Number, numbers......Grrrrr Numbers.

I love Saturday nights. Its the one day in the week where I can really relax and chill. Saying that I found myself scanning schemes of work for year three today , because I really wanted to, ordering some educational books for next year from Amazon- and been a little excited about my new class next year. I don't think I am capable of switching off. This Friday just gone, I actually felt sad that I wouldn't see work colleagues for a week. We ended up going out for a drink after work and I was mildly surprised at the out of work personalities of the people I share the bigger part of the day with. I wondered if I was sad that I spend a great deal of my time dreaming up crazy lessons to teach. Why is it after nearly 10 years of teaching I still love it? I love having the attention of 30 children, I love challenging what they think or giving them new ideas to think about, I love empowering them and making them feel worthy. Some teachers unfortunately burn out and fall out of love with the profession....I guess I did with secondary school teaching. I was lucky enough to be able to go into primary school teaching. It wasn't easy. I pretty much had to retrain. My biggest thing to overcome was having to learn how to teach mathematics (it was never my strong point). I have had to learn how to teach lots of methods I never ever used before...the bus stop method, the grid method, the extended multiplication method, the tree method of calculating fractions... to name a few.

Numbers worry me. I also have a problem with retaining numbers. Years I am fine with....Norman Conquest 1066, WW1 1914-1918, WW2 1939-1945.... But phone numbers....Um...I don't know my own phone number of my mobile number, I never remember birthdays, I never remember anniversary. I have no idea what my partners birthday is....

Numbers give me a type of dyslexia. I have never had this confirmed but I do think I have this. I try so hard to retain them but I cant (this makes mental maths very hard- I have to do it by scribbling down the calculations on paper).

It will be my challenge next year- not the level of teaching it...at year 3 its not that difficult...More so I have to conquer my fears associated with maths. If I was to get in a time machine and go back to my time at primary school I would see me been forced to stand on my table and rote call my 6 times table to my class and get it horribly wrong and have my teacher call me a "idiot". The teacher made me do this everyday, because I couldn't retain the times tables. I remember crying my eyes out every morning before I went to school as I knew it was time for my daily degradation  in front of peers who already thought I was a weird kid.

Sadly it turned me a bit into a maths rebel by the age of 15/16. I turned up for my maths exam without a scientific calculator and when asked by my teacher if I wished to borrow one, I said no...I will do it in my head. I then proceeded to write in random numbers into the paper and walked out early, knowing I hadn't got a single question correct. I was that fucked off with it. That fucked off with been totally shit at something I so wanted to be good at.

I paid the heavy price. I went to college to study for my A-levels and fostered my dream of becoming a teacher...only to find I had to get a maths qualification to even get accepted (WTF, Why the hell do I need maths when I am going to teach history!!!!). Result was, I had to study again in my own time, between my A levels. I scrapped a C.

Today I plan numeracy schemes of work, I plan them well and I teach them well. I wish i had me as a teacher back then when I needed someone to just realise we don't all learn the same way...

Master Vanilla Forum Poster

I thought I would speak about my guild today. Its a strange vocation as a guild mistress. I don't think anyone expected me to be any good at it when I was in my old guild. In fact my on-line persona was very different to the CM of today. One of the reasons is I am ofc a little older, but then that I have to be responsible in a way I never had to when I was a officer in my previous guild. I have other people to do that for me. I was just a bit of spirit, a laugh, a flirtatious person. I was however very very good at keeping guild spirit up, and I knew how to delegate, to those who knew more.

Then Vanilla came along and I was so nervous that I wouldn't be professional enough that I couldn't manage everyone well enough, that it would descend into chaos every time someone had a difference of opinion. I learnt I could be strong enough to balance all the male egos behind the scenes in Vanilla. Its a daily job at times, this amazing balancing act. I'm surprised at times how protective I feel towards my guild mates. My online family. The truth is they have given me a great deal of joy. I am so thankful that the officers and councillors I have in the guild are so willing to blow up but then get back to normal. They have all been a rock. Some ofc more then others :)

I think if your going to be a good GM you cant be a fly by your pants type of person. You have to have rules and routines as no one likes change without a damn good reason. People like good organisation and a good social aspect fostered. I really try to do this, as do many of the people I play beside. I think people at times think I am a stickler for the rules, and yes they would be right. i have even lost people from my guild that I like immensely as I had to appear fair when I dealt with them....those times never make me feel very good.  If I have rules I have to stick by them....even my rl partner knows he is no exception to this but I am sure overall he respects me for it.

The guild are, as time goes by, more like family to me. I really do care for them. I try to take care of the newcomers, hope the existing motley crew except them....they usually do.

Online world, I don't care. I socialise with these people. Hoping to meet many of them in August in 2011. How many years we go on, I'm not sure.  But  I have every intention of going on as long as people are happy with what I'm trying to do.

/fingers crossed

The enigma of counting your blesses.

I have so many things I am so very thankful for. I am thankful for coming from a background where I was poor. It made me realise how grateful you should be for the money coming in for a job well done. My mother and father- my father predominately, worked shifts in the night and the day when I was a small child. My fondest and most earliest memories were when he came in from a nights work and got into bed, me behind him snuggling into his big warm protective back. I asked him if he could save me from an atomic war ( I was kinda obsessed with the mushroom cloud as a child) He said ofc not.  It was at the moment I learnt about keeping things real.

I count my blessings when I walk past the canals every day and clutching a starbucks, I head to work where I teach wonderful children who drive me mad yet they keep my young and active and full of wonderment.

I am grateful to my two brothers, my oldest a stranger to me until I grew up, but he became the brother I needed, one I can say anything to and he will, in his way tell me what he thinks honestly. My younger brother- same age as my boyfriend yet he seems so much younger....but represents my fun side....we have the same sense of humour...the laughing I have done with him would make tears spring like niagra falls from your eyes. I couldn't wish for two better siblings. My mum, what can I say? I wasn't always the best daughter to her. I was far too much on team father. But I always knew she was a woman who wouldn't think twice about laying her life down for anyone of us. If I am half the woman she is, Id die a happy woman. I know if my brothers read this they will laugh at me and tell me to stop boozing. But with a drink or not, even they know this is true.

My dad, my whole world. His not even in this world and he is still my whole world. I'm a stubborn mule like him, but I have a soft vulnerable side just like him. Wherever he is I raise a drink to him and its the only thing I look forward to about dying, to hopefully (if all this religion stuff is true) see my dad again. We wouldn't even hug, so not our style. First thing we would say to each other would be a piss take.

I've rambled,  I'm happy to be alive. I'm strong enough to deal with what life throws at me. Just don't take my mum or my brothers. Not for a while any ways.

Flesh Wounds- last installment

Well heres the last part. I will work on editing now I have the basic structure of the tale. Il try to re post the entire thing in coming weeks. Its still all needs a lot of work. If you have no idea what this is about check my earlier short story blog posts.  Enjoy.

Then the ground falls away and I realize that this was the last time I will ever see my parents again. I surprise myself about how easy I am taking this. It almost doesn't matter anymore.

"You can enter now" says a disembodied voice from inside the room. I am standing facing a large corporate brown oak door.  Slightly unhinged it opens easily and I begin to walk inside. The light is low. I can see windows showing no view of outside apart from what looks like clouds, wispy and thin. I feel like I am on an aeroplane and if I look outside the window I will see a city in the dark, house lights acting like little beacons in the night sky.

I dutifully walk in and the woman sitting behind the desk lets a small smile escape her lips as she beckons me with a slight wave of her wrist to sit across from her.  She opens up a small drawer from beneath the desk and takes out a envelope. I know immediately what it is.

"I am afraid we cant accept this" She pushes the envelope across the table and I reach for it. I open the letter and I read.

To anyone that cares

I cant go on like this anymore. I have grown so used to fear that I have to make it stop. I go to bed every night wishing I didn't wake up. I cant cope anymore and I hate him so much he deserved to die. I don't feel proud of what I did to him. He was helpless, like a baby when I crept into the bedroom and stabbed him until I was too tired to keep stabbing.  Tell my mother and father I wont stay around to embarrass them. I guess I'm like my mother. I put up with it for so long that a little bit of me died every day. I don't want to be like her anymore.

I will punish myself. I'm sure even after I'm gone I will keep on being punished. So what does it matter if I stay or if I go.

I know what's coming now. The room spins. I no longer have any control over this.

A woman is shining a torch into my face, I am disorientated, petrified. I'm lying on the floor of my bedroom, my dead husband lying in a pool of congealed blood on the bed, arms flayed. Dead eyes looking straight at the ceiling. Our cat licking his face and purring. The paramedics are holding a pressure pad against my neck so hard I feel like I am choking. My legs are elevated, a person takes my pulse.  Its at this point that I realise its not worked. Its just not worked. I cry so hard the tears start in the pit of my stomach and resonate through my whole body. A kind looking paramedic wipes my tears, looks straight into my eyes. "Your going to be alright love" she says.  "Its just a flesh wound".

I hear my father and my husband laugh.

The day when she rediscovers poetry...

William Blake wrote:

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy. 

So its about the corrupton of innocence... Im sensing the theme of sex and decay. Glorious evening time reading. Im now thinking of reading T S Elliots stuff again, not because I was remotely intererested in him, but I was mildly facinated in his wife Vivienne, who led an extrodinary life.

If your interested -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivienne_Haigh-Wood

Most noteble quote which says it all "Vivienne ruined Tom as a man, but she made him as a poet."

Short story part 2

Im starting to know where its all going now...Second installment.

I recoiled for a moment, clicked her fingers and I was gone. For now I wouldn't be back. I was now standing in my mothers front room, I guessed the late 1970s if the gaudy orange flowered curtains and the tan bean bag chair that had seen better days were anything to go by. I tentatively looked around and saw the room through the eyes of my 7 year old self. From the kitchen I could hear the kettle boiling, the radio blasting out Bonnie Tyler's its a heartache. My mother singing quietly along. Upstairs I caught the familiar sound of my father snoring, and suddenly none. Silence. I heard my mother turn the radio down, and remembered how she always did that if she though she had awoken him. Hoping to get 20 minutes more reprieve. No such luck. The sound of his two feet hitting the floor.  The sound of the plates been snatched out of the cupboard and a meal hurriedly dished out.

The living room door opened and I saw the face of my father for the first time in 4 years. Younger here, less lined, fuller face, thicker head of hair. He stared at me and shook his head, looking confused.  He walks slowly to me holds his freckled hand out and with one finger runs the tip down my cheek, I mistake it for affection. The finger follows my chin, down to my neck. His finger rests at the gash across my neck and after pausing he pushes the finger inside the wound. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt me at all. As I stare into my fathers eyes I want to tell him so much. I have a lifetime of words I need to share with him. As he gently pulls his finger from my neck my mother enters the room with two plates of rissoles, potatoes and garden peas and a bottle of daddies brown sauce tucked under her arm. She also fixes her look on me for a moment, just enough time to look straight into me and at the same time through me. I hear her sigh and  she sets the plates down. She hurries back into the kitchen for the plate of sliced white bread. As I watch her go, my father cups my face in his hands and turns my head to face his. Pulls me close so our noses nearly touch. He whispers in a voice that doesn't sound like his  "Its only a flesh wound love".

An old Poem..

In stark contrast to this cheery little number below (A poem I wrote some 2-3 years ago), I am shocked at how low and down in the dumps I was. Like Alan Partridge I have "Bounced Back" AHHHHHAAAAA

Right here, right now (3/6/2008 12:41:00 PM)

I dont feel like when I knock on my own door, that I am in anymore Im hiding behind the sofa, putting the phone on mute I want some silence but Im the noisest thing around So I hold out my hands for liquid redemption, and its so sweet, its so kind, its so forgiving and it loves me. It puts me to bed and wraps the blanket over my head, safe inside the dark, safe under the problem It takes the phone away from me, it hides the bottles at the bottom of the bin bag. It makes me feel closer to dad