I always thought that my classroom assistant was wonderful – but when she came back from her coffee break with Marmite smeared on her face, it was almost more than I could resist.
Perhaps I should set up a new ‘special interest’ website: specialneedsassistantsandmarmite.com
Little Nutter’s school was closed today, as the support staff were on strike.
Thankfully, his after-school-club stepped up to the oche and happily offered us all-day care – for £30! What else could we do but gratefully hand over the wad?
But at 5pm I collected him, and was briefed: he had spent the day drawing pictures.
Little Nutter, who has eaten every crayon he was ever given and never ever drawn a picture, had made a train with lego pieces and filled it with animals, and then drawn three dozen pictures of it. The colours were accurate, the proportions were spot on, the elephants, ducks, sheep and dogs were all anatomically correct, and he had signed each one with his own name (albeit with the “N” back to front…)
Being shorter in the afternoon. (My rear view mirror is too high when I drive home from work.)
Grey stubble. (And that is worse than grey pubes.)
Lie-ins are pathetic. (I had a lovely lie-in last Saturday. I got up at 7:45.)
Using a bottle stopper because you can’t finish a whole bottle of wine on your own.
Putting half a bar of chocolate into the fridge for later. (NB Don’t do this if you have children. You never see the chocolate again. Well, you do – smeared around a little mouth that is busy saying, “No. I haven’t been eating chocolate.“)
Using a spreadsheet to calculate fuel economy in your car. (Pink cars get better economy.)
Actually hearing yourself say, “You’ll catch your death” when you see a gorgeous woman in skimpy clothes.
Little Nutter was in respite, and we had a family obligation. What we didn’t anticipate was the clocks going forward.
So we set off an hour late, having forgotten the goody bag from Betty’s, forgotten my mobile phone, forgotten fill the car with petrol (and motorway prices are 5p? a litre more expensive,) forgotten the Christening present (get the picture yet?)
And we had to leave early because we needed to collect Little Nutter from respite at 5pm.
At least everyone was pleased to see us, and our children had a good time – for a couple of hours…
In the middle of a lesson this morning I sat on top of a low bookcase. There was a broken staple sticking out of it, and it snagged on my trousers. As a result, a long thread was hanging down from my bum for most of the day.
This drove the classroom assistants nuts. I spent the day defending my derrière. They just had to interfere. And they wouldn’t leave my chuff alone.
Don’t tell Darling Wifey – but it was one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had at work for almost two decades.
My little pink car is in the lowest band for carbon emissions. So I get a 50% reduction in road tax.
What am I going to spend all that money on?
If you’re going to buy a hands-free two-way radio for your caretaker (that’s “janitor” for readers of an American disposition) then be sure to advise him to turn it off when he starts hammering.
I now need a blow-up doll!
We went to see the Headhunting Head yesterday, and toured the school and spoke to her deputy.
And there was evidence of a lot of hard work to make the Cotswolds job as attractive as possible: the package includes a discount on fees for the children, and the campus has schools that can take Little Madam and Tiny Flirt, whilst the special school that Little Nutter can attend is only five minutes walk up the road.
We toured the rambling buildings and admired the students’ art displays and I inspected exercise books and textbooks and tut-tutted at their very poor choice of schemes of work…
Then we drove around the towns and villages, finally having tea in HH’s garden, in a very pretty village, looking out across an ancient churchyard towards a millionaire’s mansion.
And my overall impression: very similar to the “Golden Triangle” (which is what the local estate agents call the area we live in, although I think it’s a better description of a natural blonde than the Vale of York) except everything is built with yellow stone, and? unnecessarily cramped together. House prices are about the same, until you reach the larger properties which? are ridiculously expensive? in the Cotswolds. And the towns in Oxfordshire are hideous dumps when compared with Harrogate, Ilkley, Ripon, Knaresborough, York…
So if we’re going to talk about the North/South divide, I’m pretty certain that’s a win for Yorkshire.
Then there is education; the school places we have for Little Madam and Tiny Flirt are far better than the ones on offer in the Cotswolds; and we can’t overloook the fact that moving Little Nutter will almost certainly trigger a regression in his development. A demotion for Darling Wifey just at the point when she has achieved spectacular success in her current management position, her bosses love her, and her job is set to get easier as she becomes more established, can only be a bad thing. And I really, really do love teaching special needs more than I ever enjoyed teaching RE.
Ultimately, socially, York wins hands down. We know so many Geordies who pop in on the way to/from home that we bought a sofa bed for them (yes, that’s an? open invitation. Check it’s not occupied before you pop in, but you can have the sofa bed and a parking permit any time you want.) Oxfordshire isn’t on the way to anywhere except? Swindon and Redditch – and who wants to go there?
Darling Wifey knows that she could change my mind for me – but I don’t think she wants to.
Finally, late last night, we stopped for supper at my parents’ house in Stoke-on-Trent, which really is an unattractive, economically depressed and culturally deprived city. It underlined the fact that we are choosing between Paradise and Nirvana.
