So, it's been a while. I promised more than a week ago to blog again, but things have been crazy busy. Firstly, with the weather being so nice recently, we decided to get out of the house on the bank holiday weekend. We didn't want to go far, but we all needed a bit of fresh air, so Ben Wolfson, Sarah Sarah Leeson from Monsoon and Official Photographer Tim the Architect from Next Door joined me in a jaunt to Menston near Ilkley, where we took advantage of the ridiculously cheap camp site. Tim and Sarah formed team A, and used Sarah's tent, whilst Ben and I were team B, and we used mine. We won the construction and destruction of tent competitions, but Sarah was the greatest cook. We also took part in some crossword action, and played more cribbage than is strictly necessary. The pipe was busted out, and in order to play cribbage in the tent in the dark, Tim ended up wearing my cell phone in his hat, with the light switched on. That was pretty funny. I guess that you had to be there. The following day was spent on Ilkley Moor. That's where mine and Ben's team photo (above) was taken. Fresh air, excercise, great views... What a weekend.
The advantage of the bank holiday weekend, of course, is that you don't have to go to work on the Monday. This seemed to us to be as good a day as any to mark the beginning of Honnis season. Honnis, the game invented by Me, Rob and Jacob two years ago, is growing in popularity. The sport, which is played using honnis rallets (hockey sticks) and a honnis ball (a hockey ball), takes place on a honnis court (a tennis court). I'll not give you a full run-down of the rules here, as it is a bit complicated, and would probably benefit from a diagram etc. What I must tell you is that I am currently ranked number 1 in the world, having had an excellent start to the season; although I am not so confident that I will hold up so well against ex-honnis world champiom, Rob Littler in the next few weeks, and I am as yet undecided as to how I will fare in the forthcoming Canadian Open, where I will face the mighty Jacob Murphy, and other top honnis player, Joel Mason.Pictured above is Tim from next door firing a superb shot at Ben Wolfson in the first rookie match of the season, which Tim took with barely a challenge from Wolfson.
The other picture here is the photograph that I hung in Starbucks this weekend. I'm fortunate enough to have a wall in the coffee shop in Borders bookshop to use as display space. For the past few weeks, it's been home to a bunch of smaller pictures, but I felt that it was time to show something a little larger and more interesting. I'm rather pleased with the way it looks. I think that I'm going to start advertising some of my stuff on my myspace soon. I need to get rid of some bigger pieces before I go to Canada, and a bit of extra money wouldn't go amiss either...School is going well, but is becoming harder. A couple of weeks ago I had a terrifying incident, in which the two lessons I was teaching in the morning got progressively worse as time went by. I realised that things were not going well, and ended up panicking, and getting worse. My lessons have been better since then, and I'm not discouraged, but I think it stirred me to realise that this isn't going to be as easy as I first thought it might be.
My link tutor is coming in again this afternoon to observe my literacy lesson, and that should be good. It's the third in a series of four that I'm teaching about stories from other cultures. Last week, we read some stories, and this week we're planning and writing our own. Hopefully, it should go well.
I've formed a good relationship with my tutor, who is a born again Christian; he is very supportive, not only of my work in school, but also of my relationship with Bethany and my plans for the future.
Speaking of which, I'm going to go look over some plans for the very near future now. My lesson plan for this afternoon. My boss always says that teaching is a little like being in the theatre, because you have to learn your lines, otherwise you'll end up floundering. I don't mean that I have to learn the lesson off by heart, word for word, but that it is advantageous to know what questions I'm going to ask when, and what I expect my pupils to learn and to demonstrate in class. Best get to it, then. It's been good to catch up. I must make an effort to do this more often...
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