It comes and it goes

Well, it’s been a long time since I wrote a blog, last time I wrote I was getting ready to go on a road trip to celebrate my father’s 80^th birthday, not telling him, not my mother that I was on my way… so… what happened since then, what have been the ups and downs of my life? Well quite a lot, here are the ones I can remember, leading me to tonight, this morning, middle of the night, back in France and unable to sleep…

-         October 26^th: leaving my parents’ house after lunch to go and spend 3 nights at my friends’ in Paris.

-         October 26^th: 16:30 ish, my car breaks down a third of my way up between Toulouse and Paris, I then stay stuck in Uzerch for 2 nights and half a day waiting for a new alternator for my car.

-         October 26^th to 28^th, stuck in a small village, thank god for free WIFI in my hotel… also realise how wrong I was about some people and what a fool I have been but also realise how many great friends I have and how lucky I am despite all the crap that seems to be happening at the moment.

-         October 28^th: released from Uzerch with a list of repairs the French mechanist urges me to do on my car… I manage to make it to Muriel’s for a bit less than 24 hours before I have to leave to catch my ferry. Still it is nice to see her and her family.

-         October 29^th: front right tyre bursts just before I get to the ferry, find a nice guy from London to help me! Give him one pack of sweets I had bought for my class to give to his kid in his car, invite him and his wife for a drink on the ferry but they decline.

-         October 30^th finally arrive home in the middle of the time, it is true what people say: it is good to be home!

-         October 30^th, later on in the day, verdict from our mechanic: my car is not really worth repairing… we go and find a new one before the new term starts…

-         October 31^st: have a new car: a nice blue Volkswagen Polo.

-         November 2^nd, new half term starts for the next 3 weeks or so (up tp the  I go through my work review, get observed twice, have meetings with different people, get told I am doing a good job (yeah me!), have to write reports for 49 pupils, go and watch Romeo and Juliet, publish one podcast… fair to say I actually do not see the weeks go… and oh yes… Karle spends the first week of these three weeks at his parents, feels like I don’t see him a lot these days and when he is home I have so much work that it’s like I am not home…

-         The following 2 weeks we are having school exams, mock exams, another 62 or so reports to write… but I also find the time to go and see Stewart Lee in Birmingham on the 28^th of November, my first night off since the start of the half term and it is worth every single pennies! Finally having some down time with Karle!

-         The following weekend I am off to London for the Cylon Attack Convention, where I meet Wendy, we record a couple of podcasts, attend a couple of talks but I decide to go home a day early to surprise Karle as he is due to go to a Ninjutsu seminar, which means I would not see him much again this weekend, Wendy decides to leave early to and I drive her home, making a one hour and a half or so detour in the process… but hey, that’s what friends are there for, right? Karle spoils my surprise by calling me about something, and I end up telling him that I am on my way home.

-         Sunday 29^th November, Karle goes to his Ninjutsu seminar, I do some of the marking I needed to do, early afternoon Karle finishes his seminar and write off his car on the way home… thankfully he is ok, just bruises!

-         Oh well… looks like we need another car… 2 cars in one month… this is crippling us financially but hey… we are sound and (sort of) healthy, I guess I should not complain too much.

-         I am dreading this week as last year it had been a bad week with Karle in hospital and me falling off with his parents…

-         Tuesday 2^nd is my mother’s birthday, I forget to call her as I am working on my pupils’ reports and I always think that her birthday is the 5^th… I plan to call her then…

-         Wednesday the 3^rd I feel pretty good, I am on top of all my marking, all my reports are done; I can look forwards to the end of the term.

-         Thursday 4^th, I should be happy but for some reasons I feel depressed, I guess having worked so hard and nearly continuously since the beginning of November it’s my body’s way to react to me slowing down, I decide to go home early, Karle greets me with Nicole called, it’s about your father… my word starts to fall apart at that time, I know what this could mean, I hope I am wrong but deep down I know I am not, I will always remember the 4^th of December, Karle at the top of the stairs telling me to call Nicole… I do so, No one answers at her home, so I call my parents’, Nicole answers, Dad is in hospital and the doctors give him a few hours to live. I manage to talk to Nicole, tell her I will be there the following day, that I’ll call her back as soon as I make my travels plans. I don’t know how I manage not to break down there and there, I call work to tell them and, of course break down then… Once I calm down I finalise my travel plans and call a few more people, Karle is great, knowing when to come and hold me and finding ways to help me… the rest of the evening is like a blur in my memory, we have to go and print my flight tickets at some friends (of course our printer decides not to work any more!), drop the dogs at our friend’s Julie so Karle can drive me to Gatwick in the middle of the night, I arrange to meet my nephew at the airport in Toulouse and my brother will come and pick us up.

-         Friday 5^th: we get up at 2 something, the trips go like they are not real.  Alix is there waiting for me, I can’t believe how grown up he looks, we go for a coffee waiting for my brother, the place we stop at is called Paul… like my dad… Philippe arrives and according to him the news are a bit better this morning, so he will be driving us to my parents’ house to see my Mum and we will go and see Dad in the afternoon… we make it just thought the limit of Cazeres, my parents’ village when we get the call… we know we are going to have to break the news to Mum…

-         Dad was prepared for this better than us, he had made a file ready for us with all his wishes, all the phone numbers we need etc and two letters one for Mum and one for us…

-         Since then I have tried to keep busy, helping organising the funeral, tidying the house etc, I have tried to be strong for Mum, my sisters, my nieces and nephews but it is hard at times but at least we are all there for each other and many of my friends have been great, leaving me messages of support or chatting with me on the net, it’s quite impressive how some little moment of “normalcy” can be so good, so thank you to you all for this (if you ever read this)

-         The funeral is tomorrow, well today as it is now Monday 7^th December (happy birthday to my brother Remi… his birthday will never be the same again…) and I can’t sleep… dad’s body is downstairs, in his room waiting for the undertakers to come, people have come to see him, I went too, for Mum, I wish I had not, he does not look like my father, he looks like one of the statues in Madame Tusseau or in those stately homes… not my father… at least I can think back to a month or so ago when I drove down and surprised him, this is the way I want to remember him, the look of surprise and joy of seeing me when he really did not expect it, we had such good chats him and I over that weekend, this is how I want to remember him…

So as you can see a lot of ups and downs… maybe too many downs and not enough ups but I guess this is life and we have to learn to go with it… I think I should try to sleep now… I will upload this later today… maybe but it was good to write it whether I upload it or not…

Bonne nuit et je t’aime Papa où que tu sois, tu vas me manquer. Bisous.

Enjoy the ride (2)

A year and a bit ago, I used this title for one of my blog when I wrote about being in a car accident… so as you can imagine, I chose it as an ironical statement whereas today I am choosing the very same song title to name this blog but wanting to take it to his very first possible sense: in a few hors I will be setting off for my 3rd road trip of the year (my second solo one) driving from Birmingham (middle of the UK) to Cazeres-sur-Garonne (pretty much right down to the Spanish boarder, well a couple hours short of it) so obviously I DO want to ENjoy the Ride!

I have decided on this 3rd trip to surprise my dad, he celebrated his 80th a couple of weeks ago and he does not know I am coming down… well my mum does not know either… I just hope I will not give them a heart attack when I show up!

I think I am quite prepared now, I planned a longer but slightly cheaper route and I have enough Big Finish stories to keep me entertained on the way there and back.

So I’ll keep you posted as much as I can along the way, depending on the free WiFi I can find or of course thanks to my brother’s computer once I get to his.

TV reality or Not TV reality… that us the question

As I lay awake at this ungodly time of the night, unable to go back to sleep, my mind wonders: why do we have TV reality shows? I know, weird thing to wonder about at 3:15 in the morning but I guess this is better than thinking about stuff I have no control over.
So, what is the point of Reality TV shows?
Are they our modern time gladatorial arenas? People are pitted agains each other for our viewing “pleasure”?
If not pitting against each others they seem to be shown as having some kind of failings that the RTV will try to sort out: so, are they meant to make us feel better about ourselves? I mean, when you see some of the people in some RTV shows, it does make you think “how messed up my life seems to me, at least it’s not as messed up at theirs!”.
At times one could wonder if these so called RTV shows are indeed “reality”: some of the people on them seem so extreem that one could be forgiven to think they are in fact actors…
This brings me to my next wondering: why do people want to take part in some of these RTV shows? For example: if I had a problem with my child, if I was failing as a parent or if my house was a real mess, would I really want a good part of the nation to see what is happening behind my front door? Erm… I don’t think so… I am not the slimest person around, I know that, would I want to appear on tv sharing this, sharing how my body makes me feel… erm… I don’t think so! I don’t think my fashion sense is the best around… would I want Trisha and her friend to come around my house, make fun of me, in the “nicest” ” most constructive” way possible… erm… yes, you know want I am about to write: I don’t think so…
I could go on and on with examples like this but I am sure you catching my drift! So why do people do it?
To get some sort of “celebrity” status? The “I was on TV” syndrome “therefore I am someone”? I just wonder what happens to these people the following day at work… I can tell you one thing fir certain: I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes!

No me gusta…

“No me gusta” (Spanish for “I don’t like it!”) is exactly how I feel right now about my work!

So yes… here is a ranting blog about my job, read it and tell me if you think I am wrong… I guess it could be possible…

 Earlier this term I had to give up one of my weekend to go to a “Bonding Weekend”, tomorrow I have to stay at work until 21:30 for a meeting evening with the parents of all the boys in my form and on Saturday I’ll have to drive to school for the 2 hour long open afternoon…

Now, I can see the value of the Bonding trip, but did we have to give our weekend up? Other schools run similar courses but during the week! I can tell you that last week was hard going as we, all the teachers who HAD TO take part in the bonding trip, kept going even though we were all very tired and battling whatever virus is going round: 40 boys out of 150 who went to the trip were off sick for some part of the week!

I can also see the value of the meet and greet evening with the parents of the boys in my form, they are first years, they are now the little fishes in a very VERY big pond, so meeting with us three weeks after the start of the year to see how all is going is fine… I just wish it could be a bit earlier in the day… but fair enough these parents also need to work… and so coming to school in the evening makes sense… could I have the time in lieu? (I know… I can keep dreamimg…)

The one thing I really REALLY don’t get is WHY I have to come on Saturday!! We are in a department of 9 staff, the 2 part-timers don’t have to be there (fair enough, granted), but we will still be 6 to man 2 classrooms! (1 member of staff is management so he will be elsewhere), now THIS is ridiculous!! Moreover, I live 35 minutes drive from work, so this will had another hour or so to this commitment and to make things worse: it’s from 14:00 to 16:00 right in the middle of the freaking day!!! So here I am: most of my Saturday is kind of screwed!!

Now, you would think it could not get any worse, well he does!!

This weekend, and this weekend ONLY (for the WHOLE FREAKING YEAR!!!!!) my friend Tod is over from the States as he is attending a convention, for his work, at the NEC on Sunday: so, I won’t be able to see him much on Saturday!!

No me gusta!

Happiness is an option

Here I am, Sunday night, watching tv and typing a blog post… yes I like multi tasking…

I had a great weekend: freakishly busy but fantastic nonetheless!

It started Friday night with our friend Jon coming over to work on my car stereo and having diner with us. I cooked paella and baked a cheesecake! It was nice catching up with Jon and who knows I may end up going to a club next Friday night with him and Tod…

Saturday went like a whirlwind: shopping with Jules, hairdresser, and then… hen night!

I met the girls at their hotel, and what a place it was! The hotel did not look like much from the outside but inside it was like a maze and the door to my friends’ suite was… a bookshelf!! No kidding! It was like we were in a secret set of rooms! There were 3 bedrooms, I think, a shared bathroom and a cosy little reception room, where we drunk a few bottles of champagne while we were waiting for the taxi to pick us up. I have to say it was very cool, in fact it felt like it belonged to the late Victorian era… it reminded me of Sherlock Holmes in a way… we were just missing the violin and the opium den…

The night was brilliant; we went to a couple of bars then to Jongleur, a comedy club. After the show, Jongleur became a night club which thankfully was not as bad as I thought it would be… apart from one thing…

Picture this: I was having a good time (wearing bunny hears by the way…) when a young good looking guy tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Are you Madame Saunier?”… turned out he was a kid I taught in my first school about 12 years ago now!! When I said yes: he gave me a hug and asked me how I was, how other teachers from the school were… how weird was that!?!

In fact I am not sure if I should feel flattered he recognised me after 12 years or creeped out because he hugged me… it was just weird and kind of surrealist in a way…

Went back home to Karle not too late as I promised him when I flashed him what I was wearing under my lovely new clothes…

Sunday morning was spent nursing a sore head, mojitos, shots, tequilas and vodka mixers do not go well together… I also found something else which do not work with all these drinks: mowing the lawn while nursing a hang over!!

This being said by lunch time I was well enough and set off to drive to Daventry to catch up with a couple of mates and record a couple of Sending a Wave, the Firefly / Serenity podcast I am involved in. That was good fun too and best of all Wendy had brought me my Little Damn Heroes maquette of Jayne back from the convention she attended a few weeks ago! Have a look at it here!

So as you can see my weekend was full and fun but now I guess it has to be back to reality and work…

Oh one last thing! I joined a knitting club at school! Yup you read correctly! Me, in a knitting club… Ok we meet in a bar and “bitch” a lot about work… how could I resist!?!

 So as you can read, happiness was in fact not an option, it was just natural!

Shout

Oh my god!! I just heard that Anastasia / Chaka Khan and Lulu are touring the Uk in a show / concert called “Here comes the girls” and I so want to go… the tickets are going on sales tomorrow… in Birmingham they will be playing at the Symphony Hall! The Symphony Hall oh my!! The sound is going to be awesome!! I just hope we can afford the tickets!!

I have to admit I don’t really know Lulu but I know her most famous song Shout! And it gets me going each time I hear it! And boy wasn’t she sexy back in the 60’s?? Actually scratch that, she is still very sexy, I wish I’ll look half as good as she does when I’ll be her age!

Of course this made me want to listen to Anastasia, I had not listened to her for a while… I forgot how good she is, how powerful her voice is!

I picked one of her songs I really like as it is linked to some bitter sweet memories… listen to it and picture me in my first car (a gold mini! ) singing my head off while driving to my work about to hand in a resignation letter!

Enjoy!

Lights out

See! I didn’t stay away too long this time round!

Today was a good day, despite having a headache for a great part of the morning as well as feeling feverish for a while… but nothing that the nurse’s trusted paracetamol could not deal with… this being said a third of my tutor group was off sick… so here I am, wondering if the bonding trip was not not an unbonding trip… or a bug sharing trip… well only tme wil tell I guess… I just hope I’ll be fine for this weekend as I am going to a hen party and I really don’t want to be ill for this!! We are heading to Jongleur, a comedy club in B’ham and I am really looking forwards to it!

I got myself  booked up on another course for this term (I’ll be going on 3 in the next 3 months or so! ) and I am off to London on the 12th of October to work on VLE in MFL… that’s Virtual Learning Environment in Modern Foreign Languages… then again… am I getting myself out of a job??

Got a letter from Equality Now thanking us (me and the students who ran the CSTS Screening) thanking us for the money we raised and then got an email from the global CSTS team teling us that their website had been upgraded and you know what… looking at all the other cities around the world, our little Screenig did bloody well! Want to see how well?? Have a look here! (bottom of the page!).

Listened to my “Now Hear this!” CD again today and I’ve found that I really REALLY  like We Fell To Earth’s Lights out. What a cracking piece of music! Great to listen to while driving but also while marking, it got me going while I was grading a few of my GCSE’s 150 word essays!

Here it is:

So?

What do you think?

Back to mine

Well, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?

I have actually wrote many posts over the last month… only… all of them in my head, while I was driving around, walking the dogs etc but each time I got home I failed to sit at my computer to type any of them, hence my silence…

Oh well… not the end of the world, I am quite sure!

This being said, I enjoy writing these blog posts so I decided that today I would write down the one I was “writing” in my head on my way back from work, so here I am…

So? What should I write about?

I could write about work… but really it’s kind of same all, same all… well apart from last weekend when I had to go on a bonding trip with my form to an adventure centre in Lincolnshire, I abseiled down a tower just to please my tutor group, that was cool even though I slightly rope burnt one of my hands… I was still pretty good at it and better than most of my tutees!

The bonding weekend was an overall success even though a few kids came down with some flu like sickness… and now I just hope I haven’t caught anything from them…

I have read a few good books and found a few others I want to read or buy. At the moment I am reading “The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Next on my list is going to be “Twilight” I think as many people have been recommending it to me but the latest book on my list is “House of leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski, a book the abseiling instructor recommended me last weekend, while the kids were climbing first a Jacob’s ladder and then a wall we had some good discussions about books we like and his favorite House of leaves did sound very good, so I’ve put it on my Amazon wish list… I am also reading “The Narrows” a book written by one of my friend, he is publishing it online at the moment on authonomy.com and is well worth the read, so go and check it out here when you can!

Today on my drive to work I did not listen to one of the Big Finish stories (I am mainly listening to all the Charlotte Pollard ones at the moment as I have them all now!) but listened to my latest “Now Hear this!” CD from “The Word Magazine”: this month I really like 3 of the 15 songs, “Lights out” by We fell to Earth, then “Frozen Heart” by Smoke Fairies (they kind of remind me of Medieval Babes), “Anchor” by Beccy Owen, she has a very French-like sound at times… to my French ears anyway… I guess the accordion is the main culprit for this and finally Ben’s Brother’s Apologise; I like their video too, check it below!

Want to know more about all these artists? Check The Word Magazine website here! So I guess a few other things are going to go on my wish lists and Beccy Owen’s album may well be one of them!

Been watching a lot of DVDs lately but also went to the cinema a couple of times, the last two films I saw were District 9 and Dorian Gray, two very different films but I enjoyed both of them greatly!

I would go as far as to say that District 9 may be one of the best films I saw this year!

As for Dorian Gray I wanted to see it even though I was a bit worried about it as it is a book I really enjoyed when I had to study it at university and often adaptation of such well known novels can… well… not be very good… This being said, the added character was fine, may be not necessary but it was fine… the film was beautifully made and even if some of the actors were not brilliant (Rachel Hurd-Wood in particular) and a few of Colin Firth’s lines were not very convincing at the start, it got better… or I got used to him… but still, I have to say overall I did enjoy it.

Ok… I think I should stop writing now and I’ll try not to disappear for as long as I did!

So I leave you with Apologise by Ben’s Brother as promissed! Enjoy!

Summer’s pleasures

Holiday time is always a time where I can read to my heart’s content as well as to catch up on DVDs I’d want to watch.
My latest book is “In the city, a Celebration of London Music” by Paul Du Noyer. I first heard about it listening to The Word Magazine Podcast a few weeks ago when Mr. Du Noyer was being interviewed. The podcast was really interesting, their podcasts usually are but that one was even more so and un fact I listened to it twice so once I got home I went straight to Amazon and ordered the book .
I had to wait a few weeks before I could start reading it as I was still at work and was very busy besides I also wanted to read “Personal Effects: Dark Art”, a brilliant book by JC Hutchins. Now I am reading Mr. Du Noyer’s book and find it really intersting!
It’s not the kind of book I usually read and thus it makes a nice change. The whole book is about how the music industry has evolved in London over the last few centuries from the troubadours to well… nowadays music. The book ends with the author’s 140 music recommendations of which I am bound to go and check a few.
I often stop my reading to go and check some of the artists and places mentioned so I guess I’ll be reading this book for quite a good part of the summer!
I am also taking advantage of the summer to catch up on some if the Big Finish stories, even though I should really keep them for my commute to work… but as we listened to quite a few of them on our road trip I want to know what happens next to some of the characters. One of my favorite companion is Charlotte Pollard, luckily for me there are quite a lot of the stories with her… well maybe unluckily for me really as I want to buy more of the back stories and this is starting to be quite expensive… What I don’t get though is how did she get to travel with two different Doctors… If anyone can explain this to me, please feel free! While we were on our Road Trip we listened to Neverland, which I got from a friend, and it finished on a cliffhanger: I really need to get the next part but as I have already bought a couple of hundred pounds worth of Big Finish stories for my birthday last month I guess I’ll have to wait a bit … well I stil have a few hours of stories from them to listen to… I’ll survive…
DVD wise lovefilms is keeping me busy but I also have a few of the First Doctor Who DVDs to watch. I have watch and overall enjoyed a few of them but some are a bit overlong… however it is nice to take a “stroll” into the past of this English cult show.
So that’s it really for my summer pleasures: books, DVDs, music, audiobooks. What’s yours?

Click 2

I re-read the blog I wrote just before leaving for France and it struck me that the title I picked worked on another level I did not think of before…
It got me thinking about Torchwood and what Captain Jack did and what he does at the end and what a big coward he is really and how it fits so well the lyrics of Little Boots’ song Click.
Why do I think Captsin Jack is a coward?
Well simply because he did and does things he knows deep down he should not but at the same time had / has no choice, these terrible deeds needed to be done (sending the group of kids off to the aliens, whatever their names were, not knowing why they wanted the children but knowing doing this was, at that time, the only seemingly way of protecting the rest of the world; then sacrificing his own grandson to save once again the rest of the world). However this is not why I think of him as a coward, it is what he does after that makes him a coward in my eyes: he runs off, disappeara, leaving his friends (and especially Gwen) to deal with all of it: dealing with her new found knowledge of what Captain Jack did in the past, dealing with the loss of their friend as well as to deal with being abandonned by a person she came to trust 100% (a thing, I think, which does not come easily to her). That’s why I think he is a coward: he prefers to take the easy way out rather than to deal with the consequences of his actions.
The link to Click?
Well simple… go and find the song, listen to the words and you’ll see what I mean.

We all do or have done things one time or another we know / knew  we shouldn’t but at the same time thought there were no other ways for us at that point, what defines us is how we deal with it afterwards.