Back to School

So, after my ten day convalescence (perhaps a little OTT), I'm back at school, and contemplating how I'm going to achieve the commute tomorrow if the threatened six inches of snow arrive. There is every possibility that I will fail to even manage the steps outside my flat, as they have a nasty habit of icing up under those conditions. I suppose it's either tackling them with some SAXA and a hairdryer tomorrow morning, or stocking up with tins and bottled water tonight. Oddly, one of these options seems noticeably more appealing.

There has been some good news this week. Firstly, Queenie has posted a real comment on the blog, so I feel loved. (Or is it stalked, Queenie?!) Secondly, Mr. BMW has acknowledged his shaky grasp of the highway code in front of a magistrate, and has pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention. This is good news, as I feel somewhat less silly admitting that I was knocked over, whilst remembering nothing about the circumstances. Apparently, there are plenty of witness statements to suggest that the circumstances included a BMW driver driving like a prat. And now he has agreed. In so many words.

The less positive news is that William is still in hospital. It seems that this infection is really difficult to shift, and the poor boy is now so generally under the weather, that he is picking up new ones as well. All of this means that he is unable to have a new central line fitted, which means that he goes without nutrition, which means that he is less able to fight infection... You see the difficulty. However, and not just because I know that Hope now occasionally reads this blog (I suppose meaning the language can never extend beyond 'PG' any more), I should say that this is not a disaster. These are just infections, and William will get there. It's just quite unpleasant visiting your son and being called upon to hold him down whilst yet another doctor assaults him with a sharp instrument. It's all too easy to consider that modern medicine is still harking back to the mediaeval when your child is having his blood let every day, and your own leg seems to have been fixed by a blacksmith. I tried to make both William and me feel better by buying him a LEGO Percy. An expensive business, guilt.

I am writing this blog whilst at my school desk. I have discovered another use for the blog. To put off writing reports. If there was no other reason to remember why I left teaching in the first place, writing reports would be enough on its own. It is the art of writing a set of 25 paragraphs per class, 23 of which are elaborate ways of saying nothing in different ways, whilst one will praise a child who is motivated anyway, and one will bollock a child who won't care. (There goes the PG rating.) How I've missed it. If only I'd kept the reports I've written for the children of royalty, the rich and the famous. I could have flogged them to the tabloids, paid my tax bill, sold my soul, and all in the certain knowledge that I didn't really have anything earth shattering to say about them either. I probably checked the spelling a little more carefully though. Back to the grundstone.