Saturday, April 18

Easy Street?

A new term begins on Monday, so I am enjoying the remaining days of freedom in the (semi) sunshine doing nothing at all.

One more term until the summer holidays. In theory this should be the easiest term of the bunch; it's the shortest term (five weeks until Half Term, woo!), and at some point my Year 11s will slouch off into the ether, only to return to sit their GCSE exams, leaving me with four free hours a week in my timetable for drinking te... sorry, MARKING DILIGENTLY.

However, it is also the term where the kids get a bit hyper, and things can happen in schools. Things such as abnormally hard paper missiles being thrown across the classroom, and soaring errant flapjacks breaking bus windows.

I have my last observation by the borough on Thursday. If I pass that, and the next half term then I am not only a fully qualified teacher, I will also have successfully passed my induction year. It's a little scary to think that I was typing depressing missives into this very blog three years ago, with little hope of things improving. Now I am a 'professional'. Me! Weird.

Friday, April 17

Apples and Pears

I walked from Oxford Street to London Bridge today. So yeah, er, yay for me.

I also had to brave the Apple store, which can age you 10 years. The Apple store is like a Hoxton installation; cavernous, brilliant white and choc-full of every kind of wanker imaginable. The stairs are made of glass, which means that you can't place your feet properly and have to hold onto the hand-rail like a decrepit pensioner.

The charger on my aged Mac was faulty, and the over-heating had made my laptop shut itself down and go into some sort of laptop coma...

...but the little man with the 'Apple Genius' t-shirt knew how to make it not in a coma anymore. He whisked it out back, leaving me squirming awkwardly at the counter surrounded by angry and frustrated Apple owners, only to return a short while later, cradling my newly resuscitated, geriatric iBook in his feeble, geeky arms.

Everyone else at the 'Genius Bar' had their laptops in special swanky cases, so the sight of mine wrapped (lovingly) in a tatty old Primark tea-towel with Santa on it, and wrapped again (lovingly) in a Budgens bag to keep the rain off must have elicited thoughts such as:

'No wonder hers is fucked'

'Fucking kook'

My enthusiastic response of "IT'S ALIVE!" probably confirmed both of those musings. It's okay though, if I get my way I am never going into that place again. Next time I will bin the laptop and leave the 'Geniuses' to work their magic on somebody else machine.

Do Google searches and that...

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