annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 11th This year seems to be belting along. Spring is springing - daffs all over the place, primroses, little tiny buds on dead looking branches. Still fucking cold, endless rain, roaring wind, but definitely spring. School this morning, meeting the third of the three classes I will be working with on rotation. I'm not convinced it's a good use of my time, to hear a lot of kids read for five minutes each, once every three weeks, but there you go. I'd have picked out five or six that were struggling the most and given them each ten minutes every week for a couple of months and see where we were. Today's class were Year 4, and much more fluent in every way than the Year 5 class I saw last week. Enthusiastically reading big fat books - a lot of Wimpy Kid, Goosebumps and Harry Potter - and mostly able to tell me succinctly what had happened so far. I always regret having volunteered when the alarm goes off, when I'm crawling along the bypass in rush hour traffic, but when I'm sat on a little chair at the little table in the corridor, listening to a small child reading a story they're enjoying, watching them move the bookmark down the page, line by line, looking up at me wide-eyed when something cool happens, then it's all good. Especially as I then walk away, get in my car, drive off and have no responsibility for thinking of anything about any of it till I turn up next Wednesday morning, back with Year 1. I had another sudden brilliant (not really) insight about the virus. We've never had anything really scary to deal with as a group, us white, middle class, straight (ish) Brits. We've not been the victims of prejudice, not had a war on our territory, or one with compulsory military service, not had an epidemic or any kind of natural disaster - apart from flooding, which is terrible but only a few have had that - I don't know anyone who's had their home or business flooded. We've never gone without power or water for any amount of time, nor had to queue for food. All this stuff is what happens on the news to other people. Usually brown people, to be honest. I remember how shocked I was seeing the war in the Balkans on TV in the 90s - I'd never seen colour footage of people who looked like us, dressed like us, carried backpacks like us, fleeing from bombs and soldiers, day after day, year after year. Even now, we're not convinced it's going to be real - the media have cried wolf too many times. There was a panic-buying of toilet paper (no, no one knows why), but that's passed. Maybe it won't spread far. I still don't know if I count as a vulnerable adult. Meh. I need to get a new program to edit my blog in - I'm accumulating too much already and I'm only six months in. One of the women at the writers' retreat was very keen on scrivener so I had a look but became overwhelmed almost at once. Maybe I need to go slow. Day one, click on the link. Day two, read the first few paragraphs. Etcetera. Today I am grateful for: a nice dinner, with lots of roasted veg, most delicioiusly fennel and carrots; a walk with BigM to her allotment where she discovered her first asparagus spears just poking through - much joy as she's only had the allotment a few months, she's never grown asparagus before and this was already planted; being indoors in the warm on a wet, windy night; Mischa the fat cat (almost certainly) came in through the cat flap unaided, which means the microchip thing worked and he had the confidence to go for it; having that video of me and Sammie to watch as much as I like, my little bub
12:14 a.m. - 12.03.20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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