Imagine

For some reason..

...all my autoposting has been been knocked out of alignment. For that reason this account hasn't been receiving any pictures of Inaya. Now I know that no-one else's kids are as cute as your own but who can resist a baby with chocolate around her chops?

Catastrophe

That's the missing word in the last post. (not the one you play when a soldier dies but it's kind of apt)

End of an era

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After a year where my car cost me three arms and two legs just to keep it on the road, I finally said goodbye to it yesterday. 160,000 miles and roughly 6 months of my life actually inside the car since my old man first handed over the keys when it was all shiny and new. It has been brilliant and it feels a bit like when my dog died. The new car is small enough for my girl to be able to drive but just big enough for me not to feel like a dick. It has all the mod stuff and for the first time in 18 months I can drive without fearing imminent. We should have paid for it around my 80th birthday.

Inaya ball frenzy

as if we didn't know already

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/may/31/european-students-statistics-interactive

A personal perspective, not an institutional one:

This link takes you to an interactive map. One of the things it shows is the university fees across 6 countries. No doubt no-one will be surprised that England comes top (yey, we won something) with a staggering 10,400 Euros. But what makes it all the more galling is what everyone else pays. See if you can guess what the next highest is and who the next highest is before you click on the arrows. Thanks ‘Mr’ Cameron and, especial thanks once again for soul-sold Clegg for this most abhorrent of u-turns in policy. I hope, now that there’s no way my son can afford to go to university, that this turns out to be a blessing in disguise for him and others like him and that he can find a job. Chances are though they have cursed a generation. My youth was blighted by Thatcher. Note the absence of ‘Mrs’ there- she lost that when she lost the respect of the nation. Clegg’s already done the same…so what’s it to be for Cameron? He never earned my respect, hence the inverted commas earlier, but what about those that voted for him? Once Greece flatlines and Ireland and Spain and Portugal follow suit, maybe you’ll realise you’ve been punishing the wrong people. But will you care?

war

I was actually searching for something useful and related to my job. Not sure how I stumbled upon this but it made me chuckle. If only my girl was as gentle as this with her cousin.

Do do do...

... Didier Zokora! I miss that guy. I know this links to the Daily Mail but it's about revenge, it's about standing up to racists and it's about a bloke getting kicked very hard.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2140723/Didier-Zokora-kicks...

Au revoir you fascist nutter

If only we were able to stick two fingers up to Cameron in the way the French have to Sarkozy. I love France. I worked there for three years. But I'd reached the point where I could no longer go to a place where divisiveness, islamaphobia and general intolerance were being espoused by the President and enshrined in law.

Hollande wants out of Afghanistan, rejuvenation not austerity and to build bridges not break them. Bienvenue "monsieur normale", show Europe and especially our bunch of short sighted, right wing posh boys how it's done.

Fortnight review

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I'm doing this on my phone so typographic errors should be perceived as revealing rather than condemning.

My big girl is back at work and was confronted by Ofsted in her second week back. They'd have got a "4" if it wasn't for her. As you can tell, i'm also going for an impartial tone.

As a consequence of big girl's return to work, little girl with giant cheeks stayed with grandma. We have all aged as a consequence. The biggest surprise has been how non- English speaking grandma has taught "ya ya" how to count and a whole bunch of other words. Much more amusing is her fake sneeze. Baby's not grandma's. Grandma's is rubbish.

Sis out of hospital and giving other grandma the runaround. We are in drought but the rain has only just abated and been replaced by a big temperature drop. To me it feels like the two things are related.

Spurs, who couldn't buy a win for months, have finally bought a couple. I was at the Blackburn game and it felt good to have a shout and cheer. The "leaving baby PTSD" needed a release. Unfortunately the olympics offer me no alternative. Stress will no doubt increase as trains fill up with people wealthier and with more leisure time than me.

The boy is working his butt off on his extended project. His presentation is as good a Prezi as I have seen. I think I'll get him in to train some of the more technophobic teachers.

Work is the same.

me and my family in the olden days

Paolo Friere

From Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

I know which one I like but I also think I know which one we have got.

Adventure

On Wednesday I helped evacuate a train that I was on that caught fire between stations . It sounds dramatic and exciting but, to be honest, it is so bloody cold just now that it came nowhere near matching the thrill I felt when presented with my girl's first attempt at 'toad in the hole'.

You may think it sad but, heck, in these austere times in the UK, this is what constitues a good time. And , unless you're vegetarian, it tasted as good as it looked.

language development

Inaya speaks