9°C, still & foggy start.
Drove in today. Fog has descended.
Drove home in clear air but my view was obscured by a boot full of leaves. Our caretaker let me take 6 big bags of swept leaves, mainly from London Plane (?) trees. There are loads of those in the borough- they cope with pollution well.
10°C, grey, rain threatens.
Teachers’ entry requirements:BBC they’re “getting tough” on teachers. The Govt. plan to raise the entry requirements to the profession by adjusting the skills tests taken by trainee teachers. The English & Maths tests will be raised to a GCSE grade B equivalent, once source said. For decades, all teachers must have a decent Degree. But wait, we all had to get that GCSE to get on the BA course all those years ago so what’s the problem? I don’t see what this is meant to achieve.
Let’s hope that the Govt. ministers will have to sit a test too. Don’t forget that Ed Balls, the previous Education Minister clearly stated that he wanted most pupils to be “above average”. So there is scope for improvement if a bloke who has such responsibility has not the faintest understanding of basic Year 8 maths. Averages, mean median and mode, we all understand it, why not you?
How did that guy get into Oxford?
12°C, sun.
At work, 11 year olds were issued with Gideon’s bibles today. They looked puzzled, though some said you can use them to help with problems in life. There is a sort of key in the front where problems are listed giving passages to read.
My problem was- can they go into the recycling bin, or should we drop them in the normal land-fill rubbish? It hangs on whether the cover is real leather.
_____
Later: After work was filled with trying to use Excel to decrypt a text string. A nice problem to work on. I didn’t know enough about arithmetic progressions to write the formulae quickly. A good problem to try, I like the feeling when puzzling over things like that.
15°C, rain
In biggin Dale yesterday. I was on station to wait for the DofEers who might make a wrong turn and walk off the map. Two groups were supposed to come by and I would sure see them while reading my book (Murakami 1Q84). Sometimes I snoozed, sometimes I sneezed and sometimes got up for a walkabout.
They never came. Was I generous to give them five hours before moving? It certainly qualifies as a a blissful day- becoming buried in a book that grew in my mind. Would that I could write so well.
Description: Trees were knocked down and burned over hundreds of square km by the Tunguska meteoroid impact.
14°C, rain which arrived late.
This is a day off work, blame backache. At one stage I had to lift my legs out of bed. These things make you feel rotten, it’s the kind of thing old folks supposedly experience.
So here I am, a little housebound so I fired up the computer upstairs. I still have some old Flight Sims files that are worth uploading. There are some compatibility problems with software that is new. GoogleEarth 6 doesn’t work properly with the scenery app FSX-KML. there is a workaround, but it’s a pain. Still, I have fixed up a file for the area of the Tunguska Event (1909). There is no real impact crater, but there is a convenient marsh area shown on GE.
The other files I fiddled with are Siberian airfields in the Sakha Republic. Some of the files are a mess of naming conventions. I don’t yet know how best to release the files. There are about a dozen airfield files in total, along with nearby scenery. Perhaps later, I may upload some pictures.
FSX scenery remains a therapeutic thing to do. I used to, years ago, get really hooked on this.
11°C, sunny & light wind
This is not the way to spend a sunny but cool bank holiday weekend. I’m exhausted and am rumbled by ominous gurglings from my belly. Yes, I’m unwell. Confusingly, for a few days exhaustion has crept up; is it stress, lack of sleep or just the unwinding feeling from a lesson observation at work?
Sleep habits have evolved this year for me. Not in a good way though, no more is the solid sleep with a very early rise. I don’t get up before 5am these days. Now I lie a frustrating hour in bed wishing I could nod off at about 3am. Often, like tonight, I get up for a camomille tea in the hope that it will help.
Days, I look at the bike in the garage and lament its meagre 110 miles for the year so far. This time last year, I had clocked up over 300 and worn out the first chain.
9° to 4°C, rain then cleared
I didn’t mind the ride to work in the rain, it fell a little thicker than drizzle & blew my road speed downwards. However, I was comfortable. The heated pipes that can be relied on to dry my clothes, ran less hot as we approach the start of spring. Putting on a wet, cold shirt in preparation for the journey home is the bit I react to. It’s a kind of physical jolt from the part of us that does reflex actions. It only took about 3 miles before body warmth raised the temperature of the water that had soaked through every layer of clothing this morning. Body heat is good at that, and you generate more of it at speed.
0°C, sleet.
There is a sort of ante-room leading to my classroom, it’s quite small and closed by a strong, fire-door. Sometimes kids go in there to quietly revise, socialise or just get away from it all during lunchtime. Today I nearly tripped over a girl dressed in black and wearing a headscarf. She was crouching down and then standing back up, time and time again. She must be Muslim and be doing the daily prayers thing. She’s lucky I didn’t knock her flying if I’d flung the door open at just the wrong moment. There was a mat laid out in the room and she knelt on there a few times. I went into my room another way instead.
Should I have popped my head round and pointed left to say “but Mecca is that way”? She was facing south west and Mecca is South-east from the UK.
10°C, lightness
“Her efforts are to be congratulated“. My favourite report correction of the day, I’d prefer to congratulate the girl. That’s how I changed it.
Headlights: after 9 years, one of the car’s headlights failed. I could see the lack of a point of light shining on the boot of the car in front this morning. Not a bad lifespan for a halogen bulb. The one that died was on the easy side to fix, but I bought a replacement pair which promise to be 120% brighter. The right-hand one was so awkward to fit- there is no real hand-space behind the light cluster. You’d really need a child’s hand to reach the wires and avoid touching the glass. The new bulbs shine out the same to my eye. Maybe order these?
My nose is so blocked today that I can’t draw the slightest breath. This is a head-cold that has moved around, throat, chest and nose. An unsettled, wandering nomad of a cold. May it wander off somewhere else, or somebody else instead.
There is a link there that reflects the world’s deep interconnectedness between things. I just can’tsee what it is apart from occurring on the one same day, today.
8°C, clear, light W winds
Look what they’ve done to this door release button. How naughty?
Micycle 