Back to the daily routine

Last Tuesday classes started in earnest and on the first morning I managed to nearly knock myself out. A good start for me! Let's hope that this isn't a sign of things to come. I don't think I'll go into how I did it, I feel rather foolish. Needless to say, my accident led to my line manager deciding that in deed, I did need a large monitor mounted on the wall in the library, as I had been asking for for nearly a year. I stayed home on the Tuesday and continued to have neck pains right through till Friday. As the high school secretary said, "No pain, no gain!"

The beginning of a new school year has prompted a certain amount of self examination and reflection. Did I manage to do all that I set out to do this summer? Well, yes, for the most part! I read a lot, I reorganzied the house, I gardened, I went to London on several occasions, and I swam almost everyday. However, I didn't write much at all, nor did I learn how to make a sour dough starter. I had hoped to do the Thames river trip from here to Hampton Court. I did go to the Hampton Court flower show but by rail, not boat. I had also wanted to paint the living room and my bedroom. Perhaps, I set myself too great a target.

Now that summer is almost over, what do I want to accomplish this fall and what do I want to avoid doing! Now that will be an interesting voyage of discovery.

A week later

So here I am again a week later. I have had a hard week since it was the first full week of pre-planning before school starts on Tuesday. I didn't get as much done as I should have for any number of reasons: lots of meeting, all day first aid training on Tuesday, a hospital appointment on Wednesday and two coffee mornings for staff in the library. I crawled home on Friday and went to bed at 8! Yesterday I should have gone into work but I just can't bring myself to do it until I have too. Instead I went to lunch with Emma at a lovely little Japanese restaurant in Staines and then went to see A-Team, a good time waster and just what I needed.

Today, I have a cake to make for Emma's last cricket game of the season. Chocolate Zucchini, I think. I made it for my coffee mornings and it was a huge success. At 1 Cliff and I are going out for lunch to celebrate his birthday, which was last Tuesday. At the moment, it is overcast and drizzling. Let's hope it passes!

I suppose there is a lot I could say about work, which is not all that positive. However, I will try to linger only on the good things. My goal for the year is not to end up on stress leave, so I must stay positive and not get too demoralized by what I can't do.

We have a new head of English who seems as determined as I am to get students reading more. I have spent a good portion of my budget on buying books for a Teen Book Week in October. All of the grade 9 and 10s will come in on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the coming week to choose one of 26 titles to read. I bought 3 to 5 copies of each title but will get more if a student can't get the one he or she wants.

Tomorrow, I am taking part in a 'fair' in one of our gyms. Parents come to talk to various groups about the activities their children can participate in over the coming year. I have arranged for a librarian from the Surrey library system to be there with me and to hand out pre-ordered library cards and go give out information to anyone who might be interested. I will also have information from my library for parents. Something else to be excited about.

More another day!

I know!

I know, I know. I still haven't written anything here. I can't say that I'm lazy because I have accomplished a lot this summer. I just haven't written very much. I am going to do so today but you will have to have a look at my cooking blog if you want to read it.

It was pointed out to me today

It was pointed out to me today that I have been rather sporadic in my writing on this blog and it is true. I have had no difficulty achieving the majority of my goals or at least getting them well underway. However, that doesn't excuse not writing! I have been thinking about writing and working on some plot lines while swimming. I realize that just thinking isn't writing but I suppose it is a starting place. I should be writing every day, even if it's just a few hundred words here! I will try harder. Now, I'm off to bed!

And here I am again!

Wednesday Morning

As promised, I have returned. I also wrote this morning in the cooking blog about my madeleine making. Yum! No wonder the French are so addicted to having them with morning coffee (or tea, I suppose).

I had an interesting visit to the Staines library yesterday. The two librarians I talked with were lovely, though somewhat stereotypical in appearance. If all goes well, one of them will come to the school on August 23rd to hand out cards (already applied for) and to give information to those parents who haven't been able to apply before the day. I am hoping that we can get at least 50% of the families signed up.

The weather has turned cloudy and windy but still no rain forecast. This will give me a chance to do some heavy slog in the garden that I wouldn't want to do in the hot weather. I'm also thinking about starting the painting I want to do. I can just see the summer escaping from me and I still won't have painted the living room, nor finished the trim in the dining room. And then there are the purple walls in my bedroom! Dear me!

For the next day or so, I have given up adolescent novels. Instead, I'm reading a detective novel by Andrea Camilleri, The Wings of the Sphinx. As I may have mentioned before, I really enjoy reading detective fiction which was originally written in a language other than English. Camilleri is Italian and sets his novels in Sicily. Good plots, great characterization and wonderful local colour!

What I've been doing...other than writing

I may be back but I haven't been that regular at writing! I think in part that I have fallen out of the habit and so, just don't think about writing each day. That is a disaster considering that one of my goals for the holidays is to write regularly and continue with my novel!

What, in fact ,have I been doing since I started my holidays nearly 2 weeks ago! The weather has been glorious! Warm, sometimes hot! Sunny with little or no rain! So unlike a summer in England. It has been so wonderful that I haven't wanted to be in the house. I've done lots of work on my garden and it is finally starting to fall in to place. This week is the Hampton Court Flower Show and Emma and I are going on Saturday. It should be a perfect week for it, warm and sunny.

I have managed to get a lot of little jobs done, which have been waiting for me to attend for ages. The house is better organized; I have my new garden waste rubbish bin coming from the council; I have abandoned all hope of going to the local boot sale (rather like a garage sale) and taken everything to the Oxfam shop; and I'm in the process of reorganizing closets and the garden shed! I haven't mentioned the books I've read or the tennis matches I've watched, nor the daily visits to the pool. So, I have been busy but not with writing. I did re-read the first chapter and make some notes about changes but that's it!

Alas!

I've been cooking as well but I will discuss that on my other blog. However, I can say that I have finally made madeleines and several loaves of Pain de Campagne. Today or tomorrow, I am trying some new recipes for sponge cakes.

In half an hour I'm off to the Staines public library to talk with the librarian about signing my students and their families up for library cards. I can't believe how many of them have never been into their local library.

So you see, though I'm not writing, I am very busy and I do feel good about what I have accomplished so far.

More tomorrow, I promise!

Day 5 of my holiday

Sigh! I am in love with my holidays! The weather is perfect, though my lawn is suffering from the lack of rain (Well, you can't have everything!); I am doing precisely what I want and there are weeks ahead of me to keep doing precisely what I want. Sigh again!

With the wonderful weather we are having, I have found it very difficult to spend much time in the house. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. I did do some projects around the house in the first few days I had off. It was still cool and I was probably suffering from post-work syndrome. I sorted out the kitchen cupboards, my drawers and Cliff's, vacuumed anything that didn't move and then stopped. I probably did more work than I've done for months and now, with luck, I have finished with household chores.

On a less strenuous note, I have started my summer reading. It is the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill and Mockingbird and so I have started to re-read it. This afternoon I listened to an interesting programme on Radio 4 in which a number of writers and critics discussed the influence of the novel and its relevance today. I had no idea that it was such a popular book in secondary English courses in the UK. As I started to read it the other day, I remember thinking how challenging it would be for teen readers.

Off to bed now! More to come tomorrow and more reading too!