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Making your mind up.
Last night in the pub I saw an advert for London fashion week showing big red buses and a smart shiny tube train... my heart ached and I realised how much I was missing my old life...So, all day today I have been telling Ringo that I am so homesick (inbetween dealing with my lovely year 9's let loose in the computer suite - god help us).
After the bell had finished and the naughty people left to rot in detention we walked back to the station. We strolled past the icecream van (they're hardy up North for sure) and past a small fight which we broke up. The cold winter sun was out making the air pale blue and we were talking about Romans and Tudors and the truly wonderful Big Biscuits that the canteen sells. Suddenly a car stopped beside us and my parents who just happened to be passing waved us in for a lift to the station and offered to cook me pheasant for supper to drink with a harsh but fair Rioja they had picked up in Spain... and I though, my god I love it here. I really really love it here.
So I'll stop thinking and ride the wave, because I just can't work out where or who I am any more... and it seems to be getting less important. Maybe.
Losing the smog.
This is the first time for 6 years that I have dialled a number without accidently putting a '9' before it.
Finally I am free of that nasty corporate habit...
Good.
Easy like Sunday morning...
Today has been a turning point. A struggle. Today has been really hard work.
Up until today I have been having a lovely time, I am teaching in a fabulous school where I am treated like a princess, I have been praised and pampered by my mentors for the couple of lessons that I have taught and Mr Ringo makes me laugh almost all day (especially in quiet lessons it seems). College (apart from one obvious incident) has been glorious too - an orgy of beer drinking and gossip really... and the odd law exam.
Today was different though. Firstly I have been given my own class of year nines up until Christmas to teach all about 'warfare in the 20th century' and this certainly is not a topic that a classical historian knows very much about. The monumental task of learning every war fought in the last 100 years and the who's, why's and how's of them all in one and a half weeks was just starting to dawn on me, when I was given a year 8 class all of my own as well. They are learning the history of Islam 600 - 1500... *cough* just another 900 years to brush up on then.
That'll teach me to appear capable - little did they realise that it was all down to the fact that I have been teaching Romans and Tudors so far - subjects that just happen to sit nicely within my subject knowledge....
Still this is definitely do-able, you may argue... ah yes possibly, but not when a have a 2500 word critique of the National Curriculum due in to college for next Friday.
And to add insult to injury next Friday is my birthday... MY BIRTHDAY*... so this weekend I am heading to London to play with my beloved much missed friends... I haven't time to learn about world wars and cuban missile crisis' and Vietnam...
I guess that under the circumstances, there's only one thing to do as, I refuse to give up my London drinking time, and I can't give up my teacher research time, there is no way that I can give up my essay time and that's to give up my sleep time. C'est la vie.
* At least I haven't the time to panic about turning 28...
The definition of gloom...
It's raining, my jumper is itchy, my friends are in the pub and I have an essay to write.
There's no place like home?
I'm going to London... today on the train... I'll make it there in time for some serious Selfridges shopping and everything. In London.
Tomorrow I am seeing my London friends in a London pub in Hampstead to do some London drinking for my birthday.
I love London. My home is in London. I have missed London terribly...
And yet, and yet.... and yet... there is a little knot of fear in my stomach, because I am so dreadfully afraid that something my have changed... Like when you have been parted from a lover for a long time and you worry that one of you may have changed, or grown up, or gotten fat...
Baby Love
My adventures in London have been just lovely. The Benefit counter in Selfridges is how I remembered, G.A.Y. in Soho is just as I remembered, and the hours spent hugging the toilet bowl after a night foolishly lining my stomach with wine are just as I remembered too.
A nice few people turned up for my birthday yesterday, with some of the night owls not making it until well after 10pm, when I fear that I was somewhat past my best. The stagger back to my fathers flat in Bond Street clutching a bottle of champagne was one step short of a walk of shame and I have a very vague memory of thinking just how slurry I sounded when I was ordering my chicken nuggets from the ever open McDonalds at Oxford Circus (god bless it).
But what happeend today was the real reason that I was in London because today I got to play with my best friends teeny tiny ickle two week old baby. For a while I thought that I wouldn't manage to see her or it, because we were all at sixes and sevens, but she called me this morning to tell me that his hearing test was rescheduled, and even though I have to cancel a darling friend there was no way I was going to miss the chance to meet baby. When I arrived, he was placed in my arms immediately and I cuddled him all by myself - the first baby I have ever held, ever and I was terrified. I would have rather faced a firing squad than touch a baby two months ago, or a classroom of abusive year nines with 'behavioual difficulties'. But, don't we all change my dears? Every day.
After the initial thoughts of 'oh bugger, I'm going to drop this tiny person on the floor, or he is going to vomit on my cashmere jumper' horror, I felt that we actually got on rather well. Little baby and I looked at each other for a while both wondering just what was happening. Then eventually the baby gave up and went to asleep and I had the satisfaction of not only winning the game of chicken, but also of having a small being, cuddling me, and trusting me totally.
'Baby, you are by far the nicest man I have cuddled for a long time' I told him, kissing his head gently, and he kicked his legs appealingly and dribbled on my pink cashmere. It was time for him to go back to mummy.
Still, one day, I think I'm going to get me one of those baby things, they are pretty cool.
Spoilt and pampered...
So, I met my best friend for breakfast this morning (our lives are so busy it was the only possible time to catch up - mental!!) and for my birthday she had bought me a Louis Vuitton darling of a bag to carry my red pens and teacher books in. Having thus gotten my inner London It girl back with some force, I immediately spent the morning having my hair cut and my nails manicured in order to make me as fabulous as my new bag. I might have blown the budget on a few choice items of clothing from Selfridges too...
So, it's time to leave now... apart from the fact that I am offically skint, tomorrow I have to go to a cotton mill and think about the impact of the industrial revolution. At least I'll be doing it in fantastic jeans with rouge noir nails and a bling bling bag on my arm.
What. Madness.