I don't want to brag...

but I will. Paul and I are training for the London to Brighton in June, which is a challenge and it should be an accomplishement and lots of fun!
And the road to it is also full of smaller but not lesser accomplishements: today I broke my distance record (30,5 miles - was 30 miles from when I'd done the Oxfordshire ride last year, notably so as it was the third time I was riding a bike in some 15 years) and my speed record (27.3 mph - was 21.7 mph). And those massive hills seem less massive each time I attack them.
My big worry however is a hill on the actual route to Brighton - I've heard stories about it and apparently 90% of participants push their bikes up that thing. Well, me being me, I know that I'll have to ride up the bastard or die in shame. The only problem is I probably won't be able to... and I'll have to get over it...

Bletchley Park

Last weekend we took Paul's school French exchange partner, who's been staying with us for a week, to Bletchley Park. I had never been before but I knew about it of course, coming from a place as obsessed with the second world war as the Poland of my childhood was.
I was bracing myself a little anticipating a need to clench my teeth and say nothing, as yet another Polish contribution to something big was going to be ignored and buried under the local achievements. I was wrong - they even have a memorial to Polish ingeneers who started it all!
Highly refreshing after finding out about all those exceptional French people, such as Marie Curie-Sklodowska, Fryderyk Chopin and even Robert Korzeniowski.
(A big rant full of witty and sarcastic remarks could follow, but I'm afrait that if start, there will be no stopping me!)

On home stores and more

I love home stores. They make me dream of nesting and hominess, and oh...

We have Paul's exchange French teacher coming to stay with us on Tuesday, so we finally decided to sort the guest cupboard a bit - it only had a sofa bed so far. We opted for a bookshelf, as it would provide surfaces for the woman to put her stuff on and still fit into the room. I was also looking forward to having somewhere to put all the books lying around in piles, but as it is, we bought a 'CD/DVD shelf' and so only the smallest books fit onto it.

Then we did some time killing before going for dinner to Paul's parents, which resulted in the purchase of a wok (yay!) and a couple of little things that make me happy. But as we were browsing through the vast spaces of TKMaxx, I realised that I can dream all I want - some things are just not going to happen.

And so I find home stores highly frustrating - there's just so many things I want, I want, I want, but I can't have as I can't afford, I have nowhere to put, I don't need... or Paul doesn't like...

Yet again...

Excerpts from my year 10 group:
"Of course you 'do' ski, the French do everything!"
"Miss, what are you doing tomorrow after school?" (he meant could he come and work on his assessment script, but it still sounded the way it sounded)
"Vowel clash! I knew I would find one!" (Lovely that he gets this excited about the language, but no, it wasn't a vowel clash at all)

I know I'm not updating as often as I could/should. I blame the little time I have for myself and the lack of own laptop (RIP).
Yet again, I'll try to be better...

A rant

You can only do as much yourself. You can put them on report, tell them off, give them detentions, call parents, but at some point the person above you needs to take over. Who that is depends on school policies and structures, most of the time it won't be the same person for subject as for form etc. Anyway - one of my such people is mostly useless. She is trying, don't get me wrong, but things are not being chased up as quickly as they should if at all.
And of course the little buggers feel untouchable.
So all your effort, the fact that you chased everything up and did everything you could, just gets wasted.
Seriously frustrating.

On top of that, I had a fight in my classroom today. Chairs being thrown onto people, people being thrown onto tables, serious fight, not a fun 'let's-wind-the-teacher-up' fight. And of course, without thinking, I got right in the middle of it. I managed to separate them, they got removed to isolation and higher powers will deal with them now (much higher powers, so they actually will) but I can't help but think: I could have gotten hurt...

Bottom line: I need a glass of wine and a cigarette. Now.

On weights and measures

One of the biggest problems I've had to deal with these days was the problem of what 30g of dry cat food looked like. I settled for 5 spoon fulls, the cat was acting as if he was being starved, friends on Facebook suggested half a glass, failed however to specify the type of glass they had in mind, I ended up buying kitchen scales (a useful item in a kitchen anyway) and found out that 30g of dry cat food were... 3 spoon fulls. The cat was acting as if he was being starved while being overfed.
Moral: don't trust your cat with food measurements.
Quite refreshing not to have bigger problems than that (or to be capable of pushing them away to the very darkest corner of the head where no one can see them).
Good girl.

On furry sausages

Is half term. Brains are resting, bodies are sleeping until undecent hours of almost early evening.
We both brought quite a lot of work to do home this week but so far the big pile of bags has been shifted once or twice for the benefit of visiting friends (so they would not trip on it) but that's where our interaction with it ended. Which is not good really.
But to be quite honest I am much more interested in interacting with the newest addition to our little family - a big pile of black hair requiring regular brushing and stroking and emitting some serious purring. Much more interesting than marking!