I've been looking at the competition, but I've decided to stick with what I know and get a Pro account.
Can't be doing with the new year stuff, so here is yesterday again, now with pictures. Got to dash, daughter wants laptop and I'm a few drinks behind!

Coal not Dole
by morelearning @ 31/12/05 - 10:10:00 am
Woke up to one of those slushy days that are generally bad news for snowmen.

Decided on an outing to Snibston Discovery Park, the principal discovery we anticipated being the question of whether or not it had changed since the days when our older two were younger. Change it has - a bit. On the plus side there are child-friendly bits of kit such as lego, dressing up boxes and drawing stations among the more grown up exhibits. On the down side it took them 45 minutes to produce a baked potato - presumably the process involved uprooting and cleaning it as well as the more traditonal "baking"

The essence of the experience can be surmised from the location of the place: Coalville.

One of the new exhibits demonstrates 100 major technological innovations and invites us to ecide on the most significant. Those of you of the view that the modern world has a warped value system may care to look away now:

Other highlights:
The six wheel AEC Renown which nevers fails to excite me. Reasons for this are complex; don't be so keen to judge!

Also found several attractive young women in the fashion section. Judge all you want on this one; it's clearly reprehensible behaviour.

Happy New Year everyone. I for one won't be reeling around the fountain, but enjoy it if you are.

PS Just finished Peel biography, Margarve of the Marshes. Recommended.

Icecream, anyone?

See above

... a robin.

Such was the title of an article I read this week (in The Times, if memory serves) - the gist was that if you took a moment to listen for bird song this week, the perpetrator would indeed be a robin. Every other songbird in the country has buggered off somewhere more pleasant. When the boy wonder and I were at a loose end this morning, after the Teletubbies video had finished, we trogged up the lawn to put some food on the shed roof for the birdies and did indeed catch the plaintive sounds of a local robin - this chap(ess) in fact:

I'm no bird photographer - it never struck me as a very rock and roll kind of activity - and this was the best I could do from some distance with a camcorder. But I was struck by the effort. It's all very well for Saquib and Gul next door to flit to India for six weeks at this time of year, as they're more than entitled to do, but they miss moments like this. The Boy wonder had a good view from his bedroom too!

Have you looked inside your car exhaust recently?

When mine blew up on the M5 on Boxing Day, still with 160 miles to go to a 3 o'clock appointment with a turkey spread, I had occasion to explore its innards for the first time. I came to the conclusion that I had either run over a murmur of ravens or a bloke wearing a huge fright wig. There were bits of black fake hair stuff everywhere.

Anyway we limped up the motorway doing a passable impression of a rocket-fired stock car and arrived within 30 minutes of ETA. This morning I took it to Rossendale Exhausts and paid £49.50 for a new backbox. Am I boring you yet?

Here's the offending lump of useless metal:

Star
If you are
A love compassionate,
You will walk with us this year.
We face a glacial distance, who are here
Huddld
At your feet.

I can't even speak.

Ok Blogfolk, turn aside for a moment while I post my deeply unfashionable round robin. You'll have to imagine the pictures - I was gonna, but I can't be arsed.

2005 Season

Christmas cards are a bit of a dilemma – I want to spread gestures of seasonal goodwill and brothersisterhood as much as the next person, but I don’t know if any of us really NEED another crib scene round the house. Thanks for the updates, though – it is genuinely good to know what’s happening with you, if only on an annual basis. The alternatives to the card seem somehow even more unsatisfactory: the anonymous flash animation e-card, the last-minute e-mail, the not bothering this year. So you’re getting “What we did” and you’ll like it, or not. Am I bov…er…sorry.

January – Brian skiing with the school

February - Half-Term – A week in Stavanger, looking at the Norwegian Educational System.

March – At Easter, we all went to Kempervennen Centre-Parcs again

April – Nothing much, to be honest

May –
Launch of www.morelearning.org.uk
Teacher related nonsense

June
Franklin’s first birthday - at home

July – Two weeks in Gran Canaria. Hot

August

September
Appearance in “Shakers on Tour” section of Bury vs Wrexham programme

October
Ebay bargain, Holdsworthy, Devon

Sea Life Centre, Birmingham

November
Launch of more nonsense you don’t need to know
http://morelearning.blog.co.uk/

December
Christmas shopping in Loughborough

Anyway, that’s yer lot.At the time of writing my mum is very ill so we’re approaching Christmas with some trepidation, but we hope you all have a very good one.
Lots of love from:
Brian, Debbie, Joe, Beth and Franklin. XXX

Ka Trouble.
To Mr and Mrs Ka at number 2, a beautiful compact baby boygirl.
Next door but one now have three of them!

My car is fixed, thanks to the very good people at Profile Motors - if you're ever in Leicester with car trouble and in need of a place to give you an honest appraisal and a good price, Carl is your man.
You have all this car nonsense to come, littleman.

Apparently I'm the most boring man in the world and should get a life. You might be right, anonymous tagger, though some of your other vocabulary suggests your aren't going to be able to string many sentences together yourself. But I did turn down a perfectly reasonable night out on Friday because I wanted to watch the end of Bleak House and drink cheap brandy.

Beautiful morning; decided to go down the Walkers to see the Foxes fail to beat lowly Crewe.
No disrespect to Crewe; always liked them. Went to my cousin's wedding at Gresty Road, and we had a kick about on the pitch with my lad's football until someone belted it onto the railway. For the brief time Bury were in Div 1 (old money) clubs relegated from the Moneybags League would face "trips to the likes of Bury and Crewe." They've done well to stay there while we slumped back into our new home in Div 3 (old money), although did you notice that the last unbeaten record in the country went today to goals from the mighty Paul Scott (87) and Simon Whaley (90). Fantastic.

Just like the good old days!

The locals in Leicester don't seem to be as thrilled, unsurprisingly. Ask Gilbert the Filbert.

My mum is struggling; I wish I was up there with her.

Daughter's dance show went well.

I'm going to stop there as I'm the most boring man in the world (c.) and I need to buy some last minute presents and pack up some stuff for our trip to Chelmsford tomorrow to see Sue and Gordon.

I might even type out one of those round robin thangs and do some Christmas cards - I'm sure all those long lost friends and relations will want all the intricate details of my most boring life.

Pix Devon October; facts Leicester today. Life Just Bounces.

Child 1: untidy bedroom, sleeping for 2 hours after school, negotiating for a lift, playing tennis til 10pm and thus preventing me from having a drink.

Child 2: Didn't get back from school until 6:10. From front door to slamming bedroom door in 39 seconds - a new record. Now upstairs "doing RE homework" apparently- stop laughing.

Child 3: New comfort object is a packet of grapes. Held on to it for 3 hours; charmed staff in Oxfam. Still thinks cat sound is "miiiiiiiiine." Can show teeth, walk like old man, stack bricks. Renamed fish "ish" for convenience; ditto hamster, now also called "Ish." Genius.

Missis: Surfing tinternet for digital cameras without knowing a great deal about them.

Me: Dead car, too ill to eat cracking christmas dinner today, channel surfing. Every time I see "The Tube" I think it's going to be Paula Yates. She's dead though. Must try to remember.

Early Christmas presents: Fall Peel Sessions Box Set 4 me
Springsteen Born to Run 30 yrs on box set 4 me
Both arrived today! Result.

Dead Car:

Anyways, I'm going back tomorrow after 2 days off. I'm not feeling fantastic so it'll have to be some pictures.

Ads by Goooooooooooogle suggest I'd be interested in brown mice and UB40 - I'll have to be much more careful about what I write.

I'm not bothered about my youngest son any more. I struggled to night school, but apparently hee demanded that the hamster came into the living room and then sat on its cage; he also has made the link between the appearance of Teletubbies on the tv and the video box that portrays our fat, camp friends - but hasn't work out that puushing the box into the machine won't make it work.

Nightschool wise:
*one person didn't turn up (won't have done the work; still got my Polanski Macbeth dvd; curses!)
*one person turned up with young daughter in tow and left after ten minutes
*rest of us discussed exam papers and then finished 10 minutes early to share tapas and mince pies with the Spanish

Tried to snipe a 6meg mp3 player for eldest, but outbid. Back to drawing board. I'm selling a airfix concorde, If anyone is interested! It was a Christmas present last year and it's been in the cupboard ever since - I'll be glad to see the back of it. Airfix Concorde

Signing off now to wrap "Secret Santa" presents. For reasons that I think I understand, the gifts are going to be:
*A bar of milk chocolate
*A charity shop vid of "Ghost" with Patrick Swayzee
*Ditto Dirty Dancing
*A dvd entitled "Stalking Laura"
*Some batik cloth
*A jar of peanut butter.
I think I slightly cheated on the £6 limit, but not by much
I'm feeling sufficiently negative about www.morelearning.org.uk to think that nobody will follow a link here and blow my cover.

Mice are feeding well (on iodine based poison), if you're interested. I'm feeling bad about them, to be honest. This must confirm my status as wishy-washy wet liberal. My grandfathers (Champion cow-milker of Lancashire 1928 and founder of Cocker and Laycock's abbatoir in Blackpool respectively)would be so proud!!!!

Anyway, how can you worry about someone who uses a pretend pram as a comfort object?

You don't need the details.
You don't need "dire rear" puns.
You don't need a picture of a crow on the ruins of Leicester Abbey, with the National Space Centre in the background either, but that's what you're getting.

After the madness of last week, I may have got myself on a bit of an even keel - tho ~I haven't made any inroads into the list of a thousand things I should have done by now.
Saturday to Loughborough for an insurance estimate. Because of the crappy low-budget company who insure my other half's car, we have to drive 20 miles just so a guy can take a digital photo of the engine number and the bump. Luckily this is a blessing in disguise, as we replace the Saturday morning cleaning hysteria with some light shopping somewhere where we're not bored silly.
My mum's still living (on Complan and ice cubes), as are the mice (on the cheese and chocolate button treats I keep giving them!).
I'm finding it difficult to do anything www.morelearning.org.uk ish, and the same applies to a set of y9 books, a set of y8 essays, a training day, a helpsheet on macbeth and 4 lessons. My leg hurts.

Still, I'm ok. Peace be with you.

I'm stressed! (And where has the Header gone?)

Most of the time I would categorise my family/life as "amusingly dysfunctional" - but today it has been disturbingly disturbed. Started at 5 something am with plaintive cry from son, who'd come off MY bike on a sheet off black ice on way to paper round. I stumbled from bed and into some nearby clothes before hitting the cold wet mist, rescuing child and bike and completing paper round. By the time we got back I'd lost the 30 minutes I needed to complete the report for the Primary Heads Meeting at 8:30, and then I couldn't find a dummy in house. In the mangled thinking under pressure I'm so good at at this time of year I decided I had to buy some more, so drove to Sainsburys. Child was so relieved to get it he fell asleep, so I was able to leave the car in the middle of the staff car park with the engine running while I did registration, printed and delivered report and set off lesson one.
From there it was ten minutes to run the lad round to his nursery, by which time I was a nervous wreck. Got pulled out of class to talk to Primary Heads about 20 mins later. Finally judged persuasive writing competition, with only tears from me. At lunch time I supervised four of my form rehearsing a dance routine for the end of term show while I lay on the floor trying to recover from painful sciatica. Got 15 minutes snooze; saved me from nervous breakdown.
After work rushed into town to buy mouse traps.
At home managed to bust the brabantia bin, so had the treat of sorting through rubbish by hand to find the catch -the second soddin piece of plastic that was about to wreck a major appliance in a fortnight. I want to go back to the old days - when I could sleep.
.
Remarkably, I found it - and things picked up a bit from there. Both boys played with the cardboard box the s/hand car seat came in. I watched Bleak House. We put the new Christmas tree up. It's a vision in plastic and fibre optics. It twinkles.

PS baited 2 traps an hour ago. Bait has gone on both. This is not popular with the women of the house.

Youngest had fun putting washine tablets into washing tablet drawer on washing machine tonight. That's a game. That's "Should I be worrying about my son #3". Or should I be worrying about the 15 yr old who wouldn't know a washing tablet if it landed in the breakfast cereal he keeps stealing from me. Ditto the washing machine.

Anyway, it's going to be Hugh, apparently.

Memo to self: I do not want an argument for the sake of it.

10:30pm, eldest picked up from tennis, large drink poured - time to shed some thoughts. Stick with it, my brain is teeming.

Life at the interactive whiteboard face is always frantic this time of year.
Actually began day with some INSET for Teaching Assistants on use of aforementioned boards. Went well, but nobody ever did INSET on chalk use. PSHCE (don't ask): "Your Vote Counts" - from David Cameron to the forum in Rome and back again, and to finish I threw some peasants off my land for not voting for me, which was fun. From then we went for Writing Practice Papers - I'll have to mark the beggars, but you have to keep the lid on the youth at this time of year.
Things went batty at home from the moment I walked in.

We have mice, apparently.
The other half isn't keen on the idea of mice, and the discovery of small brown bombs in two kitchen cupboards sent her into hysterical mode. The effect on me was even worse - ~~I found myself singing "There's a moose loose aboot this hoose" and - the horror - a UB40 song.
Managing to do an even a worse job of "There's a rat in the kitchen what am I gonna do" than even the Brummy Bunglers of Cod Reggae was not ideal preparation for my appearance in the school choir later in the evening. Neither was - the following scene contains graphic images of baby faeces, and you may wish to skip this bit - my youngest emerging from the bath and making a bit of a mess of the living room rug. The resulting kerfuffle was punctuated by daughter's frequent phone calls to wangle a lift back from some party she'd found herself at ("I haven't got much credit...")
Our brief performance of "Away in a Manger" and "Riding Across the desert" wasn't ruined by the sudden appearance of some extras to sing the bass line, nor by my attempt to distance myself from the newly acquired bass section, leading to me stumbling over a guitar and producing more feedback than a complete Jesus and Mary Chain set.
I managed to pick up a DVD of Alfie for a fiver on the way back.
In the 30 minutes between getting home and getting son from tennis club, I did a spot of marking while half watching the David Attenborough spider thing. All the spiders appearing on the show were able to produce more in an hour than I seem to manage in a week.
I was really cold in the car and the zip on my coat's bust, so in order to keep warm I set myself the challenge to drive down the A6 as far as the racecourse while controlling the car with my knees, but I had to give up at the bend near where David Gower used to live.

From the Oadby and Wigston Mail:
Frog vs Sheep
A flock of singing sheep have launched a bid for pop glory with a new version of Jingle Bells.
The Lake District's "Baarmy Army" hope their take on the classic hit will beat rivals to the Christmas Number 1.
The Crazy Frog is one of the hot tips for top slot with a rendition of Jingle Bells.

O Tempora! O Mores!

Thoughts on "The Radio" next time. These are the days...

Goodish day.
Finished Year 7 reports and Year 9 mocks.
Lunch duty and dinner duty over for another week, as is nightschool. Bit worried about quality of work on Macbeth, but still.
On the way up there I managed to pick up replacement car seat I bought on ebay from bloke up Fosse Road North way. (See "For want of a horse" below).
Also managed to book a holiday at Easter on Fuerteventura, months before eldest is 16 and youngest is 2, so to keep the price down. In April last year, 0 inches of rain fell on the island - sweet.
None of this is remotely interesting, but I'm past caring - I've opened a bottle of brandy and will shortly be entertaining myself with life's trivial details: Why can't Sven say "World Cup" properly? How long could I live on beer alone? What rhymes with secret? How many beans make five? Who ate all the pies?

Here's a quick time check for you. Cheers!

I've decided to buy you a goat for Christmas.
Click here
Teachers cost £30.

I've lost my laptop -it's gone upstairs with teenager, downloading "Stuck wit u" and "Feel my bumps" and goodness knows what else R&B gangsta grooves for new mp3 player.
This means not much access to pictures, so on a fairly random basis but to commemorate end of Routemasters in London this week, here are our friends from the north:

Stayed up until 3 am this morning watching "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and writing aimless e-mails, so I'm turning in soon - my head hurts and my right leg still pains me greatly. The Feyenoord shirt I bought in Oxfam (WHY????) isn't very warm either.

It looks like me mum won't make it to Christmas - phoned tonight and she was coherent enough to be planning her funeral.

What's this, quiz fans?

Apparently it's a Victorian anti-masturbation device. I had to disguise it a bit to get it into the school magazine, but you get the idea.

Had the camera out today, on the occasion of my daughter's thirteenth birthday. So I'll keep the word count down and see if I can give you a flavour of life through some images

Life is metaphor - so what does this pile of unwrapped cds signify? Freebies from "The Word" and "Uncut" - an excellent John Peel Festive Fifteen, including £Eat Y'Self Fitter, a Tube compilation I've not even unwrapped. Plus Gordon Ramsay Cooks Christmas, still shrink-wrapped with a magazine that tells me all about what was on telly last week. When I die, they'll find that copy of NME's "The Cool list 2005 " still in its cellophane and have a good laugh.

Been wading through piles of reports today. Depressing stuff - one person has managed to compose two different reports, and appears to alternate these between pupils randomly; a disturbing number of people seem incapable of stringing two grammatically correct sentences together; most of the computer-generated ones appear to come from computers with very little memory for who the kids are.

Students, eh?

You get a good view of the clock tower from upstairs in Pizzaland.

Should I be worrying about my son? #2
Hoovering the carpet in the Early Learning Centre.

Incidentally, the city centre is no place to be at this time of year. Just ask my co-pilot: Muttley.

Strange days at the INSET meeting last week. We were supposed to be reading images using the 5ws and layers of inference:
What do you think of when you look at this image?
It's a Pink Floyd LP.
Well, yes. Well spotted. Try another one. What do you make of this peasant carrying sticks?
Led Zep 4.
Ok, well try this one.
Scissors sisters. Go one, we'll have a go.

Speaking of record covers - Now the dust has settled (sorry), it's time to reflect on the footballer that was George Best. The word iconic is overused (though not by anyone writing reports at my school, haha) but how about this for iconic:

His favourite play things:
1) A pink pram that he pushes around the house
2) The mop
3) His toy iron here

It can look quite charming, when he begins ironing the stair carpet in strange shops, but my concern is that the cumulative effect of so many unmanly items will be emasculating. In fact I was preparing a body of evidence to cite in later life, when he tackles that awkward conversation about his predilection for show tunes and interior decoration.

At least I was until I saw the way he lamped some kid in the face with his iron in the ball pond the other day.

Yesterday I wasted 8 minutes of my life installing batteries into Little Singing Alfie
Man, was that a mistake? Yes it was - stop it with the rhetorical questions.
I'd forgotten how needy the cheerful little fokker is. If it's not "Give me a cuddle" it's "Give me two kisses" and the like, even when he's buried under the toy box. Even when he's buried under the patio. That's where he's going if he doesn't stop propositioning me in the middle of the night.

Little Singing Alfie features a friendly voice and singing to reassure babies whilst encouraging them to develop first language skills. Three interactive buttons teach the numbers 123 through adorable kisses, promoting motor skills and early learning. Different textures and flashing light provide tactile and visual stimulation. Cuddle little Alfie or keep him with you by attaching him to the cot or pram using the handy velcro strap. Features lots of fun melodies and sound effects. He's a needy whingeing little whiny bastard.

I feel my professional reputation is in tatters.

Luckily this is not my main profession - the one that occupies much of my working day, pays the mortgage, keeps the wolf from the door etc. That's going ok, I hope.

Things is I've been developing a sideline: newspaper boy.

It started as a favour to my son - he has a couple of drops on his newsapper round that are geographically inconvenient, in that the thoughtless owners live a couple of hundred yards from his beautifully sequential loop. It began with him leaving them for me once or twice a week, and has progressed to me carrying out my duties at 8 and 9 Palfreyman Close with obsessional care. I don't care if I'm late for work - as long as I've done my papers properly.

Thing is, the lad doesn't share my pride. He's starting to hate his paper round, not realising that getting up at 5 am and cycling through snow, hail, wind, fog, sleet and rain is character building and will result in him becoming a real man. He just thinks to see it as a right royal pain in the arse, and has stopped caring whether the good citizens of the area get a paper or not. So on Tuesday the Daily Mail reading occupants of 8 Palfreyman Close had a leftover Sun; on Wednesday I only had a Telegraph for them. This morning the lad got a note to the effect that he had to be more careful, but I took these criticisms very much to heart.

We are admittedly becoming obsessive about the papers. It's the last year of GCSEs, coursework deadlines are coming thick and fast, he could be a hard drinking coke snorting monster for all we know - as long as he doesn't sack the paper round off before Christmas.

Anyone remember "Sam" - a CCooksonesque drama set in the North East? I once one a fancy dress contest by dressing up as him (ie by wearing a cap and short trousers) when I was about 7. If only I had fancy dress photos of those fancy dress triumphs of yesteryear: Leyland Motors Extended Tea Break (political!), Jaws (complete with papier mache shark), The Gnomes of Zurich (!), Honey Monster (or was that my brother). I digress. The other memory of "Sam" was a mother of the house , racking her brains for the most withering insult she could imagine, and finally settling on "And while you're out, why not buy a copy of The Daily Mail."

Of course, it could have been "When the Boat Comes In"

He delivers about 12 copies of the paranoid rag every day. We might have to move.