Thank God For Blundies!

I would like to take this opportunity here and now to say thank you to the good Lord for giving some individual the inspiration and talent to create the world's greatest shoe.

I refer, of course, to that wonderful Aussie icon, the Blundstone boot.  These shoes have to be the best shoes ever!  Made for that 'hard yakka', in my experience they are the perfect hiking boot, dress boot (well, sort of), snow shoe, travel shoe and now canal-doing-the-locks-in-rain-or-shine shoe.  I would've been lost on this trip without them!

Especially as for the first 5 or so days it rained quite a lot.  Not very pleasant when you're out there doing the locks.  But in Blundies - well, you're laughing (almost).

So thank you very much Blundstone, if you ever need someone to join your advertising compaign, you know where to find me...

Five (or Six) Go Mad In Somerset!

Well being the May half term, a couple of us from school decided to brave the Canal boat adventure again - this time the Kennet and Avon canal, which runs from Bristol through Bath and on to Reading, and boasts over 100 locks (we're not going to get to do all of those though!) and the famous Caen Hill locks, one of the "Seven Wonders of the Waterways" - a stretch of some 29 locks with 16 straight in a row!  It's going to be absolutely amazing!

Our intrepid explorers are - Erik (the "Chief Engineer" and general organiser of the whole thing), Q (the "Admiral"), Stella (the "Mutineer" as she will be leaving part-way through), Makeda (the "First Mate"), Michelle (the "Cabin Boy" on account of she has a complex about looking like a boy when she is soaked through from rain doing the locks), and myself (the "Pirate" on account of that was the only badge left!).

We picked up our boat, the Axbridge (from the AngloWelsh Boat Company), from Bath on Saturday afternoon and set off as quick as we could, off to cover as much of the canal as possible.  Unfortunately this canal is one of the more populated ones, and seeing as you can't go very fast at the best of times (and certainly not when going past other boats), we really didn't make much progress on that first day.  We didn't even make it to any of the locks!

But obviously the journey up from London and the bit of boating we did on the first day must've really taken it out of us all, because we slept so late the next day!  We didn't get underway til about midday, and it was raining, so it wasn't really very pleasant, but we stopped off at a lovely pub enroute for Sunday lunch, which was gorgeous.  The sun then came out, we made a bit of mileage, achieved a few locks, and generally felt very good about everything - until we accidentally hit another boat whilst trying to negotiate a narrow bit of the canal.  The woman from that boat came out, yelling and screaming at Makeda, saying "I'm gonna knock your teeth down your throat!".  Suffice to say we hoofed it out of there pretty quick!

Our boat is not the best narrowboat I've been on (listen to me, like a seasoned pro - although I've only been narrowboating twice in my whole life!).  It supposedly sleeps 6 - if 4 people don't mind sharing - and if 2 of those 4 don't mind having to set up their bed every night by folding down the table and all... And the electrics are rubbish.  If you don't rev the engine enough, or just motor slowly throughout the day (and remember you can't actually go fast as there are a lot of boats moored in this canal), then you don't have any electricity later in the evening.  It's pretty ordinary, actually.

Anyway, Monday.  We were up marginally earlier than Sunday and set off in two teams of three as the weather was really bad, raining very heavily (and at times even sleeting).  We accomplished several locks throughout the morning but then the wind came up.  It was blowing us all over the canal!  One bloke we passed advised us to pull up after the next lot of locks, as we were fast approaching the famed Caen Hill flight of locks - and there's just no way you can stop once you start them - they apparently take 5 hours to negotiate!

So we waited out the wind a bit and then decided to press on towards Caen Hill, in the hopes that we might actually make it up there.  At the start of the ascent, we stopped off at the ranger's station - and he told us we didn't have enough time to negotiate all the locks, we would have to moor up overnight at number 29 (some 7 away from the start of the sequence) as he was locking them all up for the night.

Which is exactly what we did.  We moored up, and then had to walk up past the 16 in a row which we would negotiate the next day, on our way to the Black Horse for our evening meal.

Moored up for the evening at Caen Hill locks

The flight of 16 locks at Caen Hill awaits us tomorrow (with another 6 at the top afterwards!)

The next day, Tuesday, the sun came out, we got up early (8am thank you very much) and then with another boat proceeded to make our way up the flight of locks.  I'm very pleased to report that as each lock was 'ours' (meaning that the lock level was at the level we were going in at - as opposed to requiring us to empty or fill the lock before we could go in), it was much quicker and we managed to do the whole thing in just on 2 hours!

We pulled off at Devizes wharf, at the top of the locks, said goodbye to Stella (who was making her way back to London) and headed off to do some shopping!

A much needed lunch break was taken after this - and now, as I write, we're heading off for our turning point - so we can turn around and do it all again - I hope not today though...

Procrastination Is My Passion

I'm supposed to be marking for the AQA so I decided to hop on blogger and post some meaningless ramblings.  Procrastination is my middle name after all.

I hate marking.  It really really REALLY SUCKS!!!  It prevents me from doing everything else in life, like, I don't know... something!  Anything but this!  I HATE IT!!!! (I will however love to get paid when I eventually finish it all...) 

And while I'm at it (my whingefest!), I hate that I'm not allowed to go to Thorpe Park tomorrow like everyone else.  The whole of Yr 7, 8 and 9 (excepting the naughties who have to stay back at school) are going to either Thorpe Park or Chessington - but because I'm not a tutor, I don't get to go.  No, instead, I have to 'help' load the kids on the bus (what am I going to do?  Hoike them up there in some sort of over the shoulder flingfest maneouvre?  Or just shove 'em into the bus like a Japanese train conductor cramming 'em all in in peak hour?).  And then I've got a whole day on my lonesome in the music department, 'supervising' those who haven't been allowed to go on the trip... bummer...

Roll on half term...

Murphy's Law

It's Murphy's Law, isn't it.

You see, I've been at Jean's for three or four months now, and I've been getting my mail redirected from Wavertree Road, because let's face it, sometimes you forget to give your address to someone / company that you really need to still get mail from, but in the heat of the move, you didn't inform them of the change.  That's why mail redirection is so good, because you can catch those odd few that you really want (and binning all the annoying junk mail, safe in the knowledge that when the redirection period is over, it'll keep going to your old address and annoying the new tenants there).

But a couple of weeks back I noticed that I was getting someone else's redirected mail.  Someone else from the same street I had lived in - Wavertree Road.   And not just the annoying junk mail stuff, no, I got her credit card bill and everything.  If I had been a wily criminal, I could've done some serious injustice with that information.  But no, I dutifully phone up some burke at Brixton Royal Mail sorting centre and politely (-ish!) voice my concern - especially as if I'm getting Ms V Rose's mail, then where is my mail going?

I wish now I hadn't.  Why?  Because of Murphy's Law...

You see, I got home today to discover a "redirected" letter  - and this time actually addressed to me - but alas, it was from the London Borough of Lambeth.  Apparently, on the morning of 2nd May, my car, Ruby, entered a so-called 'box junction' and stopped there when prohibited.  What?  What does that mean?

£120, that's what that means!  Or £60 if I pay it within 28 days.  £60!  And to think, if I hadn't phoned up Brixton Royal Mail, I might not've got the silly "penalty charge notice" and therefore could've got away with it!  But knowing that the redirection is now back in action, I'm sure the blighters would've been able to get through to me again (and that would've cost £180!).  Aaaaggghhh!!!

The real bum is that Ruby floppin' parked by a 'dropped footpath' (again, what on earth is that?) two weeks ago and cost me £60 then!  Seriously, if this car can't learn to behave, she'll have to go....!

That being said, though, they'll not get a penny out of me without a fight! I've looked at their "set of 4 photos", and if you check the time stamp in each one, no real amount of time has lapsed - which would've been the case had I stopped in the "box" for a while. It's only a matter of seconds - which is what you'd expect if I was driving through normally... so look out Lambeth, I'm comin' for ya!

Meanwhile, here's one of the lovely pictures they took to commemorate the incident... Annoying so-and-so's...

Now Is The Month of Maying

You may (or may not!) be wondering why the internet silence?  Why has there been a distinct lack of blog postage in recent weeks?

The answer is very simple.  It's May.

"Hmm," I hear you say.  "What's so special about May?  Isn't it supposed to be a time of joy and happiness at the onset of spring - you know, "Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing, fa la la la la" and all that?  "Each with his bonny lass, upon the greeny grass"...?"

Ah, dear reader, allow me to enlighten you.  The month of May is the worst month of the year for the many thousands of secondary school teachers in the UK, for the simple reason that it is the time when all the coursework, all the marking, all the crappy paperwork for the GCSEs is due - or, if you are a KS2 (primary) or KS3 (up to Yr 9) teacher - you've got SATS exams to deal with.  And at the same time, some silly Burke in Parliament thought this would be a good time, every year, to hold elections - I swear, every year I've been here there've been elections in May, always on a Thursday (why? Like who can even get to a polling booth then, right?) and as many of the polling stations are schools, they have to close - so you miss a day (good for me, bad for the kids).  And at the end of May is when the SATS exams and GCSE exams start - which means frantic revision sessions with those students who think you should just drop everything and help them out now (when you've been trying to all year but they just wouldn't have a bar of it then), or even more frantic, panic-stricken revision sessions with those students who haven't done a scrap of work all year and suddenly realise the exam is today and they don't know anything!  So with 15 minutes to go before the exam is due to start, they're banging down your door wanting you to teach them how to do melodic dictation!

But before we even get to all that - the marking, I mean - you've got to get the work out of the kids.  They've had 2 years essentially to do the following:

1.  Compose (and record to CD / tape / Minidisk) a piece of music for a special event

2.  Perform (and record) a solo piece

3.  Perform (and record) an ensemble piece.

4.  Compose a piece of music in a given style (question set November 2007).

That's it!  And you don't even have to be able to notate the music you write, no sir, you can just do it all in Cubase or Sibelius and let the computer figure it out for you!  And you have almost 2 years to do all this!

So you'd think, with that amount of time, the kids would get the work in well in good time before the deadline.

Yeah right.  And I'm a monkey's uncle...

So lately, my whole life has been:  get up early, go to school, spend hours upon hours sitting with kids literally forcing them to finish their work, beg students to record something - ANYTHING - that could be construed as a performance of some kind, stay back late at school mastering to CD, recording performances and the like, come home, stay up late marking the bleeding stuff.  What a life!

And the problem is, there's a huge pressure on the kids to do well, of course - but most people don't realise there's an even bigger pressure on the teachers for the kids to do well - because if the kids fail, or achieve poor results - that gets reported in the Government's dreaded "League Tables" - and if you are below the Government's so-called 'Floor Target' - they could close the school!  So the pressure is really on...

And on top of that, I've done (yet again) something very stupid.  I do it every May - and every May I say to myself, "Not again, Kyles" - but alas, every May I still do it.  Exam-board marking.

Literally, its a huge pain.  The paperwork alone'll kill you if you're not careful.  It takes days, nay, weeks - six weeks to be precise - to do this work.  And they only pay some ridiculously low fee per candidate that you mark - its really not worth it.  But I do it every year because, hey, it earns me nearly £800 - and that's £800 I wouldn't have had, £800 I could spend on a trip - or my house - or something.  So I do it.

But this year has been completely ridiculous.  I have 44 schools' work to mark - and so far nearly every school that I have received has had huge errors in paperwork that have meant that I haven't been able to mark very much at all.  This is a real pain because the week after next, we're going away on the canal boat again - and I can't bring this marking with me to do (what a Nige I would be anyway if I tried to) as firstly, it's too bulky, and secondly, you're not supposed to do this work in public, for the candidate's privacy.  Like you could anyway, right?

So at the moment the bottom of my cupboard is full of these blasted purple packages, and I'm being seriously anti-social and just trying to get them finished before the deadline.  Suffice to say, I can't wait til it's all over... and you won't be seeing me much on here for now...

Ruby Finally Has A Win

Finally.  After so many trials and tribulations, Ruby has a win.

One of the many difficulties in driving a car in London has to do with the congestion and the narrow streets.  Drivers have to be much more courteous and willing to give way so that traffic can flow freely (well, as freely as possible).  This can prove very difficult in the narrow streets, where you have cars parked on both sides of the road, and really only enough room for one car to pass.  So what usually happens when two cars meet head on in this situation, is that the car that reaches a potential passing point, or gap in the parked cars, first, is the one that pulls off to the side to allow the other to negotiate a difficult passage.

The only problem with this is that in recent years, the level of intolerance and road rage in British drivers has been on a sharp increase.  This has particularly been the case in the male member of the species, especially when confronted with someone he perceives to be weaker.  This happened to me late last year, when I was returning home late one night from band practice.  I met a "white van" man head on, about 11pm, on a narrow road.  He came to a suitable pulling over place first, but blatantly ignored it, and pressed on - leaving me with no room to pass him.  I realised he had done this on purpose, and decided that I wouldn't move - why should I, he should've pulled over first!  He started f-ing and blinding, waving his arms up and down in the air, and I just calmly gestured for him to go back.  He then slams the van into gear and starts coming for me like a madman.  Of course, in hindsight, I should've just stayed there and called his bluff - would he really have rammed into me? - but this is England, the land of the yobbo (apologies to all those lovely English people I know though who aren't yobbos...) - and I guess in that split second I didn't really want to find out - so I gave in and reversed back.  Of course, as he passed, he gave me a few more salient words, coupled with appropriate gestures...

Then about 3 weeks ago, on my way home from school, I encountered a similar situation, this time with an African woman.  Again, she had the opportunity to pull over first, but didn't - and she refused to back up, and I refused as well - and she stupidly tried to pass, scraping my wing mirror in the process - and then pulling over to check the damage to her vehicle!  Fortunately Ruby didn't suffer on that one.

So last night, when I was on my way home from a night at the theatre with a friend, around 11.30pm, at almost exactly the same spot as the wing-scraping incident, the same thing happened again.  This time it was an African man - and rather than pull over at the first available place, he edged the nose of his vehicle just beyond the gap.  What an idiot.  Anyway, I don't know what happened, but I guess I just snapped - why should I have to keep backing back or giving way to these fools?  So I just sat there, and refused to move.  And so did he.  And I gestured for him to go back, and he didn't.  We were at an impasse.

So I did the only logical thing I could, turned off the engine and shut off my headlights (making sure the doors were locked in case the idiot got out of his car and tried to do something stupid).  And then a miracle happened.  The man gave in, and reversed back!  But the best moment was when I drove passed him - and he saw he'd lost out to a woman - he was not impressed...

One small step for man, one giant leap for courtesy and decency...