WE HAVE WON A ROCK IN THE MIDDLE OF A WASTELAND ON THE SHORE OF A POISON SEA

Prawn cocktail. Still love prawn cocktail, but my mum used to make the sauce herself, and I can't quite get the combinations right to make it taste exactly like hers.

No. When I was a child in the 70's and 80's, Halloween was not celebrated, at least not in any of the areas I lived in in the south of England (though Guy Fawkes Night was still very big and people still remembered what it commemorated). I used to be genuinely puzzled when reading Charlie Brown books as to what the deal was! Obviously, it has now caught on here big time as yet another merchandising opportunity. I feel both cynical and left out: I love dressing up, and I love the colours of Halloween merchandise, but I think that people are hypnotised into spending on Hallmark Holidays, and that Trick or Treat (while I agree it can be wonderful for small children in a safe community/family setting) is an excuse to unnerve old people who live on their own ... Bah, humbug! ;)

This morning I saw a man on the bus wearing a T-shirt which said (in one of those nice vintage fonts):


I found this mildly offensive, but funny at the same time. Not sure why I am offended, exactly.

This thing is, though, the middle word was much bigger than the others, and because I like vintage it was what caught my eye. And, because of the way the man was standing, all I could see was -AEOLOGIST. Well, vintage font, Classical reader, I thought it was going to say 'archaeologist', which was why I made the effort to read the rest.

Taken as a pick-up line, of course, 'ARCHAEOLOGIST' would have been even more insulting to a woman of certain years.

*laughs gently at own joke*

In roughly descending order of excellence (by which I mean getting across what it's really like to be a teacher), IMHO.

1. Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall
2. Joanne Harris - Gentlemen and Players
3. Zoe Heller - Notes on a Scandal
4. H.F. Ellis - The Papers of A.J.Wentworth, B.A
5. Carol Goodman - The Lake of Dead Languages
6. Ernest J. Gaines - A Lesson Before Dying
7. Winifred Holtby - South Riding
8. Thomas H. Cook - Master of the Delta
9. Jilly Cooper - Wicked!
10. Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

I may say more about these later, but for now this is a list I have been wanting to get set down for ages.

Had anyone else noticed the lack of embodiment. It's gone! sassyredbitch has started a new community called embodiiment (see her post today in jr__nal, but there are pleas to bring back the old one if possible so that all our posts and pictures are not lost. Don't know if that can be, but it's worth adding your voice to the pleas ...

Teaching my 15-year-olds this morning, we did a passage about a Greek lady philosopher walking through Rome and being shouted at "with rude words" by some workmen. I then explained to my pupils that this was in many ways a British cultural reference, because, once upon a time before it was made illegal [and, yes, starstealinggirl, I know that there are places in the world where it still happens!], it was customary for British builders to wolf-whistle, and call out suggestive remarks at passing females between the ages of, well puberty and menopause, I guess. I was often regaled with "Cheer up, darling, it might never happen!", but I know that far worse things were shouted at more attractive girls. Several of the girls in the class were horrified by this, and one of them asked me why I'm not scarred by the experience, because she really felt she would be. I answered that I suppose it's because it was ubiquitous and we knew it was going to happen and braced ourselves whenever we saw a building site or men working on the road. Sometimes I would even feel slighted if I was ignored, assuming that I must be beneath notice on the potential mating hierarchy. And you knew that all they would ever do was make noises from a distance. But, of course, we didn't actually like it - that's why it was banned.

But I hadn't realised how long it had been banned until today when it became clear that the idea is completely alien to the modern London girl. So there has been some progress here!

Anyone old enough to remember what this was like in London in the '70s and '80s, do remind me of the other catchphrases they used to use?! And does anyone remember a comedy sketch (? Not the 9 o'clock News) where they had women builders shouting after men in business suits scuttling off in embarrassment?
 

I dreamed last night that (in the middle of a complex sequence of events) someone, whose opinion matters to me very much, said: "It's no wonder that it takes three people to like you." I think I know what they meant, and I'm really sorry everyone!

 I have been startling myself in the last few days with how long I have done some things for.

So, for instance, I realised in a comment to someone the other day that I have been knitting for 39 years - really! - I am 43 and I started at the age of 4. Admittedly, I wasn't making historic designer garments at that age, but I did make an oblong of stocking stitch in purple and mauve yarn about 3 by 6 inches, with long threads attached, that my dad could use as a surgical mask. Actually, if that's not absolutely designer wear for a dental surgeon, what is?!?!

Then, today, I said to a woman on the train (who was being really annoying by insisting that it's purely random which 4 of the 8 coaches go which way [it isn't, but they alternate on the .17 and .47 services]) that I had been travelling from Victoria to Worthing for 35 years. Which I have - my parents divorced when I was about 7, and that's the journey I make to see my dad.

I can't quite get my head round having done anything for over 30 years! Obviously, these are extreme examples, because they are things I started before I was 10. But think of all the things I remember that so many other people I spend my days with don't: the ladybird plague and the great drought in 1976, the day Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979, the Iranian embassy siege, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the great storm of October 1987, seeing Star Wars for the first time (and Grease, for that matter), the first test-tube baby, Bucks Fizz winning Eurovision ... hell, I can even remember watching and being amazed by a documentary on BBC2 in which they outlined for the first time a mysterious syndrome that was affecting certain groups of people in America, which was later given the acronym AIDS [and which my mum thought so bizarre that she and my foster brother had no problem making 'Aids' my new nickname...] ...

And, seriously folks, I don't actually feel old. I feel more baffled at remembering things that other people don't. I am not conscious of being that much older than most of the people I socialise with, and these are not things which habitually crop up while teaching (and anyway most of my pupils think I was born before the 79CE eruption of Vesuvius, anyway!!!) ... baffled, I tell you.

I would so keep it! Same parents, and keep my memories. I would even be happy to start from later than the beginning - 14, I think, would be my restart point. I feel I really deserve that card, since I'm being so undemanding! Not going to tell anyone why, though ;)

Just when you thought it was safe ...

My To Do list this morning is 16 items long. Some of these may only take a few minutes, others are a matter of hours, and others even contain a whole set of sub-headings ...

After I wrote my last post about ergophobia and procrastination, I have been thinking about last straws, camels, and the reverse of that idea. By which I mean that the worst cases of procrastination are really a syndrome [my, I nearly started punning on 'dromedary' then!], brought on not by one dreaded task, but by a heap of tasks so numerous and complex that it is like playing pick-up-sticks - you don't know where to start, and the total number seems so awful that you don't want to start because you want someone to step in and say, "Oh, you poor thing, you can't possibly do all that! Here, have this winning lottery ticket and three wishes." But last time I discovered that getting one task done made everything feel better. NB I do not mean that doing any one task will solve it - marking a set of vocab tests this weekend did not suddenly leave me gasping with relief that the block had been removed, quite the opposite in fact (I have spent most of the last three days wailing and swearing in despair at the heap and my inability to tackle it - hb has been quite anxious about me) - what I think is that, out of the list/heap of tasks, there is one which is more dreaded than the rest, but not necessarily the biggest one, and when this key item is done, the others don't seem so bad. Sort of the opposite of a 'last straw' in other words. Now, if you are still with me, you will realise that the problem now is to identify which of the items is that key-straw.

I intend to spend at least 20 minutes pondering this issue ;)