As I live and breath, Mary Poppins has returned and she came in the form of a practically perfect (in every way) antidote to too much Christmas chocolate and an excess of lounge lizarding in festive pyjamas. As I didn’t have access to young children, I nagged Favourite Son and Favourite Daughter into Boxing Day…
The Santa Clause
I can’t remember as a teacher ever writing December 21st on the whiteboard and still trying, so close to Christmas, to convince students that GCSE set texts might be more interesting than watching ‘Elf’, ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ or eating their own body weight in Miniature Heroes. Usually, to shake off the memories of school…
Rapping up birthdays
If I had been dreading my birthday, (last Tuesday, thanks for asking), that foreboding dissipated last weekend when I was invited as a plus one to a lunchtime drinks party. I didn’t know the host at all and had decided at an event the night before that – as I really wasn’t cracking solo socialising…
Frozen
Appropriately for this time of year I’ve managed to freeze my shoulder. Not quite sure how this happened – perhaps a cocktail of an exuberant boot camp session where we were paired with another boot camper and instructed to tear each other’s arms off in the ‘warm up’, or perhaps it was my pre-marathon training…
Bounce back
Grid-locked in traffic hell this week, I became distracted by children spilling out of a school’s gates. My stationery confinement coincides with the end of the school day and I am impressed with the bubble of energy that the pupils are displaying after a day in the classroom. I’m drawn to a young girl (perhaps…
Unwrapping it
This week has heralded the switching on of three sets of Christmas lights locally. I feel distinctly anxious for December is still weeks away. While I love Christmas, I just don’t appreciate the mission creep. I come from a family of autumn birthdays and when growing up it was only fair that my sisters and…
Dodging Defeat
I experienced another milestone a few weeks ago when I was selected for the teachers’ team to play in a charity game of DodgeBall against students, in front of an audience of students. (I’d love to give the impression that this was a stadium invitation, but the reality was a packed spectators gallery in the…
Colouring in
Years ago – I mean YEARS – I managed to persuade my boss that I needed to go on a course discussing the impact of colour in business. I worked in press relations at the time and to this day can’t remember why I – or he – thought some Kodachrome insight would add value…
In the land of the blind …
My sister often quotes the proverb, ‘in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king’, and I’m reminded of this as I sit across the kitchen from one of my dearest partners in crime – or ‘one of my besties’ as she likes to be known. She won’t let me sit any…
Mini dramas
Not being a Penelope Pitstop sort of lady, my car has proved one of my biggest challenges over the last 12 months. Like any good relationship we need each other – Mavis and I – but my goodness she has proved as temperamental and needy as her owner. The mini dramas she promised when we…
The Dragonfly Jar 