Legend

 One of the tricky things about holidays and teaching in your home town is the fame. It can be hard to be famous and I do not envy film stars. 

It’s not the shouts of your name, as you walk home from school, or even being told in the swimming pool about a recorder a parent has finally bought the child that I mind. That’s my fault for wanting to walk to work. In term time I expect all of that. However, during holidays I want to hide. I am (as we are encouraged to say now) overstimulated and disregulated (which even my spell checker knows isn’t a real word). In other words, I’m a brat. Miserable, grumpy, full of cold and forcing a smile for even people I genuinely like is a challenge. 

I need my space. 

I seek out places where children are unlikely to be. The Moot Hall with my favourite ghost, the records office, with its damp smell of the past, supermarkets in other towns. The Long Suffering Husband would have liked to have gone away but we didn’t manage to arrange it and it doesn’t always work. There have been times when walking on my favourite secluded beach in Pembrokeshire I’ve heard my name shouted, only to look at an embarrassed family or a small child winding itself around a parent’s legs, deeply regretting their choice. 

Children rarely care that you are incognito. A different set of clothes, a hat and a pair of sunglasses are catnip to their sleuthing powers. 

This holiday has been particularly challenging. I’ve been more bratty, sorry, I mean disregulated, than usual and while I’ve changed my pink bobble hat, am wearing a different coat and sunglasses the children have a lot to say about my apparent existence outside of school.

At least six times, so far in this holiday, I’ve heard, “Mrs AllTrades!”

This has been followed with an explanation to the adult they are with.

“That’s Mrs AllTrades she picked up the dinosaur poo!”

This has led to some interesting conversations with shop workers.

“No, it wasn’t dinosaur poo,” I tell a woman at a till, who is simultaneously crossing her legs and wiping her eyes. “I think it was fox. You know how they gorge themselves on the food waste bin and get diarrhoea? Well, it was outside the school gate.”

“And you picked it up?” The woman says, slightly gagging at the thought.

“Yeah. It was huge. It filled 3 dog poo bags.”

“Oh my goodness. Are you the caretaker?”

“No, no but I have a dog and I had bags in my pocket.”

“That explains it, then,” the woman says, “Legend!”

I could die now. Then they might write on my gravestone how I was fearless in the face of dinosaur poo. 

Penguins

 I couldn’t let a blog slip by without mentioning the penguins.

In this crazy world, where I am able to waste inordinate amounts of time watching short videos, penguins are quite high on my list. Animals generally get my viewing time, as do swearing toddlers but penguins are some of my favourites. 

So, along with my obsession with the orange idiot that the Americans elected to run their country, I am now delighted. I’m here for the penguin content. Memes, reels and cartoons of penguins are everywhere and my lazy dopamine hit is joyous.

In the ‘Independence Day’ trade war the Trumpanzees chose a whole list of countries that would have tariffs. The president announced each item as though it were a game show, claiming that he was getting back the countries that had raped and pillaged their land. Russia wasn’t on the list but the islands of Heard and McDonald in Antarctica have a tariff of 10%. No human has visited the islands for over 10 years and so the world is wondering what the penguins have done to Trump and the reels and memes are fabulous.

The hill to die on

 Blogging has seemed pointless.

The world is going to hell in a handcart. 

The Trumpanzees have come up with a new catchy slogan for a global trade war. (Liberation Day)

Wars rage. Natural disasters happen daily. A foot appeared in the sea in Thailand during an earthquake. (A while ago I jokingly wrote about storms being angry giants). People stayed in their rooftop swimming pools while the earth shook and water splashed over the edge, only pausing to set their phone to selfie mode. 

Meanwhile, we are all being asked to do more with less. 

The solution, apparently, is AI. 

This is currently my hill. The one I’m going to die on. 

Like a dinosaur, refusing to grow longer arms and not stare, unblinkingly at the incoming comet, I absolutely refuse to believe that AI can write faster and better than my own brain. Intelligence is preferable and I can’t help thinking that if we don’t use it, we’ll lose it and some of us need the practice. 

In the future, people may agree with me. I was never convinced about Flora, stubbornly sticking with butter, despite the heart disease in my family because I wasn’t keen on artificial. I didn’t want to eat plastic, butter tastes better and the choir warm up Betty Botter just wouldn’t work if we were singing about partially hydrogenated sunflower oil spread. Recently, health researchers have started to agree with me, although they haven’t mentioned the song. 

My problem with AI writing is that it always sounds like an arrogant teenage boy.

“Errm, I think you’ll find that if you are, in fact, bitten by a squirrel, you will have to seek urgent medical attention.”

“Penguins do, indeed, have knees.”

I wonder if this is what people thought in the Industrial Revolution? 

I always get morbid around Easter, when I forget that it’s not all about chocolate start to consider the awful nature of human beings and people dying on hills. 

If it is all getting to you too then I’ll share a child’s drawing from many years ago. 

Before you get any ideas and run it through AI, where, no doubt, the big-headed teenage boy will give you an explanation of fellatio, it is a picture of Jesus getting his feet washed by Mary.

Caveman Brain

 My poor caveman brain is struggling at the moment. Logic should be able to defeat it but as far as it is concerned the evidence is stacking up. 

Whenever I leave the house at night, I walk out of the door, look up, and there, in the sky, are new orbs of light. Bright. Shining and scary. They are lined up in a row and my caveman brain is convinced they are a sign of impending doom. 

NASA takes better pictures than me

I started this blog a month ago and stopped writing because I knew I was being silly. Science. I told my brain that we knew what they were and even Facebook was more advanced than it was being.

However, my caveman brain hasn’t been soothed, even now, that they’ve gone away.  

“You can’t deny that something weird is happening,” it shouted as I switched off the news because the Long Suffering Husband was making sure his flat feet would still exempt him from a call up in the event of the impending war.

We discussed Trump’s behaviour towards Zelensky and I didn’t say that it was the strange alignment of planets and did my best to not stoke up any more fear.

The human need to pretend everything is ok is baffling. 

I do it too. I’m soothing the LSH, allowing him to believe that we aren’t on the brink of implosion. Telling him that it is fine if he doesn’t watch the news. Even stranger, though, are the American public, who still think that the man who is crashing their economy has their best interests at heart. 

I haven’t stopped watching. Even now that the planets have gone, I am still uneasy. 

I am careful about my sources, though. I didn’t trust the video that showed Trump opening the letter from the King to show a drawing in crayon signed sausage fingers. 

Yesterday, I fell down a little rabbit hole, going to original sources. I had seen a convincing reel showing Trump sign an order to ban men from wearing skinny jeans so I went to the congress website to check. I couldn’t find any evidence to back it up and so am able to laugh at its comedy value.

While I was there, however, I did find this.

Greenland, which is not for sale, is going to be bought by America and called Red, white and blue land. Comedy is dead. It’s over. Comedians, just give up trying to be funny. You can’t trump Trump.

Glory Hunting

 The Long Suffering Husband called me a glory hunter and it bothered me. He was actually joking but he made the joke in reference to something I had done that was a bit extra and could get me noticed.

 Palpitations. Hot and cold sweat. A migraine. 

Who me? No surely not. I’m humble. Never stick your head above the parapet it might get shot off. No one likes a bragger.

The phrase, itself, is so good, though. It rolls off the tongue, sits roundly in the mouth and says much with two small words. So my stupid brain has been repeating it like a song: An earworm. 

So, instead of tormenting myself I’m here to unpick it. Hello Blog.

Except that I can’t. The idea of publicly questioning my reluctance to be praised feels like seeking praise and so anything I write will end up being a worm that eats its own tail.

Instead I’m going to join the rest of the UK and talk about TV. The one programme that everyone is watching. A programme about a bunch of glory hunters playing the most middle class game of wink murder ever invented. The Traitors.

I was late to the party. Reality TV isn’t my thing. I don’t like watching people put in uncomfortable situations or being mean to each other. However, when my colleagues were talking about it and one explained it to me as wink-murder (a description that all teachers will understand and it’s true we would also watch a version of heads down thumbs up) I was there. I’m more of a binge watcher and wasn’t sure I could commit to 3 days a week but a weekend binge has changed my mind. The LSH and I actually stay in the same room to watch and we talk to each other. 

My thoughts so far.

1. Claudia Winkleman has amazing comic timing.

2. The format of the game shouldn’t work but it does.

3. Knowledge is power

4. People don’t trust nice people.

5. Linda, Linda, Linda.

The LSH and I talk about what we would do if we were a traitor or a faithful, as if we know but we don’t and we never will because televised glory hunting would bring us out in hives. Those contestants are braver people than we are. 

Thanks Facebook

 I thought it was a return to school, a lack of heating or generally getting older. I’ve been going round in circles for days, unable to settle to anything. Frankly, I thought I was going a bit mad. Then Facebook came to my rescue.

‘Happy Birthday, Linda’ writes Bill.

‘Best wishes,’ writes Alan

‘Conteatllions (sic) on your 80th’ writes Sade

Sade needs new glasses.

Is it my job to let these people know?

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to go round in circles and do a last minute lesson plan change to a lesson on opera in honour of what would have been my mum’s 80th birthday. I might even get a packet of olops 

And tomorrow I’ll be able to think again. 

Are you listening?

 1n 1999, just 4 months before the shiny bright new aluminium, as those of us who liked to play with words were calling it, I sat with my mum, having a coffee outside Costa (very continental) by the bridge at Chelmsford. These were days before computers had properly invaded our lives but we were all worried that the Y2K coding error would crash the world. 

‘People worry too much,’ mum said, lighting up a second cigarette. ‘They always do.’

‘But if they’ve not planned for a two-zero at the beginning of the date everything could go off line.’ I said, twiddling my hair around my finger. 

She humphed and changed the subject.

‘Sometimes it feels as though the universe is listening to you. Do you know what I mean?’

I didn’t but she went on to explain how you could be indecisive about something and all of a sudden the answer would be everywhere. 

‘You think the world is trying to tell you something?’ I laughed. 

For a non-religious, feet-on-the-ground, no-nonsense person my mum was remarkably superstitious. 

I have been thinking about that conversation a lot recently, especially as whenever I turn on the telly or walk into a room where it is on, a disembodied voice says, ‘Always keep away from children.’ I know it’s a washing powder advert but maybe the universe is sending a message or death isn’t as final as I thought a mum is having a laugh with me. 

Our conversation had continued, talking about computers and how they’d never be able to keep up because the world changes all the time. 

‘How would it know something had gone out of fashion?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, maybe if less people are searching for it?’

‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘You never see men with gardening tools strapped to the crossbar of their bike anymore, do you?’

I agreed but wasn’t sure I ever had.

‘They used to be everywhere. Old men, cycling to the allotment or off to do some odd jobs.’

There was nothing more to say.

‘Shall we go?’ I said, turning round to pick up my shopping. My breath caught in my throat, ‘Mum, look!’

She turned.

‘See, the world is listening!’

The breeze ruffled her hair as the man cycled past, hoe attached to the crossbar, watering can dangling from each handlebar. 

I wonder what she would have made of tech actually listening to you?  Would I have popped round to find her shouting, ‘Oi Alexa, play Etta James.’ or would she have been as reluctant as I am. 

I do not trust that Alexa. For one  she can never seem to hear me, even when I haven’t lost my voice. She’s always much more keen to do something once it has been repeated by a man. 

Over Christmas we went to two different houses where Alexa already had her feet under the table. On Boxing Day the pressure to take it in turns to shout at Alexa to choose the next ‘banging tune’ brought me out in a cold sweat. And on Christmas Eve she ignored the woman of the house, who wanted the lights on until a man said it. The Long Suffering Husband thought he’d have a chat with her and a laugh.

‘Alexa! Play AC/DC Highway to Hell!’

It wasn’t a highway to hell kind of evening until that point but Alexa was up for the challenge.

‘Playing Highway to Hell through Amazon music. You have been signed up for free trial then you will be charged 10.99 a month.’

Shock filled the room. The LSH laughed awkwardly. The woman of the house shouted at Alexa to stop. AC/DC filled the room. The man told her to stop and the music ceased. The man frantically tapped at his phone.’

‘I can’t do it from here. I’ll need to log onto the computer.’

Alexa was threatening to spoil the party. The LSH had broken out into a sweat. It was decided that people could worry about it at another time.

It must be hell going to parties if you are called Alexa.

A few days ago the LSH had a message to say that he could breathe easy. No one knew what Alexa had been playing at and there was no subscription to Amazon music. 

It’s enough for me that the other appliances are listening. 

I grew up in a house where the radio was on all the time. Background music or chat from the Archers and habits are hard to break. The dog likes Classic FM and we leave it on for him over night. Radio 3 started playing experimental birdsong at 3 am a year ago and so he went back to the tunes everyone knows.

The other morning the LSH was going through the shopping list just as Maggie from Solihull was making a request for her cat. The LSH said that he had already bought marmalade a second before Maggie told us the name of her cat - Marmalade.

‘That’s weird,’ we said together.

However, not as weird as the thing that has just happened. I suppose I should have expected it at some time because my washing machine does finish by playing a short excerpt of a famous piece of classical music. However, Schubert Lieders are definitely out of fashion and no one expects to hear a perfect duet of the trout on radio and washing machine. In fact, the likelihood of that happening is so remote I probably should buy a lottery ticket. 

While I’m gone I’ll leave you with this little rumour. Apparently, Samsung chose this tune for their end cycle sound because they test their machines by putting a trout through a normal cycle and if it comes out damaged then it doesn’t pass quality control. 

Jesus Christ

 ‘Where were you?

We were waiting for the 12 days of Cheesemas and Books-in day.  Maybe even some dry comments on spending time with relatives, the fact that jigsaw puzzles should be for life and not just for Christmas. 

But you were AWOL,’ you cry.

You wonder if I was having an amazing time. Maybe partying or travelling and too busy to bother with words in a blog. Maybe I was writing other things. A little part of you wondered if I was OK but you didn’t like to ask.

The truth is I have done nothing. Absolutely nada, nix, nil. Who wants to read about nothing? 

I fell into the Christmas holiday, exhausted and coughing. I put the decorations up and hung my sign.

Usually I hang the sign and say to myself, ‘This house believes in central heating.’

Not this year.

At the beginning of December we had our annual service and our tank was condemned. The Long Suffering Husband had only mentioned a noise from the timer when we first turn it on. The engineer changed the part and the noise got worse. Unbearably worse. The part he needed next was obsolete. The only solution: a new tank and for obvious reasons British Gas contract that out to Dynorod. The engineer left apologies and 2 blower heaters and a promise of a call from Dynorod in 4 hours. The tank was obviously out of stock and the factory shut down until after Christmas. 

My whole personality, through the festive period has been about keeping the house warm(ish). There are rooms we have shut up (my study - winging next term’s lessons) which give us a good insight into the outside temperature (always warmer). I think that I can’t go out because I have to put another log on the fire soon. The dog has thoroughly enjoyed being a breathing, heated blanket and worships at the alter of the blower. 

What do we believe in now, if it’s not central heating?

I confess that Santa will always be my man. The dog had me up 3 times in the night on Christmas Eve at half hourly intervals from midnight. Something had spooked him and he had to check the roofs. 

The LSH, on the other hand, is more of a Jesus Christ man. I’m assuming so because of the number of times he has mentioned him over the last few weeks. New Year’s Eve being one of them. There we were, reading in bed. Double duvets, bed socks and jumpers, reminiscing about the 1970s, when the clock ticked into the New Year.

‘Jesus Christ! Who are these animals? Happy New Year,’ he said.

I laughed but didn’t sit up in bed to watch the fireworks in case I got cold. 

‘It’s like a war zone. If they wake the dog up and I have to get out of bed ….Jesus Christ!’

It has, obviously, been perfectly fine. Just not something you would want to read about. 

The 6th of December - Epiphany. And my epiphany is I am going to be pretty grumpy (and possibly smelly) as I go back to real life with the promise that it ‘should’ all be fixed by the end of January.