A pleasant happenstance to share is that this year’s Valentine’s Day crept up without me wanting to slap it in the face. Stepping over the rows of red rose buckets trip-wiring the entrance to Tesco’s the evening before, I acknowledge that it is impossible for any male to solve the Valentine riddle: how to acknowledge…
Stretcher Case
When I wrote last week about upping my marathon training, in my head I was actually thinking about slowing down. Over the last seven days there have certainly been plenty of opportunities to note that Life sometimes just puts a big road block in your path to ensure she has your full attention and that…
Spandex Speedypants
Confession time: I am out of self-inflicted retirement again and marathon training is mission-creeping my life. I spot my tell-tale anorak behaviours and the snarkiness which always accompanies the pyramid schedule of long distance runs. If you zoned out on reading the word ‘marathon’ I don’t blame you. I am even boring myself. I promised…
Name and Shame
If you believe what you read, January should be a mammoth slog to get through. I must be bucking this trend because relatively speaking, January – so far – has been very good to me. I think the bad press January gets arises from the media’s obsession with naming days. If I found myself a…
Knee High
Red January (#redjanuary2020) has been going so well, that without lying, I can boast that I have been knee high in physical activity – unspecified – on each day of 2020. This was until yesterday. I was feeling torn because I was due to run the Gloucester Half Marathon today and the habit of my…
I see you as you are
In the spirit of tough love, the new year hoiks Mama J off a very comfortable sofa to honour the ventures that her Autumn self believed would be character building after a month of wanton slothfulness. I am grateful to that Autumn self for two weeks in, January has already ensured my comfort zone has…
Good intentions
The inter Christmas- New Year week is an annual invitation to be in your pj’s powering through a selection box at 11 am and to legitimately still justify it as breakfast. Add some left over camembert and cold brussel sprouts and you can call it brunch. You certainly have no time to write a weekly…
It’s a wonderful life
On the last day of term I realise that I still have deeper depths to plunge on the chocolate orange front. It is the Sixth Form Christmas Review and one tutor group challenges the others to take on their Chocolate Orange Challenge. I am officially teacher tired and tetchy but my interest is piqued by…
Good Sport
When ‘Sports Personality of The Year’ airs on the BBC tonight I will know it is also time to stop pretending that Christmas is a long way off. As someone who loves arm chair athletics, I am more than a little excited to see Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson Thompson – DAS and KJT to…
Work, rest and play
Now that we are actually in December, I can feel my inner Grinch starting to slowly thaw. The students have a Christmas playlist ear-worming its way through the Common Room and I have reluctantly relinquished THE master key to the Sixth Form store cupboard so that they can unleash the box of tat they like…
