Hi wicken,
The Dolmio carbonara sauce sounds promising. If you were really, really hungry on your fast day and consumed the whole pack of noodles, it would still only cost you 8 calories.
I’m surprised at Paxo, I thought he had more sense. Cheeky monkey! We should all dress up as Hell’s Grannies – remember the Monty Python sketch where they all dressed up as sweet little old ladies and rode around on motor bikes knocking seven bells out of young hard cases in leather jackets – and go and sort him out. 🙂
Another ex-teacher, I see. Me too, but I only lasted five years. I didn’t like being an authority figure and I’m too much of an iconoclast to be in the position of guiding the young.
After taking a modern languages degree as a mature student, I did a PGCE, during which I had two lovely teaching practices at a nearby single-sex comprehensive, one of those which had maintained its academic tradition and was a joy to work in, in terms of both colleagues and kids.
Sadly there were no vacancies and I wound up at a not-so-great comp equidistant between Spurs and Arsenal where I attempted to teach French and Spanish to off-duty football hooligans, most of whom were naughty but nice and could be unexpectedly kind, but there was a hard core of psychopaths. Worst of all, the head was constantly on my case and I was perpetually being accused of doing things or allowing things to happen which had absolutely nothing to do with me, e.g. allowing kids to carve initials (and worse!) on desks in a room I had never used, and failing to attend a staff meeting at I was sitting right under his nose in the front row. Didn’t stop the nasty litle man pinching my bum when I returned to the school for a social event after I left, though.
I then moved into the private sector, to a very prestigious girls’ school, feeling somewhat uneasy as I’m politically left-leaning, but at last I was able to do the job the I was trained to do, namely teach, rather than trying to stop 12-year-olds climbing out of classroom windows. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The job was a promotion – teacher wih responsibility for Spanish, also teaching beginners’ Latin, and later 1st to 3rd year French. The kids were a pleasure to teach, the staff were kind and supportive, and the head, a delightful, youngish lady, actually liked me. I would have stayed but the urge to try my hand at the job I’ve had for nearly 25 years – freelance translating – was too strong.
BTW, I’m curious about your nom de plume. Can you explain?
8:04 pm
5 Oct 14