot to mention. At the beginning of this lesson, the teacher had asked me to check through all the pages of the newspaper incase of any inappropriate pages like naked women. Why the teacher had bought a bunch of The Sun newspapers rather than a sensible one I don't know because every other page was a naked woman! Now as it happens, unfortunately I overlooked one such image of a woman in a skimpy bikini and very unfortunately it ended up on the table of the silliest boys table and they started giggling and showing the rest of the class. The teacher glared at me and snatched the paper off them. Woops! heehee.

Anyway, as I was saying. After wandering around all the tables I was asked to help with the boys table that found the work particularly difficult. Again, just as in the Year 4 class, these Year 6 boys were only not able to do the work I think because they were misbehaving, shouting and running around with scissors! One poor boy in the group I felt really sorry for because he was trying really hard but the others were spoiling it for him and I found myself feeling a little annoyed that the teacher had mixed a lovely, hard working boy in with a bunch of loud and boisterous kids. Well, there was only one thing for it...... yep, my teacher voice came out again and I shouted at them to stop being lazy and to get on with it. I explained that they were being very unfair on the boy who was actually working hard for the table. Happily, my shouting pretty much worked and I got them trying harder and concentrating more. Then after all the tables had made their newspaper sticks (cantilevers) they then had to test them for strength by placing metal weights in a plastic cup (with string attached like a little bucket) at different points along the stick to determine the weakest points of the stick. Most people's sticks collapsed and sagged downwards at the first test of weight. Later they learned about other ways to strengthen the stick like my adding string and supporting columns. I think the lack of convincing cantilevers was down to the general noise levels and lack of concentration in the class, because although their teacher shouts a lot, she didn't seem to have much control of the class. A lot of the 'sticks' weren't made very well with the odd exception of some very neatly crafted one's and I don't know if there was anything in it, but the neat and well structured ones came from the girl groups. It's funny because this Year 6 group behaved quite badly but all the younger classes behaved almost perfectly! Still, it was a good challenge for me and it was good to teach some of the older kids because although I found them more challenging than the younger classes, I still know that I want to teach older children at a secondary school. I'm sure the secondary pupils will mess around and be a challenge, but I like a challenge and I like having good conversations with them and teaching more complicated things.

My day was over and my last thing to do was say goodbye again to my lovely Year 3 class who I made a special visit to at the end of the day. I got lots of hugs and one girl said that when I became a teacher, I had to let her know at what school so that she could come and be in my class! How sweet! I gave a thank you card to the teacher of Year 3 who has always been very good to me and then when I had said my goodbyes I made one last visit to the lady who organised my work experience for me and gave her a card aswell. She also said she would be happy to give me a reference and she seemed a little disappointed that I wasn't doing more work experience. I felt really guilty knowing that I had decided on doing secondary teaching rather than primary but I still loved my time spent at the school and I will actually miss some of the children. It has been far more useful and fun than I had imagined it would be. I feel good that I have helped children and made them happy.

Some more experience at the school

2008-03-07T22:50:00.005Z

Yesterday - 6th March 2008

Yesterday, I went to Reading to attend a meeting at Reading University about the GTP route into teaching. I took the day off from my work experience to go to the meeting and the school didn't mind. I wanted to learn more about this route because I thought it might be a good option for me rather than PGCE as you get paid a salary of around £14-£15k to work and train as a teacher. Plus applications are still being accepted whereas the PGCE primary deadlines have gone and I wouldn't be able to do the primary PGCE route for this september because at the time of application I didn't have the relevant experience. However, from doing my primary school work experience, I have come to the conclusion that I would actually prefer to be a secondary school teacher after all, which means I can still potentially get onto a PGCE for this September because the application deadline isn't until June. This is not to say that I haven't been enjoying my primary school work experience, because I really have enjoyed it very much and I have learned a lot more than I thought I would. I am opting for secondary now though because after teaching the older kids in the primary school, I have realised that I prefer teaching the older kids rather than the younger ones, because I get the chance to do more complex work with them etc. Also, it seems I would get paid more to do secondary school teaching and I could also specialise in Art and Religious Studies I think, which are two of my favourite subjects. In primary I would have to teach all subjects which I am not sure that I would want to do. I wouldn't have been able to know that I wanted to do secondary teaching without first doing the primary experience so my time spent in the school has been invaluable. Plus I have had a fantastic time! There are other reasons that have made me want to do secondary teaching but I think I have waffled enough! Anyway, the GTP meeting in reading has made me rule out the GTP route to secondary because I found out that you only get a QTS qualification from the GTP route and it means that you would not be qualified to teach in Scotland, Ireland and a lot of places abroad. I figure if you are going to work just as hard as a PGCE student then you should get the same qualifications but it seems you don't. You also don't get a University certificate or any modules towards a masters, wheras all this you get with a PGCE. PGCE seems just more varied and interesting as you switch schools through the course and get extra qualifications. So...PGCE here I come!

Today - 7th March 2008

I was back in the primary school today with my favourite Year 3 class that I have got to know quite well in a short space of time. I promised the Year 3 class, who I spent the day with on Wednesday 5th March, that I would come back to their class today for the whole day again (because they asked me to come back and because their teacher was OK with that). In the morning I listened to two children read and helped them if they got stuck. Then I sat with a table that was allocated to me to help and helped them finish their numeracy work from Wednesday which was bar graphs. They all finished with a few minutes to spare before break time so I allowed them to ask questions and I answered them - normally they ask questions all the time anyway that are not necessarily work related and I have to tell them to concentrate. I indirectly got a bit in trouble with their teacher though because several times the teacher started shouting at my table to be quiet and only talk about work, so I guess she was sort of telling me to keep them more in line. I like listening to their questions and stuff though and I didn't know if it's my place to tell them off so I let them talk a bit but after the teacher not being happy with that I became stricter! Then came assembly. The children's parents were in from the lower years in the school to watch the little ones do readings about St Davids Day. I had to sit with the parents rather than the teachers and I got some dirty looks from parents. I know why and it made me laugh. They must have thought I was a young teenage mum (because I look only about 17/18 a lot of people say)and because I was sat with the parents. I also didn't have a video camera like all the parents so I think they thought I wasn't interested in my child, even though little did they know I don't have one! After assembly, came P.E. One of the teacher's was off sick so I was given half the class to teach - it was a different Year 3 class and I had to teach all by myself! Great experience though. I was teaching them basic tennis skills and I had to really shout across the playground at times and think on my feet because I wasn't given time to plan a lesson so I made up activities like asking them to work on their own and try to keep the ball in the air by bouncing the ball on the racket to see how many times they could bounce it before losing control of the ball. I then put them into pairs and got them to try making one bounce on the ground only before they hit it back to eachother . After P.E, I helped my favourite Year 3 class again and the kids had to make up imaginary animals as in a few weeks time they are having a sculpture maker come in to look at their ideas and then help them to create a sculpture. The kids were aksed to draw an imaginary creature, such as something completely random or perhaps a shark's head and a horse's body. Some kids had really good ideas. Some struggled to even think of one type of animal! As usual, all the kids were shouting for my help at once so I had to be firm and say to stay quiet until I got round to their table. I was a bit shocked and embarrassed because a couple of kids started crying because even though I had already spent a lot of time with them, I had to share my time with everyone so they cried because they wanted some more help or for me to draw something for them. It was embarrassing because the teacher had to keep going over to them to ask why they were crying and it was because I couldn't help them all at once! hehe. One girl got in a very sulky strop because I couldn't spend the whole lesson just with her and when I came over to her for like the 4th time she wouldn't even speak to me or try and come up with any ideas for animals! In the end I left her to it because she was just attention seeking and misbehaving. Other than that everyone was really well behaved. After the imaginary animal session, there was Golden Time. Golden Time is time the kids have earned for being good and in this time they can do whatever they like. So, I went in the playground with some of them and also the teacher. Some of them performed songs from High School Musical for me because they are going to be auditioning to be in the school play of it. Then I played catch with a few of the kids and spent time chatting to them. Also, incidentally, today was my record breaking day for number of hugs received. It's really sweet, these kids just love to hug! I had to ask the teacher if I should be pushing them straight off me though because sadly the world has to be more careful now and there are some dodgy people in the world so I had to find out what the rules were. The teacher said it's fine if they hug me and not to worry, as long as I don't let them hug me for long which I didn't anyway. At the end of the day, the teacher told them it might be my last day with their class so everyone said thank you and bye and gave me a mountain of hugs! Sorry if this blog is a bit rushed but I was too tired after my day of work experience today to write it up straight away and I'm still tired now as it's getting late so I'm rushing a bit!

More primary school work experience

2008-03-05T17:16:00.004Z

Today - 5th March 2008

Today has been my favourite day of being a classroom assistant. I stayed with the same teacher and class all day. I was helping out in Year 3 today so the children were age 7-8 I think. Already I have come to the conclusion that I definitely prefer teaching the older children even though I had fun teaching the younger ones. With the older children, you can have more advanced conversations and they are able to ask more complex questions. It also gives me the chance to explain instructions or ideas in more detail rather than having to keep things basic. When I walked in to the classroom in the morning, the children were particularly excited because one of the girls in the classroom was also called Lindsey like me. I started my day off by listening to a child with learning difficulties read a few books. He was struggling to read simple words like if the word was 'duck' he would tell me it said 'the' which is very different. I think he struggles because he tries to rush the words rather than looking at what the word begins with. He loses concentration and makes up the words. Then another boy came to read with me and he was reading very quickly and understood most words. It is so interesting to see the different levels of ability in the classroom. After reading with the two boys I then observed while the teacher of the class went over how words change when you add 'able' to the end of a word like 'enjoyable.' Then she also went through how to read a clock and where the hands should be to represent a specific time. This teacher is one of the really good teachers, I could see that straight away. She is always friendly to the kids but firm when she needs to be. She clearly explains everything to the kids. She was also really nice to me and so far has been the only teacher to offer to show me around properly (apart from the kind lady that gave me the opportunity for work experience in the first place) and she made sure I had somewhere to go at lunchtime and also let me wander around the classroom helping anyone that asked for help. Again, I was amazed how much the kids respected whatever I said and trusted me so quickly to help them. Some kids even kept running up to me and hugging me, even the boys! Then it was time for assembly, my first one I have been into so far. It wasn't very interesting but I suppose it was worth seeing at least one. The headteacher read a story about perseverance and there was a prayer. Also, lots of the kids were being told off for bad behaviour.

After assembly, the kids had a numeracy lesson and learned about tally charts and then how to represent the voting figures in a bar graph. I was assigned a table to sit with and they were all well behaved except for one who wasn't concentrating and kept interrupting to tell me about random things not related to the lesson. Then after lunch, the kids had the best lesson of all in my opinion. Design and technology. They were learning how to make a pop-up book which was brilliant because I found it easy to teach because again, it relates to my art degree. It was fun thinking of all the diffrent ways we could make pictures pop out of the page. I had free reign to wander around the classroom, although I never got far if I started walking because the kids clustered around me all the time asking questions! I loved that they were keen to ask me things though. Also walking a round was the teacher's permanent teaching assistant. Some kids wanted me to show them how to draw different animals, so I drew quite a basic fish and soon I had the kids fascinated and they all wanted me to draw their pictures for them and in the end I had to tell them that they had to do their own work but that they could copy what I did if they liked! The kids were easily impressed, because my drawings were not great, they were basic outlines with smiley faces but they were loving them so it was great to watch their excited faces. At the end of the lesson, there was a short question session with the teacher that they have everyday. At the very end one girl had a question for me which surprised me. She said 'are you going to be coming back?' so I told her that I was going to be away tomorrow but would be back friday but not necessarily in her class. She then said 'could you be our new teaching assistant pleeeeeeeeease and coud you live with our teacher?' I thought it was really sweet. The teacher has kindly said she would be happy for me to come back to her class on Friday so I am going to teach with this class again on Friday. I overheard some really nice comments from the kids about my being there and they were all really happy when I said I could come back on Friday. I am happy to be going back to that class because they are so friendly and well behaved and ask so many questions! Something that I have forgotten to mention in my primary experience posts is just how shattered I am after every day, a lot of it is very interesting but after a day of having to be so alert and attentive with the kids I am ready for sleep!

Primary School work experience

2008-03-04T16:58:00.007Z

Yesterday - 3rd March 2008

Yesterday I had my first day of work experience at a local primary school. The teacher who first decided to allow me to visit her school for a week has been fantastic. When I arrived yesterday morning, she let me get stuck right in and while she took the register, one child at a time would bring me a short book to read to me and then when they had finished, I would write a comment in their progress book. The age of this class was around 4-5 years. What surprised me most is that not one of the children was worried about having a stranger in their classroom and all of them seemed to really enjoy talking to me. The teacher and I then played word games with the children in a lesson about phonics. The game involved understanding the way adding the letter 'e' on to the end of a word changed the sound and meaning of a word. For example: TAP and TAPE. Once all the children understood the idea then they were all given one word each on a piece of paper and had to find who had the word that connected to their own, so one person would have TAP and one would have TAPE so they had to sit next to eachother. Then after the game was finished I moved on to another class called the Foundation Group. From what I gather these are the youngest children and their is no real structure to their activities. There seem to be several tables with creative materials on them and also a play area with a sandpit and dolls house etc. The teacher in the Foundation Group wanders around and helps children with any activity that they feel like doing and so this is what I also did. I was not watched by any other teachers so I felt like I was in charge and this was a helpful experience; to totally have a taste of teaching by myself and controlling the class. I helped children trace around the template of a number between 0 and 9 and then I watched and demonstrated how to decorate the numbers for a wall display. At this point I had such a funny comment from one of the children. She asked me if I had children and when I said no, she asked why not and why was I in a school if I didn't have any children, so I explained I was there to learn how to be a good teacher. Then, she poked my belly and said ''Is there any babies in there?'' I thought it was so funny, she looked so confused, but I also thought oh my god I need to lose some weight!!

In the afternoon, I sat quietly in a corner of a numeracy lesson with children aged 6-7 and observed a PGCE student teach the children. She was herself being observed by a lady who was perhaps her mentor I'm not quite sure. This particular PGCE student in my opinion is already the perfect teacher. She has her own children and seems already very experienced and has worked previously as a teaching assistant. She is very confident and has a wonderful command over the children, mixing humour with firmness so that the children really pay attention to what she is doing and if they don't, she soon has them behaving properly. I will certainly steal some of her classroom control techniques. One of her techniques is that she explains to the class that she is not going to speak to them until everyone is quiet and sitting nicely. Also, when children start fidgeting and messing about she adds humour by saying ''stop rocking about you are making me sea sick.'' This lesson was very basic and all about representing groups of data in tables, such as how many children were aged 6 in the class and were boys. I got a chance to ask this PGCE student and one other about their course and if they are enjoying it. They both told me it's hard work and lots of essays, but really interesing and rewarding. They both seemed to agree that the PGCE route may be better than the GTP route (where you earn your qualification while being in full-time employment as a teacher) because the GTP route is not as easy as you don't have so many other students also doing the same course as you to talk to and share ideas with. It has put me off the GTP route a bit, which I was considering as a way of still getting onto a course for this september (I have missed the deadline for PGCE this september now because as I thought, I needed more work experience; the GTP deadline isn't for a while yet though so I have enough time to get the experience).

The next lesson, with again, a different teacher, was with younger children again and involved watching a projection screen of a video about what different materials houses are made of: brick, wood, glass, clay, plastic etc. The classroom facilities have definitely changed since my days at school which made me feel really old! They now have special white boards where a computer program is projected onto the board and then the whole board becomes touch sensitive so the kids can press buttons just by touching the projection of them on the board. After the video and touch screen session, I spent the rest of the day playing estate agents and also drawing houses with the children. Again, I was amazed how happy the children were to play with me and how comfortable they were around me. They all wanted to sit with me and learn and some wanted to sit on my knee or hold my hand. Some even wanted to sing songs with me and dance. The difference in this school is that to me it has an unusual structure. All classrooms are open plan. There are no doors and all classes can hear and see every other class - which I'm not sure is a good idea because the children sometimes get distracted by the other noises around them. At different times in the day the children are also allowed to do whatever activity they like and play games. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's nice to see the kids having fun and creating chaos, but on the other hand it seems a little unstructured and random and maybe the kids need more attention. It is very useful to me to see such a unique style of classroom environment because I have learned the positives and negatives of this.

Today - 4th March 2008

My second day of work experience. The day started off with helping in the numeracy class with the PGCE student. I would mention names but I think it best to keep things anonymous. This time, I was allowed to get involved as the PGCE student was not being observed. Everyone was learning how to produce block charts. I thought there was a mistake at first, I thought they were meant to be called bar graphs but it turns out I learnt something new along with the children. Block graphs are when there are gaps left between each column! I felt bad not knowing that. They were learning how to produce a graph that showed how many people in the class liked each of the 5 different types of drink written on the board. I then sat with one of the children's table's while they filled in their own graph based on how many people had voted for each different type of activity such as drawing or lego. Some children understood the concept straight away, while others really struggled so it was great for me because I really got to help the children improve their understanding and in effect, practise my teaching. One boy really stood out as gifted, he found the work too easy and finished almost straight away, I was impressed! After this lesson I was with another class again of age 6-7. It was an ICT lesson and the children were in a computer suite learning how to edit simple sentences such as how to delete a word or add in a capital letter. This teacher had a totally different teaching style, which really differenciated from other teachers because she is quite strict and often raises her voice to say something, even when the kids are not being naughty. However, this method also works well as the kids respect her authority. I even had to tell off a couple of girls who were poking eachother and I was amazed when they listened to me and started behaving properly. I had shocked myself because I have been finding it a lot easier than I thought to be firm and also be friends with the children. Again I found that most of them were desperate to ask me questions to the point where I had to tell them to put their hands up if they wanted help and to sit quietly and wait for me because everyone was shouting for me or coming over all at once and tugging me over to their desks! I couldn't help but find it amusing when some of the children were slightly misunderstanding the idea of deleting one word only in their work and accidentally deleting the whole document!!! Unfortunately I'm not sure the teacher was very computer literate, as she was explaining to them that a desktop is any window that they open with pictures in it (she actually had the control panel open and was telling them it was called the desktop!) but of course I didn't say anything!

After lunch, I spent the whole time particularly enjoying myself because I helped in an art class with the children aged 5-6. This is the best lesson I have helped in so far because it relates to my studies and degree in illustration and I was given free reign to pretty much teach the children. Again, they all concentrated on what I was saying and they crowded around for help. I admit that I also liked the lesson because the idea was to pick an animal and then make a drawing or collage of it and I know quite a bit about animals and also LOVE animals so I could tell them interesting facts about them and give them ideas for creating fur textures etc. I can't explain how much I liked the children's drawings they were just so fantastic. All of the drawings just looked so cute and funny. So, to show you how lovely the pictures were, I have attached most of them to this blog. The little boy who made James the polar bear really was just soooo sweet, he was very quiet and hard working and I spent a lot of time with him showing him different ways to make the arms and helping him cut and stick things. I also had to blow his nose for him, a new experience for me, hehe (at one point I couldn't tell what was snot and what was pva glue).

Glove Man

2008-03-01T21:13:00.006Z

I have named this little creature Glove Man. My sister's husband surprised us all at the pub with this treat. He started off life from 2 black gloves (Glove man, that is, not my sister's husband!) and from only folding the gloves over eachother in a marvelous way, he presented an extraordinary puppet of what looks to me like a little man in a turban. I thought it was brilliant! What do you think? Maybe it's just a case of simple things please simple minds, hehe. Sadly the video quality doesn't do it justice so I will have to get a clearer one sometime.

An EARTHQUAKE I will never forget

2008-02-27T02:39:00.005Z

Well, there I was only 2 hours ago, editing my blog as it happens when I get startled out of my wits by the house shaking violently. The walls were moving, the floor was trembling under my feet, the windows were rattling and everything on my desk that wasn't pinned down wobbled. The noise was as if a truck was driving right past the house in the middle of the night. It all only lasted for about 5-10 seconds but it was weird because I didn't know what caused it and there was no wind outside which at first I thought might have been the culprit. I was so confused and so was my boyfriend who was also with me at the time. We thought perhaps something was either wrong with the house (perhaps a bit of a panic thought but I thought the house was collapsing!) or there had been an incident nearby like a small gas explosion or something that we may have been feeling tremors from. We went round checking the house for damage or any clues and after establishing everything seemed fine we went outside. No one else was in the street but some lights were on and there were some distant car alarms. I decided to go back inside and put the news on and to my relief, Sky News confirmed that it wasn't just us that had felt the tremors and that the tremor measured 4.7 on the richter scale and had been felt across England. As soon as I saw that, I was excited by the fact that I had been awake at the time to experience the dramatic tremor. Now that I am calm I feel like I will remember the tremor forever because at the time, it was quite impressive!

p.s I'm adding this sentence in a day later, because reports now agree that the tremor measured 5.2 on the richter scale! Still nothing compared to countries that suffer damaging earthquakes though and I do feel sorry for them. To England it's exciting to have a tremor as it was not dangerous.

The ''I love morons'' watch

2008-02-26T23:53:00.006Z

This particular feature of my blog is not intended to be cruel or bitchy (well not too much anyway,hehe)This is going to be an ongoing feature in my blog. Basically what the ''I love morons'' watch means is I will be updating my blog with facts about the STUPID beyond belief people I have had either the fortune/misfortune of working with in the past, depending on what way you look at it. To this day, all these silly souls have managed to evade winning a Darwin award and I'm still puzzled as to how they avoided this achievement. Most of the people watching for now will be things from the past, as currently I am unemployed as I need the time off to get some volunteer work done at primary schools so that I am prepared to do my teaching course. Seriously though, I just find morons hilarious!! They both wind me up and crack me up inside. Now don't get me wrong, a lot of people I work with are really lovely, but some are just plain thick, there is just no getting around it. So, I will start this first ''I love morons'' watch with genuine quotes from various people (of the moronic kind) that I have either overheard or had said to me. Of course though, I am not going to name and shame as that would be unfair so the quotes will be anonymous I'm afraid. Some of the quotes are by the same person though and if they were, you can identify them by their unique moron number if it repeats. Quotes are in green. Enjoy!

''Hee hee hee, I've got wind.'' moron 1, female. This person often said this one again, and again, and again....Glad I wasn't sat too close.

''This work is challenging'' Now this quote was again by moron 1, she said this about basic admin work that a monkey could do.

''I know for a fact that people only speak French in the Channel Islands'' moron 2, female

''Have you tried outside Staples?'' This quote doesn't make sense at first I know, but when you put it in context it does. This quote was said by moron 3, male. One of my favourite moron's it has to be said. He was someone similar to a manager. He was in fact talking about a car park outside Staples. The day he said this I was 15mins late for work in the morning because the city parking spaces often fill up way before 9am and this particular day, the lack of spaces was made worse by several car parks being closed off, not sure for what reason but they were closed. I had to spend a total of half an hour driving around looking for an available space that morning. Hence why I was late for work. The Staples car park was directly outside my at the time place of work. So no moron 3, I never thought in a million years of checking for spaces right outside work! Of course I did check, moron 3, because that is the first place I looked you moron.

''We must remain vigilant... ...fraudulent manor'' This genius, whom we shall call moron 4, wrote this in an email that she sent out to the team. This lady was of a manager type position and could not spell or write professionally to save her life. I believe what she in fact meant was 'fraudulent manner' and not a fake house. She also severely failed to remain vigilant.

''You need to be more vigilant'' Her favourite phrase. Oh the irony, need I say more. moron 4.

Starbucks Devil

2008-02-26T19:55:00.010Z

I admit that I am totally addicted to Starbucks. I know that it is a global chain company that wipes out all the smaller cafes and I know how ridiculously expensive the drinks are (believe me I know I spend a small fortune on the drinks there!) but I just seem to have no will power. One of my friends tuts and disapproves every time I go in to Starbucks because she hates them for taking over smaller businesses and being everywhere you go, which I understand. I mostly blame the whipped cream...yummy! I shouldn't even be eating any fatty things because I have familial hypercholesterolaemia which is a fancy name for hereditary-caused high cholesterol. I am supposed to be extra careful with what I eat because I have very high cholesterol for my age, but I just enjoy my food too much. My Mum has the condition too and she deals with it perfectly, she has so much will power! I'm trying to be good though. However, Starbucks is my one major downfall as I just can't get enough of their Iced Cafe Mocha (with whip of course) and I have 1-2 a week. It used to be 4-5 times a week so I've managed to cut down a little. Ha! The Java chip chocolate frappucino is delicious too. The only good thing about drinking Starbucks is that it replaces chocolate. I love chocolate and didn't think there was anything I could like more, but Iced Cafe Mocha's are scrumptious, so I've been eating less chocolate. I need a restraining order put on me though as it is simply disgraceful of me to be so addicted to Starbucks. Help!

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

2008-02-25T21:55:00.007Z

Three of my favourite books that I have ever read are the His Dark Materials trilogy by the genius that is Philip Pullman. I am proud of the fact that I became a fan of his before his books were recognised for the talent they represent, because my Mum used to work as a librarian and would get to review books for a magazine. Therefore, they would send a large bundle of various new books for her to read and review and then her articles were published. Buried amongst one such bundle was Northern Lights. I have always been into fantasy adventure books and she insisted that I read Northern Lights which she had told me was fantastic. So I opened the first page and began to read...I literally could not put the book down and was glued to it ALL day and night until I had finished. Ever since, I have been a huge fan of Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy. I wrote Pullman a letter (I seem to remember I wrote it in big green felt-tip pen words, as I was only a little nipper when I wrote it!)He kindly wrote back in person and I have treasured that letter. I had asked him what other books he could recommend that were similar to his and he replied something along the lines of he didn't actually read fantasy books himself which surprised me! I went to see a theatre performance of His Dark Materials at The National Theatre years later in London and that was a real masterpiece I thought. Wonderful puppetry techniques were enlisted to portray the animals and the actors were thoroughly convincing. In my third year at university I even managed to persuade my tutor to let me write my dissertation on His Dark Materials because there was so much that I wanted to say about it, even though my degree didn't strictly relate as it was in Illustration. I received a First for my dissertation which I think was mainly to do with the fact that I find it much easier to write about things that I am passionate about. Attached below is a small extract from my dissertation:

The portrayal of the Church in His Dark Materials is quite a challenging one. Examining this should be helpful to the task of understanding any messages that the trilogy may have been attempting to put forward about contemporary culture.

For the people of Lyra's world, government is very different than our own. Religion is all powerful and is represented by the Magisterium: a collection of religious colleges, councils and bodies that regulate the actions of people and deal with heretics, keeping a close eye on the scientists of Lyra's world, to make sure they do not do anything the Church would not be comfortable with.

The Church of Lyra's world is recognizably based on the Christianity of the real world; the use of the story of Adam and Eve is one example. It becomes clear that Pullman’s text portrays a disapproving opinion of certain aspects of religion. At its most controversial, Pullman directly attacks the church of Lyra’s world, which is also deliberately impinging on some of the worst characteristics of real Christianity. One example is the condemning words of one of the witches;

“It’s tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them it cuts them out. That is what the Church does and every Church is the same, control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.”

Neither such explicit reference to a religious institution nor such negative and absolute judgment has been seen before in children’s fantasy literature. If this rather accusing statement was not protected by quotation marks, it seems likely that the text could be interpreted as extreme propaganda by some people. The direct insults are given through the speech of characters, rather than the narrator, but the cumulative effect, from the mouths of the more morally sound characters, like the witches and the scientific researcher, Dr. Malone, is determinative in shaping the ideology of the text.

Another such example of clear disapproval of the Church comes from the quote;

“The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake. That’s all.”

The blatant objections to the unpleasant facets of the Church in Pullman’s writing imply a relation to Christianity today. This quote demonstrates Pullman’s intention to highlight how it is possible that people throughout history, right up to the present day, have been, and are being, continuingly hoodwinked by what he sees as a falsity. By calling it powerful, he is probably indicating that religion has the power to do great harm, because he sees it as misguiding many people, so that they are left following the path of something similar to a lie. He is surely attempting to make the reader think about the potential corruption there is to be seen in religion. This can be seen as a good point about the trilogy. Whether religious or not, perhaps we should all, as a society, be open to all viewpoints and we should not turn a blind eye to something just because it is in opposition of what we believe. When we have a strong belief in something, then by studying possible flaws in what we believe in, even though we still may not be swayed by hearing other viewpoints, at least we will have acknowledged their existence and have given consideration to other views. Open-mindedness is surely a good thing.

Other historical interests

2008-02-23T21:31:00.013Z

I mentioned previously that I find the Egyptians extraordinary. There are other time periods and perhaps in particular, architecture and fashion styles that captivate my imagination and I feel that they are also worth presenting very briefly. Firstly, I admire the oriental styles of Japan and China. I find it difficult to describe exactly what it is I like about the style but I suppose in short, it is the fashion they have had over the ages. Take for example, the intricate and delicate floral patterns and scenic illustrations incorporated into the clothes and the elegant eye make-up. It is not solely the fashion that I respect, as even through their landscape and architectural design such as in water gardens and pagodas comes a unique and stunning style. Moving on, in no logical order, but in a random stream of thoughts.....Indian fashion. There is just something beautiful about saris and to be honest, some of the time I find myself desperately wanting to wear such colourful, decorative garments. There is nothing really to stop me doing so and although I should not be affected by what people might say, I do not know if I would be met with disapproval or strange looks. Saris are not really adopted into Western fashion which to me is a shame. I also like women's fashion in Britain down the centuries. Some of the layered dresses and feminine tailoring were wonderful and again, perhaps it is odd but I really would like to try wearing one or two of those dresses. The fashion styles are partly why I like period costume dramas like Pride & Prejudice so much and why I like old houses that are now often owned by The National Trust. Whenever I visit a listed building I always try and imagine what life would have been like in those days and what people would have been wearing. Sometimes I even imagine, just for a second, that it is my own grand mansion that I am walking through. I wish! Sweeping right back through time again we come to a medieval world and my interest for castles, knights, variations in timber beamed buildings (perhaps the reason I like Stratford-Upon-Avon so much) and even Robin Hood. Here I would like to say A Knights Tale is one of my favourite medieval films and rest in peace Heath. Then there are also the perfectly crafted calligraphy and illustrations often made by the dedicated monks of the time. As I have started to write down the similar things I appreciate in our world, I find an even longer list begin to form in my mind and when I think about it, my blog could in theory be taken over by them alone! So for now, I had better stop before I get carried away.

All things Egyptian

2008-02-23T02:39:00.001Z

I am quite fascinated by all things Egyptian: from the pyramids, statues and other artifacts to curses, pharaohs and multiple Gods. To me, it seems that the Egyptians led an almost magical life in that they believed in various deities such as Ra, the God of the Sun (see left image). Egyptians thought that he sailed across the sky each day in a boat, while carrying the sun on his head. He would then pass through the underworld in the night to reappear the next day. There seemed to be a God to serve every purpose; some Gods and Goddesses took part in creation, some controlled floods, some watched over people and protected them while others cared for people in the afterlife. There were even local Gods that connected themselves to towns or minor Gods that represented plants or animals. Like most religions, the Egyptians worshipped their Gods and thought that to keep the Gods content meant that their own lives could continue without threat. When people think of Egypt I expect that pyramids often come to mind first. I personally find it incredible that a civilization that lived nearly two thousand years ago could build such magnificent and colossal structures. Then again, their history did span over a period of an astounding three thousand years, so I guess they had a lot of time to develop their building processes! There just seems to be no architecture existing today that is as imaginative and frankly AWESOME as the pyramids were and still are. One last thing I will add about the Egyptians is their style of jewellery and use of colour in their art and their art in general such as wall paintings and hieroglyphics. Quite simply, I love all of it. I bring a touch of the egyptian style into my life to reflect my interest in the Egyptians but also because I love their use of colour and in particular blue and gold. I can often be seen wearing a small, egyptian Ankh necklace that my sister and her husband bought for me. I also have an egyptian cat necklace (see below) and a cat statue (see above right) given to me by my boyfriend's parents. I wear quite a lot of dangly gold and blue earrings and some of the clothes in my wardrobe are blue and brown (gold clothes might look a little garish in this day and age). On occasion, I even put my warpaint on in a typical egyptian eyeliner way. I define my eyes with black liquid eyeliner and then flick the outer ends of the lines upwards or in an extended straight line. So there you have it...a small insight into my appreciation of the egyptians.

Introducing something black and furry

2008-02-21T20:40:00.004Z

Meet my dog Sky. NOTHING is more important to me than Sky, she is my number one person in my life and so naturally, I find myself mentioning her first above anything else. Sky lives in France now because my parents had a crazy idea that England is grey and rainy and thought it might be more relaxing and sunny in France. As it turns out, of course, they were right and it is probably one of the best ideas they have had. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss having parents around but I know that they are happy so that makes it all worth it. You might have guessed already that obviously I miss no one more than Sky. In that way I may never forgive them for moving because now I miss giving Sky tummy rubs, watching her steal food from the kitchen, listening to her dreaming and snoring, stroking her velvet ears and watching her naughty but adorable personality. Oh and one more thing that I miss.....living rent free at the parents house!