Chasing the Only Meaningful Memory…

Not many pictures for July unfortunately…as I said in June’s post…not the greatest time  in my year.

July 4th.  A friend of mine is married to an American and she invited me to come to the local American airbase celebrations.  There was a funfair, there was candyfloss and there were fireworks.  It was fun.  I may have giggled a little at the overt patriotism, but not in a mocking way, it was strangely sweet.

Look…a smile!

Ice cream!  Lots and lots of ice cream.  Cures most ills….and yes, we did eat it all.  (and yes we did feel justifiably sick afterwards.)

Contrary to popular belief, when the mood takes me I quite enjoy cooking and baking.  These particular chocolate cakes were a thing of beauty. (okay I know they look squished, but believe me they tasted damn fine.)  Unfortunately, by taking some in to work I started an avalanche of demand for my baked goods.  Did I mention that I only like doing it when the mood takes me…?  Allegedly my biscuits are good too.

I’m a little bit obsessed with the strange works of art that kids do in margins, on the back of papers or in an attempt to answer a question.  I have a vast collection of art from exam papers but for obvious reasons I can’t post those photos.  This little chap especially caught my fancy.  Isn’t he great?  I mean, what the hell is it?  Why is he going to die?  Who cares?  I love the ‘why?’ in the corner…I love the mad face and strange ears, I love the fact that this is allegedly a zebra.

Here was June’s contribution to the hulking machinery outside my classroom.  It’s amazing the power a crane swinging large objects terrifyingly close to a classroom has to disrrupt a class.  Who’d have thought it, eh?

June was not a great month.  I was very ill and ended up having to retreat to the family homestead for a few weeks to recouperate.  I was unbearably sad.  This month’s portrait is  kind of a tribute to the thankless task of cheering me up.  Note the running mascara…and yet, it’s amazing how much pulling a stupid face and taking pictures of it can make your day a little better.   Little sis did the squidging here….expertly I might add.

I owe so much in the way of updates and scribblings and news on my whereabouts and wherewithall.  Summer just kind of got away from me and with all the comings and going and what not I never quite caught up.

I have been taking photos dutifully though so I shall do some month by month posts to bring us nice and up to date and then we’ll try and do a little bit better!

These are the pictures I took in May with the intention of putting them up here.  Rather than backdating posts, I’ll just post them all in one job lot.

As you can clearly tell from my expert photography, this was Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds playing at Hammersmith on the 9th May.  Okay, so I was miles away and I knew you’d see sod all in the picture but it was more to remind me about being there because it was a pretty monumental gig.  (Albeit a hot and sticky one too.)

My monthly portrait malarky.  I’m proper well brought up me innit?

It’s a tortoise!  That’s about it really.  I was visiting my family, they were tortoise-sitting and I was deeply amused and thrilled by them…until you realise that as pets go - not the most exciting things to watch…apart from when they’re eating like little old men.

This is the porch of a church near Langham in Suffolk.  It’s a hidden gem and involves trapsing through several fields, but it’s worth it because it’s beautiful and quite tucked away from the noise and bustle of the world.  It’s overlooked by a nearby stately home and if you were in an especially whimsical state of mind, you could probably imagine yourself in the midst of some Austin-esque scenario.

Personally I was more thrilled by the old graves and Norman arches - but then I do have a tendancy to go wibbly at the knees over all things medieval.

As you can see I’m finally back in action.  The last month has been a lengthy battle with BT over my billing and trying to get my internet reconnected.  As you can see, I won.

Fear not though…I have been taking pictures and stuff and junk and so I’ll fill you in on my missing month and a bit very shortly.

On Sunday I went to watch a football match.  This is a striking fact on it’s own, given that I don’t generally as a rule like football.  This was a bit different though, it meant a trip up to see my home team play at Portman Rd in Ipswich. (careful what you might say at this point!) and it was part of a school trip to take a small group of kids, who are frankly lucky if they get to leave the estate they live on, for a bit of a treat and a change of scenery.

It was a glorious day both weather wise and in the sheer enjoyment of watching the game, singing along with the (admitedly mostly obscene) football songs and watching the kids have a bloody brilliant time.  Call me a sentimental idiot, but it’s still the biggest thrill of this insane job I do.   It’s the payoff for all the other crap that runs alongside it.

oh…and Ipswich won.   Clearly down to my ever so lucky presence, of course.

I’m a bit behind on the old updating malarky so prepare yourself for a flurry of postdated…er…post-iness.

Here’s last fortnight’s picture:

This was the progression from this.

I can’t say that it made teaching any easier…in fact, funnily enough, a bloody great digger moving bloody great piles of bricks from one bloody great mountain of bricks to another makes a frankly unsuprising amount of noise. It’s all tad distracting!

This is a fairly accurate representation of how I spent my last hour.

p.s - I know…I need a scanner.

p.p.s - actually I did read a really good article about the Hungarian Rising…not remotely relevant to anything I need to achieve today.

p.p.p.s - I really need to do some work!!!

p.p.p.p.s - If someone could just mercifully put me out of my misery right now, that woudl be fab.

…oooooh. Cup of tea time!

(I had this slightly bizarre idea last night of writing six short stories with six chapters made up of six words each.  There is some kind of method in my madness…but I’m not going to explain it, so there!  Anyway, here goes nothing…)

I

It began to stir.  We knew.

II

Those who were asleep finally awoke.

III

Somnambulant, had we waited too long?

IV

One singular truth formed itself. Freedom.

V

We could not disambiguate the meaning.

VI

Our eyes opened.  We saw nothing.