I have over the last three years become proficient at most peices of exercise equipment that are in my local gym. I can row 2000m in under 9min – which given my handicap of a lack of hieght isn’t bad and have maxed the weights on the some of the leg presses. I’m not bragging, I’m tyring to put into context the next shameful admission, which is no matter how hard I’ve tried I have never, ever maganged to get anywhere on the tread mills – no pun intended. I’ve fobbed it off with ‘oh I have stmaina for swimming and water sports’ and while that is true – you put me in a pool and I’ll happily punt up and down for ever. Or at least until my attention span has wondered. I could never run for more then 30seconds. A few weeks ago started to take on my arch nemesis and decided that I wanted to be able to run for half an hour non-stop. This is a mountain that I never thought I would ever have any hope of climbing but after a bit of jiggling on speed and setting myself to goal of improving my speed by just 15 seconds a week I can now run non-stop for 3mins 30. Still at the bottom of my mountain granted and I’m sure that most people out there will sneer at me, but I’m getting there and I will make it.

So what impossible goal have you set yourself lately?

It’s been a weird few weeks. Since the start of 2011 we have both been saying that thing have got to get better. We’ve been insisting on it. Since that a few things have happened. It all started with a phone call from Dom one evening saying his car won’t start, after several phones call and a lot of umming and ahhing I went and got him, leaving the car stranded at the office. The next day the RAC turned up and applied the ‘correct technique’ to start it. (see video clip).  As he had been travelling up by bike, he managed to get the car home, leaving the bike stuck until the weekend when we went and retrieved that.

Scroll to about 9:25 to see what I mean.

In between all the broken bone and car saga, I was told that the diagnosis I got for the dizziness I received in November is wrong so yay me more tests coming up in March – so year four of guess that condition coming up.

All was  fine until Monday, where upon some wonderful students of mine shut my fingers in the door and broke them. So this time when Dom phoned and said the car wouldn’t start there wasn’t a lot I could do. Still after about an hour he managed to get it started and nurse it home. This unfortunately meant that he was back on the bike. Two days later despite the frost and some misgivings he set out for work. And the inevitable happened…. At around two in the afternoon I’m sitting in my lab at work quietly getting on with some marking when I hear

“Tina, you’ve got a visitor…” You know that sick feeling you get when you just know something has happened? I do and that what I got just before I entered the prep room, whereupon I find Dom with a sheepish smile, scuffed bike gear and a sling.  Just when we’re thinking things can’t get any worse, we get a phone call from the States. Turns out Dom’s brother was playing that most dangerous of games, tennis and broke his wrist in 5 places. Even with insurance it will still cost a fortune to put right. Still we muster on through a few weeks and we make plans to fix the car. So thoughtfully so more of my students crash through my lab door, smashing my wrist meaning I need a trip to A&E to insure it’s not broken. Just to find it’s the nerves that have been jarred and I can’t drive meaning that as Dom can’t drive long distance, and certainly isn’t up to walking to the school first I have to call my mother to come and rescue my car.

That weekend we then attempt to fix the car. Only to find after replacing the ignition switch, starter motor and battery, that the alternator is dead, the exhaust needs patching, the front drive shaft is croaked and the tick over is running alarmingly high. So all in all rather a waste of time and money. Finally we cave and on Sunday we went car shopping and after trawling large numbers of garages settle on the first car we saw (isn’t that always the way?) a Honda Jazz. Dom puts down a deposit with the assumption that we will be able to pick it up this evening.

Several phone calls to and from the sales rep toady scuppered that idea. Long and short of it, he screwed the pooch on the finance package and is now running around like a blue assed fly trying to fix it. After not hearing anything for several hours I thought I’d drop in on my way home from work, it’s amazing the effect muttering words like ‘contract’ and ‘breach’ have on motivating people. So now all Dom apparently needs to do is sign the paper work and pick up the car. I’ll believe it when I see it. Still doesn’t solve what to do with the old one.

Anyone want a M-reg non starting fiesta? Going cheap….

This was possibly the most ridiculous show I have seen in a long time and I can get Sky 1 I know ridiculous. It could be summed up in three sentences Do you know what’s in your cereal? Want to? Read the label. Instead it went on for a hour about how evil the cereal companies were for trying to hide all the horrible salt and sugar content of things like ‘Frosties’ now forgive me for being a little cynical but when I open the packet and icing sugar falls out with the product I don’t think to myself hmm I wonder if this is healthy. Failing that these day’s they even write it on the front of the sodding packet as well. Now admittedly some of the points they make about the packaging being misleading is true – Special K does brand itself a healthy breakfast and granted it does contain a hefty level of sugar but again all this is declared if you had bothered to read the packet!

Moving on from their insane start to the way the show was put together. Firstly they state that the market leading brand maintains that they add salt and sugar because people like the taste, so they do a taste test in a shopping mall. From the results we are show we are supposed to believe that people actually prefer the shop own brands that have less of these things. Right all well and good, but then they go on to rant and rave about the fact that the same market leader is advertising their sugary wears to children who ‘prefer the sweeter taste’ hang on back up, if people don’t like ‘em what the problem? Let them advertise because the flavour of the others it better right? And surely if on the whole the general population really did prefer the less sweet, less salt equivalents then the leading brand in house testing would have shown this and they would save themselves a fortune by NOT adding it???

This is not even mentioning the insane supposed scientific test they ran on a ‘everyday’ family in which 3 children are forced to substitute their cereals for ‘sugar and salt free’ breakfast while mum starts drinking Atimel and dad takes up the drop a jean size in two week challenge. First off who ever decided on the substitute breakfasts is an idiot if they think that either porridge or eggs have no salt or sugar in or bread for that matter coupled with that the porridge was certainly not made right no wonder the kids didn’t want to eat it! Onto dad, who was eating less then 1000 calories a day and surprise surprise didn’t lose weight. The average calorie requirement for a male on an average day is 2500 by eating less then half that the body will go into starve mode and conserve any calories it can. Something any dietician would have told them, had they bothered to consult one. Now the show used this as proof of ‘all these things are lies’, so what did they do when mum said she felt better on the Actimel? ‘well there’s no real proof anyway so it’s probably something else’. Now don’t get me wrong I have about as much faith probiotics as I do in sticking a toad on my head for headaches and seaweed as a cure for cancer but the point is you can’t have it both ways – you cant say look the observational evidence on one person says what we want so we’ll use it and on the observational evidence on the other say what we don’t want so we’ll ignore it that’s bad science. Not that there was any good science in the whole thing. If they wanted to prove their point about probiotic why weren’t they asking the company what this ‘Scientific proof’ was? And then testing it? Why didn’t they take a white blood count at the beginning of the two weeks and then at the end if they were looking at immunity? Why didn’t they run fitness tests? And why didn’t they insist that mum keep the rest of her diet the same during the time period instead of suddenly starting to eat healthy? Because the sudden influx of fruit and veg might just might also have had an effect.

In the interests of fairness there was one point it made that while I was aware of I will acknowledge is not in the public domain and that is that companies can buy approval from things like the Heart charity to put approval stickers on their products. These stickers do not necessarily mean that the product lowers cholesterol merely that it may not harm those with high cholesterol.

But seriously folks just GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR *rant over*

According to said Head ‘there are too many seagulls on the school field’, his solution to go round with a little picker and pick up after the kids thus getting rid of the seagulls. Kid’s solution drop litter (when they never used too) and run a book on how long before in their terms that overpaid glorified cleaner (the Head) comes along and picks it up. Our solution: walk behind kids and shout at them until they pick it up and put it in the bin.

By the order of the Head – all students will be ‘sorted’ into chapters each with a predefined colour… except all the uniforms are identical, so the kids are not really aware of it. Kids solution: scrawl HOGWARTS in 2ft high red letters on the brand new patio outside his office. Our solution try to stop laughing long enough to breathe.

At the insistence of the Head: Lunchtime meals should be displayed on the internet for all to see. Our solution – you want it you do it. His solution to announce to the world that the options for lunch are chicken fajitas of VAGGIE fajitas. Our and the kids solution, don’t tell him just laugh manically every time it appears.

Head (and the sponsors to be fair) freeze the budget so we have no petty cash, so no dissection meats, no garlic or onions for plant sides, no stopwatches or thermometers for GCSE ISA exams. Our solution, to express the science syllabus through the medium of dance.

Seriously this guy thinks he can run the school??? The kids are running a bet on how long he’ll last. I might just have to have a punt on that. ..

And don’t I know it. I’m not sure what had been the most useless and mind numbingly boring… the endless meetings, the computer system that doesn’t work or the sheer annoyance that the new head thinks that it’s 1984 and he is Big Brother. Every step we take every move we make he’ll be watching us… because obviously we can’t do the sodding job and haven’t been doing it for years.

He has been making two steps forward three back for the entire of the past two days, listening to him talk is like being covered in a mucus layer from head to tow and leaves you feeling like you’ve caressed a slug. I truly feel the need to bath in acid after being in the same room as him. He also has no concept of what is and what is not humanly possible. From the obvious statement of ‘all classroom doors will be left open’ because a. the students won’t distract each other and b. they don’t have ‘fire door keep shut’ stapled all over them this is a flawless plan.. to the more interesting ‘I want you to be on duty at the gate and on the other side of the (3 ARCE!!!!) school to greet your class at the same time… he didn’t take too kindly to having pointed out that until someone arrived with a Tardis or the invention of human cloning this was in fact impossible, so maybe he should prey for a miracle as he was that way inclined.

He also didn’t like the answers we gave to ‘what is the purpose of life’ apparently he disagrees with 42, and that the man in the picture on top of the world was just looking for a good place to jump off.

Nor did he like the implication that the pic of the hands holding baby feet (below) was a crime scene photo used in the trial of the baby dismemberer. He apparently missed the sense of humour queue, come on we had been in meetings for 5 hours by this point for f’sake!

So what had we learnt at the end of this two day inset? We learnt that the students didn’t have uniform because they hadn’t ordered enough of the right size off the internet supplier, that the new school looked remarkably like the old one with a coat of white paint, the new computer system does not work (I’m shocked are you?) and that removing all the old room numbers and coding them all classes, labs and support room in a way that makes no sense to anyone who can’t work an enigma machine not only confuses the students when they arrive (and the will be confused) but also the staff. All the time wondering why you couldn’t just go plan your lessons in the sanctity of your own room, providing you could find it.

Constructive huh? And to cap it all I can’t work from home as the portal to let me in doesn’t work… oh well it’s only teaching without prepping – how hard can it be?

Swine Flu has become the ultimate Boogie man, and I am frankly sick of it, (OF it not FROM it). Anyone who sneezes has it; you didn’t wipe that keyboard down oooh dodgy you don’t know what you might get. You ran out of tissue in your room well you better replace them quick else you might catch it… I have a better idea why don’t we make the taps in the toilets work and provide the kids with soap – one of them surely must know how to use it.

I like the graffiti found on the desk in the exam hall ‘it’ll be Honey Badger flu next…’ The sad thing is they’re probably not far off the mark.

I love labels, no seriously I do. It’s not that there particularly exciting or anything it’s just that there is something particularly satisfying about using the Dynamo label maker connected to the office computer. You boot up the software, type in your desired label, hit the print button and hey presto a label pops out, no fuss no muss. I think the reason we – my entire department that is – loves making labels is that it’s the only bloody thing in the entire school that works efficiently and does what you want when you want and doesn’t ask you to fill out a form in triplicate before considering your proposal before getting back to you a week later with another form that tells you where you went wrong filling out the first one.

Seriously I love labels.

Just what you need at 10 at night, so I go down into the kitchen to hide from the rain – note self invest in umbrella hat it’s cheaper then replacing the ceilings – to find that the washer dryer is not longer a washer dryer but a washer flash little red lights that mean NOTHING and refuse to do anything.

So I go online to find out what’s wrong, well it seems the self cleaning filters are not self cleaning (what a surprise) and because Hotpoint recon they are, the instructions don’t tell you where they are or how to clean them. So off to the web posts I go, only to find that you need to pull out the machine, remove the top, reach under the pipes and disconnect the filter, clean it and put the whole thing back together again. You kow what bugger it that can wait until i’m on holiday oh what an exciting life I lead.

You know having delat with this lot the school being struck by lighting really doesn’t seem that big a deal…

Today, due to a distinct need to fit something other then a kitchen, my uncle started to strip out and fit my new boiler and hot water system. Just once I’d like one thing – just the one to go smoothly! What actually happened was that we discovered was the upstairs water tank was leaking (which at least accounted for the dubious smell emanating from the airing cupboard) and there was enough crud in the pipes to fill in my pond…. Which is more impressive when you realise there is 10 tonnes of water in the pond. Apparently someone at some time had tried to flush the system but had only succeeded in pushing all the crap into the tank, which is a perfect place for it I’m sure. Still after a lot of cursing when it was discovered some moron had fitted the tank and then built the cupboard round it, my uncle scored first blood and removed the water tank…

Unfortunately this revealed what we previously thought was water damage that had bowed the ceiling below was actually bent because the aforementioned moron had used around two buckets of sand and cement to secure the floo into the cupboard from the kitchen. I asked myself what complete and total idiot with no common sense would keep pouring concrete onto plaster board?!!?! And then I remembered it was installed by British Gas…

So some hours and a Cole chisel later he’d freed the floo and would you know it the kitchen ceiling looks a lot better! This lead to the last interesting discovery of the day – and I use the word ‘interesting’ as a metaphor, because the people who had done such a wonderful job so far of installing this system had gone on to try and connect a 22mm pipe to a ¼ inch pipe with just solder… a bit further up where this had failed they had tried to use a compression fitting… further on still they had just meshed the two together and hoped for the best… I can’t imagine why it’s leaking. Again it’s been removed and put on display in the ‘how not to do it’ category.

Fun this DIY stuff I can’t wait for tomorrow.

On the plus side we cleared the pond and you can see the fish!