The Big Smoke...

I went to London at the weekend. It was great. On Friday night we had some vocal recording to do, and that ran a bit late, so I didn't leave Leeds till half nine. I made the drive down to Golder's Green, and it took me FOREVER. There were loads of roadworks near the big city, and I was at a standstill for a while, but I finally arrived at quarter to two in the morning. It was worth it. As always, James had a particularly comfy spot for me reserved on the floor, but this time I had come prepared, and produced a sleeping bag, camping mat, and two pillows. Much better than last time. We ate muffins with bovril; we drank cocoa. We chatted a bit, and fell asleep in front of QuizMania, which is a prime example of why I don't generally watch television. That guy has issues...

When we awoke, James prepared us cups of tea, and we set off to pick up my new enlarger. I'm well excited to have this - I've wanted a darkroom again for a while, and getting a bargain like I did is awesome. Ok, it needs a bit of work, but it's going to be well worth it. Of course it's too big to bring over to Canada. I'll have to think of something... The journey that should have taken twenty minutes each way took us a total of 3 hours. Stupid London traffic. James did a splendid job of navigating though. Then we played video games.

James showed me a side of the capital that I had never seen before. After getting my mom some books for mother's day, we trekked across towards a pub that we rather like on Great Portland Street. Except that we somehow missed the road. We walked for nearly an hour. It was ridiculous. Pretty funny though. When we finally arrived there, we walked in, and found that, even on a Saturday, it was so quiet that it was closing at nine.

We gave James' housemate Paul a call, and found that he, his friend and his sister were in a pub near to University College of London, so we went to the uni to meet him. He is a GREAT guy. He's a South African archaeologist, and a very clever, very funny man. I got on well with him. The same goes for his friend Dan, and his sister Claire, all of whom can be seen in the photograph. We visited a couple of pubs, laughed a lot (not unusual when I'm with James), and formulated a plan for my stag party, which should be enormously silly. We took the night bus home, and ended up watching QuizMania again. Hmmmm. I left early the next morning, and popped in to see mom, who cooked me a wonderful dinner, even though she didn't expect me to be there. What a star...

In other news, since our clocks went forward on Sunday morning, there is now a 6 hour time difference between Bethany and I, as opposed to the usual 5 hours. This causes no real problems, but can be a bit confusing when you're used to calculating 5 hour's difference into everything. All will be resolved this coming Sunday, however, when Canada gets itself into gear, and puts their clocks forward too. And things are resolved even further 6 days later, when I arrive in my favourite country in the world. Sweet.

I have a bunch of thoughts on things this week, but I've reserved this post for telling you about London; uninteresting as that may be to you. I'll get on with some deeper stuff later on. Love, guys...

Chicks dig scars...

Or so Bethany tells me... Yeah, I took a bit of a tumble. I was on my way to a church prayer meeting. I had decided to use my rollerblades, because it was a dry day (for the first time in months) and it seemed like a good idea to get some exercise. I booted up, and headed to the venue. But, it turned out, I had got the wrong place, and I had to relocate to a centre a bit of a distance away. 'Not to worry,' thought I, 'I have my skates.' And so, I skated through Burley, down towards St Matthias Church centre. I was trundling down the hill, zig-zagging to reduce my speed (my hockey skates have no brakes), when I realised that there were cars coming in both directions. I took evasive action, and attempted to stop, but there was no way I was going to come to a halt in time, and I fell. Even though I controlled the fall, and directed myself towards the sidewalk, I came down pretty hard. I tore my jeans, and also my knee. I figure that I might sew up the jeans (as they're my only pair) in a rudimentary fashion so that it's obvious I have been involved in some sort of accident. I also intend to leave them a few days before washing them, so that the blood stains them real good. And the summer's on its way, so I can enjoy a lot of short-wearing to show off the scar on my knee.

You may also notice that I have obtained a Flickr gallery on my sidebar. I thoroughly encourage you to do the same. That's all for now...

bombastic scholastic...

Yes! What a weekend. It all started on Saturday morning with an enjoyable round of golf. Tim and I finally got onto the golf course in Kirkstall, and played a pleasant nine holes. Particularly good fun. We brought out the golfing attire that we have been gathering for a while now, and we looked a treat. Check out the photographic evidence here. You can also see some great pictures of us enjoying the pudding party that Sarah Leeson from Monsoon held at her house on Wednesday.

Golf was followed by a jaunt into town, with visits to the oriental supermarket on Vicar Lane, and Morrisons in Kirkstall for more groceries. There was also some great chop-busting action, when we encountered one of the student teachers from my school working on the checkout. We started eating the bread that we'd bought while it was still on the conveyor belt, dropping crumbs everywhere.

When we got home, I sorted out some lesson planning for today, while Tim prepared the meal. We had the most amazing chilli ginger mushroom noodle concoction. I'm going to post the recipe on here when I get the chance. It was UNBELIEVABLE... We finished off the night with a viewing of Cool Runnings. I love that film. The late John Candy. What a guy.

Yesterday, church was awesome in the morning, and we practised with the band in the afternoon. We also did a photo shoot ready for the website to be updated, and also to use some images for the demo which should be ready in the next couple of weeks. That needs to be going off to some venues in Leeds before I head to Canada. Tim and Mark's Saturday kitchen took place yesterday (I know it was Sunday...) evening, and we were able to enjoy stilton scones with butter followed by oatmeal and raisin cookies whilst we watched the incredible Planet Earth. And, I quote, lovely stuff.

This morning I had a formal observation by my link tutor from college. He was watching me teach a literacy lesson to a year four group. I did something on Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, getting the kids to plan out the way that they would poach a pheasant from the woods. It was all great fun, and I got a very encouraging feedback sheet from him, that says I'm on the right track. It's all good stuff.

So, this afternoon, one of the teachers is off, so I get to take her class. We're going to do something for mothering Sunday. I think that we're going to make a class book about what we like about our mums. I love my mums; both Hardy and Ventura. What a fortunate man I am. I'm off to get my resources together, then. Love you...

Snow day...

I meant to post this on Monday, but my computer has still been playing all sorts of games, so it took me a while to get things running sufficiently. So, Sunday was a snow day. We don't get them very often in Leeds; it tends to come down a little bit, then rain until everything has gone. Unusually, the wonderful stuff stayed around for more than a day, so there was plenty of time to play around in it, especially with it being a Sunday and all.

I was particularly pleased about the snow, because I've been feeling rather homesick for Canada recently, and the British winter hasn't been doing an awful lot to improve things. When I woke up on Sunday morning and saw the snow coming down, I said a little thank you to my Heavenly Daddy. Man, he's awesome. In the truest sense of the word.

I drove back from church through snow that was laying on the roads, which is something that you almost never encounter in this city. I was feeling more and more Canadian, and that was completed when I got a text from my friend Cesca, who asked if Tim and I wanted to join them on the park. I pulled on an extra t-shirt, and changed into some lightweight pants. Then I put my snowpants on. I tucked the inner leg into my socks, and put on a belt. Then I grabbed a hoodie, topped it off with my winter coat, and fastened the snow cuff. I attached the clips on it to my belt, and put my thumbs through the holes in the inner sleeves. With my hat on my head, and a scarf round my neck, I zipped up my coat, and then slipped my hands into a pair of gloves. I was almost entirely protected against the snow. I was certainly ready to face a snowball fight, knowing that I would be by far the best prepared for such an occasion.

After the war that ensued, we headed over to the bottom of the park, and made a snowman. The pictures speak for themselves. He was the most fun snowman that I have ever had the pleasure to hang out with; his ability to join us on the rides in the park was almost human.

The snow has gone now, and it's been replaced with rain. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. And I have many, many, many real Canadian winters ahead of me. Lots of snow. I'll probably end up sick of the stuff...

Dos and Don'ts...

It's been an interesting couple of days, that's for sure. Things started off pretty badly on Thursday, what with there being nothing to eat for breakfast in the house and all. It got worse when I ironed my brand new trousers, and someone had managed to melt some dark blue plastic on the iron, which smeared all down the leg of my new work khakis. I was in a foul mood by the time that I arrived at work, having stopped at a shop on the way and purchased a low quality tuna sandwich for breakfast (the only thing I could find that didn't have meat in it). I have a meeting with my boss on Thursday mornings; the purpose of the meeting this week, it seems, was to tell me how badly I was doing. She had a list of about twenty things that I needed to change about what I was doing. I'm not going to go into all of it, because it's boring and unnecessary. Anyway, I didn't agree with all of it, some of it was misinformed, and I have already made an effort to sort out the rest. We're all good now. It didn't help my morning though.

The day was ok, with lots of work to do, and my collegue making me feel much better. Bethany also made a more than valiant effort, with voicemail messages and emails to cheer me up; I got a good one there. When I returned home my housemate had gone to pick up my new motherboard for me, so we put the computer back together. However, my new stick of RAM is the wrong type for my motherboard, so it's completely useless. I can't send it back either. Ho hum. Neither does this motherboard have a built in sound card like my last one, so I have to get one of those before I can use Skype to talk to Bethany on the internet. Not that I can do that at the moment anyway - the network card is causing all sorts of problems. It will only connect to the net for about ten minutes, after which I have to shut the machine down and restart it if I want to email or surf the web. Rubbish. I ended up taking my aggression out on the ice at Bradford Ice Rink. That, I have to say, was pretty good.

Yesterday started badly too, if I'm honest. I woke up in the morning feeling particularly rough; coughing and spluttering. I took the day off college, and stayed in bed till half nine. Then I got up and chilled out. In the end I headed into town, and bought some new work pants. I also purchased a shirt and some other clothes for work. I spent four hours shopping. And, as it turned out, I really needed that time. Not only was it retail therapy, but it was a valuable amount of time spent on my own. I've been very surrounded by people recently, and I think that I really appreciated the time spent just with myself. I love having people round me, but occasionally you just need space to think. That's what I needed yesterday.

The evening was also great. After a night of practising with the band, and feeling much more happy about our sound than I did after our show last week, we decided to head to the supermarket and get some ingredients for a crazy dessert. You can see a picture of it at the top of this post. You won't, however, understand how BIG the portions were. a generous serving would have been to split the thing between 6 people. We divided it between three of us. It was full of chocolate, and served with more whipped cream than was absolutely necessary. Ridiculously good. Agreed, it was 2am by the time we tucked into it, but it still felt like Friday.

So, I guess my point is this: My day on Thursday was awful, but, as Bethany said, it got SO MUCH BETTER yesterday. And none of it matters anymore, because when I went to bed on Thursday night, I left all that crap behind. And guess what? Today was awesome too. I wonder what tomorrow's going to be like...

Birthday beats...

It's my wonderful fiancee's birthday today. I can't be with her, which is a bit of a nuisance, but she wasn't here on my birthday, so it's fair really. If you haven't already done so, visit her blog and leave her a lovely birthday comment. She deserves it; after all, she is the most fantastic girl in the world...

So, here I am, 3500 miles from my future wife on her birthday; in school. I have to be honest, I'm having a great day. I'm observing in the mainstream class this morning, not teaching at all. I've observed another student teacher do her thing, and she was particularly good. It's funny, because she's on the same course that I left after one semester. I couldn't cope with it. She (and her friend) seems to be doing really well, and it suits her to a tee. I find it fascinating that there are so many teaching courses out there, and that God has seen fit to get me on the one that will train me the best. He really does know what's good for me.

The other thing that we did so far this morning is have a music lesson. Teaching a bunch of 8 year olds to beat drums together but in different rhythms produces some interesting results. You should try it sometime. I think that I will. Just give me my own class...

My house is being redecorated by my ace landlord this week, so hopefully he'll be in when my new motherboard arrives to sign for it. All going to plan, I'll get everything up and running again by tonight, and this blogging thing will no longer be such a hassle. Excellent.

So, happy birthday to my incredible Bethany, thank you to God for getting me to the place I want to be, and goodbye to you lot. We'll talk later, OK?

Busting my chops...

It really is. There's no one specific thing that's doing the chop busting, it's a bit of a combo deal, actually. The workload from my course is building up in a major way. Being based in essentially two different schools is not easy, and I think that I end up with twice the work that most people do. I'm also basically being treated as the teacher in one of the classes that I'm in, all the time that I'm in there, which isn't part of the deal. I find that I haev stuff that I have to hand in to college, but that I'm not being given the proper support that I need for that at school. I'm finding that things are being expected of me at school, without the proper support for that being given either. It's pretty hard work. Put together with that the fact that I had some sad news recently, and it just makes the whole thing worse.

It's true. We did everything we could, but the time of death was pronounced at ten after one on Saturday afternoon, when my housemate Rob finally declared that my computer's motherboard had well and truly passed away. It seems that some of the resistors had blown, and it's in no fit state to be doing anything. I don't know how long it had been like that, but on Saturday morning it decided it had finally had enough. I have a new motherboard arriving this week, so that should get it sorted, but I have to rebuild the thing from scratch, and until then, I have no computer. I'm writing this at school.

So, excuse me if there's been a continuing lack of posts - it wasn't my intention, I've just been sort of forced into it. I promise that when I get it up and running again, my computer will once again become a place of much blogging. And much working. And much emailing my beautiful fiancee, who I suspect is feeling a little lack of communication thanks to my situation. Until then, then...

Bedtime stories...

Ok, just because Bethany has gone back to Canada doesn't mean I can't have fun. I'm determined to have as much fun as possible for the next five weeks, until I get to go to Toronto and see her again. As a result, I heartily welcomed last night's entertainment. Myself, Tim (pictured), Butch and Ches Dennis got together for a sleepover. That's right. We all got into our pyjamas and sleeping bags in the lounge, and had a sleepover party. Tim had never had one before. I don't know if you have. They're a lot of fun. There was the obligatory moment for one of our evenings where we have a sudden panic that we've completely lost the plot - last night it was when we realised that we were all in our early to mid twenties, and sat round in my lounge in our sleeping bags playing silly little games and drinking fizzy pop at two in the morning. It was great. If you're inspired to have one of your own, here's what we did:

We ate pizza (which we topped ourselves); we ate a lot of cookies and potato chips with dips; we drank a lot of fizzy pop; we watched a silly movie (Wallace and Gromit); we watched a rubbish horror film (Creep); we played a game called consequences; we talked about the girls and boys that we fancied; we played video games; we listened to some of the latest hit records; and, of course, we intended to stay up all night, but instead went to sleep about four am. Lovely stuff. I thoroughly recommend it to you...

Catch up time...

What an amazing couple of weeks. It's been busy, which is why it's taken me so flipping long to blog, but it's been fantastic. Bethany arrived on the 16th, and it's been pretty much non-stop since then. I have a whole load of pictures, but there's too many to put on one post, so I'll get them on a photo album or something, and then I'll put a link to them.

As you can see from the photo, we went to see Sheffield Wednesday. They were playing Sheffield United, so it was a bit of a grudge match. We lost the game 2-1, which sucked, but to be honest it was better than we deserved. It's pretty funny to see how emotional people get at the football, actually. We scored our goal from a penalty kick, and I pretty much cried when it went in. The best thing is seeing all these double hard lads around that probably rob grannies for fun and steal the wheels from baby's buggies getting so emotional about a game. Seriously; some of these guys would kill for football. Quite scary really.

It was really good to spend time with Bethany and my family, because it's the first time that they've seen each other since we got engaged. They threw us THE BIGGEST party on Saturday night. In case you haven't read Bethany's blog, I'll tell you all about it. When they first said that they were doing us an engagement party, I thought that it would be a fairly small affair. But no. They invited half the known world, it seems. Then they got the local butcher (with whom we are fairly good friends - my dad taught their kids) to turn up and do a hog roast. That's right; a whole roast pig. Head and all. You should have seen the place. The tables were decorated like nothing else, thanks to my sister. The food was plentiful and ridiculously good. The music, provided by Brett, was varied and superb. And there were about 150 people there. We had close family, friends from my church in Leeds, my housemates and neighbour, some more distant family, some family that I'd never met before, friends from my dad's church... The list goes on.

So, we had an incredible time. We got all dressed up for it, and that was good. We were given so many gifts, it was ridiculous. We're so blessed to have so many people that are rooting for us. The food was outstanding, and my auntie made us the most amazing cake. We didn't get back to Leeds until 2:15 the following morning, but it was well worth it. It did, however, add to the lack of sleep that I'd gotten over the past week. Another incident that did my sleeping pattern no favours was our little trip to Wales. We headed over to Wrexham to see Nicola Tancock, and then went with her to Colwyn Bay to visit Lee and Sarah Houghton. We had a great time, and ate curry at a surprisingly good, clean and comfortable Wetherspoons (not an easy thing to find these days). When we completed the drive back to Wrexham, I got pulled over by the cops, who told me that I had a brake light and a headlight out. I showed the guy that I had spare bulbs in my car, and he told me to go change them before I drove the two hours back to Leeds. Well, I changed the brake light, but I didn't end up having the right bulb for the headlight. I also noticed, when I drove to Nicola's house, that the dashboard lights were only on when I pressed the brakes. I couldn't see any of the dials at all. I figured something was wrong, and I ended up calling brakedown, because there was nothing open by then. This guy came and discovered that the set of bulbs I had was for a different car. By putting in the wrong bulb, I'd blown a fuse. Anyway, he switched both bulbs for me, and the fuse, and only charged me a fiver. We didn't get home till four am though...

Another great festivity took place yesterday. Pancake day. I love pancake day. A good chance to use up all those things in your house before you use them up for lent. Well, not me. I have no intention to stop eating what I ate yesterday. English pancakes rolled up, stuffed with lemon juice and sugar; flambed bananas with grated chocolate; summer fruits with mascapone cheese... mmmmmmm. Nope, I'll be giving up meat for lent. Not fish, just meat. I think that I may just survive on sushi for the next 40 days. I love meat; I'm not sure how I'm going to get on with this. Butch has three things that he gives up - he has one that he absolutely won't go back on, one that he might, and one that he almost certainly will. Good thinking, Butcher, although it doesn't help me one bit.

Finally, in other news, my school had OFSTED in the last two days. The inspectors. I'll let you know how we got on when I hear the report. It's been good to talk, we should do this more often, you know...

Women's things...

Well, that was interesting. Last night, I went along with some of my friends to watch a production of the Vagina Monologues. It was certainly an experience. I went because my good friend, Sam Reid from Band Club was in it, and a great job she did too; but I was not particularly looking forward to spending two hours listening to what I expected to be a feminist rant.

And feminist rant it was, in places. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone, although certain parts of it were invaluable. The monologues address issues such as violence and abuse towards women, and rape. These monologues must be heard. But some of it is just wierd, and some of it is entirely unnecessary. One of the pieces, for example, is dedicated to the C word. That word which is considered more offensive than any other in the English language. The speaker claims that she has reclaimed it, and takes pleasure in using it. She tries to get the audience to chant it over and over again (and I'm sad to say that most of them did). It seems to me that it was put there for nothing more than shock value. The monologue seemed to serve no real purpose; there were no staggering insights in it. Just a repeated use of a particularly vulgar word. But then again, if you're going to watch something called The Vagina Monologues, you have to expect a few vulgarisms.

I'm not going to say anything more about the production, because I don't want to put people off/ruin it for them. AS I say, I think that some of the pieces are essential viewing (or reading), but parts were a little hard to swallow.

Meanwhile, back at Salvator Darlings camp, things are getting a little exciting. Leading up to the release of our mini album, we have a series of gigs that we're in the process of booking from the end of April. We have a show next Monday (Feb 20th) at the Packhorse in Leeds, to say farewell to our Irish bassist, Tim Higgins, who's leaving for various reasons. The show will feature long time friends of the Darlings, The Hyde Park Death Squad, as well as new act Sensitive Men.

In preparation for the show, Simon and I will be appearing on Leeds Student Radio this afternoon at about 4:30 GMT. Just go here, click on the button that says listen, and you can enjoy a couple of songs and an interview with us. Should be pleasingly silly.

Right, the bell just went, and I have a group of children to take bowling. I love my job! Have a good Valentines day, y'all...

Ragtime...

Remember how I was saying a few weeks ago that everyone I know is getting a blog? Well, it's true. If he ever posts something worthwhile on there, you can read the thoughts and musings of the drummer from my band, Little Rob, here. He's a funny man, you know. If only he'd get around to typing something...

Something that has been up and running for altogether longer, is The Rag. This is a spoof of the news, contributed to by a group of people, one of whom is my old next door neighbour and hero of the now disbanded Speakeasy, Matt Medd. It's a work of genius. They're getting quite a lot of traffic now, and they're considering sorting out a proper site for it, rather than the Blogspot format. Go check it out now, enjoy it, link to it, and when it's the most popular site on the web, you can say that you were there from the start. Well, nearly, anyway...

That's all from me for now. I have college tomorrow, and the next four-week block is Maths. I hate maths. I'll let you know how I get on with that. I'm off to prepare for it now. Have fun kids...

The Swear Box...

Don't let me catch you swearing in my house. Not now we have a swear box. Butch, Tim and I were slightly worried by our increasingly casual attitude towards mild cursing. So we decided to put a stop to it by using the timeless Swear Box. We searched high and low for a suitable object to use, and settled on an old whiskey bottle box that I had. I cut a slot for a coin in the top, and we were off. We made a little label for it with masking tape, and I wrote on the white board in our kitchen 'every curse costs you ten pence. Blasphemy costs you twenty pence.'
Rob, the comedian that he is, added a joke about my mom on the Swear Box label, and so the third rule was born: 'Rude comments about mums cost thirty pence'. And the list has grown. Whenever a new rule comes into existence, we create a new label to go on the bottom. To date we have:

The Swear Box
Every curse costs you ten pence...

Your mum cost me ten pence
Rude comments about mums cost thirty pence.

Holy Smokes!
Blasphemy costs you twenty pence.

Swearopoly
The C word - Mayfair - one pound
The F word - Park Lane - fifty pence

If you're in, you're in...
Be you resident, or guest, when you're in the house, the rules apply.

Quote, Unquote
Swearing in the context of a quote, no matter who said or sung it, will result in a fine.

There is also a disclaimer attached to the original ten pence fee on the top that reads:

*Embellishments apply.
Please read all rules thoroughly to avoid disappointment...

Tim suggested that we use a third of the money to help support a tourettes charity; he's found one in Scotland, apparently. Butch thought that it might be a good idea to use the rest to throw a party for the tourettes sufferers that we're helping out. Get them to fill the box up, like...

Although that may be a rather silly suggestion, we're all amazed at the success of the Swear Box. Or are we? It's been up and running for three weeks, and it's got six quid in it. But the past week has been largely fruitless for those poor tourettes sufferers. Butch, Tim and I are operating the rules on ourselves when we're out and about too; the only condition for others is that they have to pay if they swear in our house. We're kind of pleased that we've saved up six pounds, but at the same time, that adds up to a lot of swearing...

I'm back in the class again tomorrow, teaching English. We're looking at defining words, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve for the lesson. I'll let you know how it goes, but secretly, between you and me, I'm quietly confident. The PE/Games/Phys Ed/Gym/Whatever you want to call it class the other day gave me a whole lot more confidence, actually, and I feel ready to take this on tomorrow. I'm certainly not as nervous as I was about my first lesson doing maths. I also have a lot more theory under my belt from college this time, so I feel like I'm better prepared.

My dad and uncle came up last night. My parents are decorating my old room in their house. They say that they want it to be a nice room for Bethany and I to stay in when we're married and we visit them. They thought that she might want something more...carpeted. I say that they don't know her as well as I do... Whatever they do with the room, the result was that they wanted rid of my old bed and wardrobe. This was music to my ears, because I'm sick of the bed that was provided by my landlord. It was just a bed base, with a tired old mattress on it. And my wardrobe was small, flimsy, and the drawers were falling apart. So I got my dad to bring up the bed and wardrobe that they wanted rid of. Superb! Although they are my old ones, and we bought them 8 years ago, I only lived with them for 3 years of that, so they're practically new to me. There's slightly less space in between my wardrobe and my bed now, but there's more room down the side, and I can store boxes of stuff under the bed. There's stacks more space in the wardrobe too. It's brilliant. I think I may move everything around a bit, but I'm going to leave that till Bethany arrives, because we're going to decorate when she's here too.

Speaking of which, I'm going to go to the supermarket. The love of my life arrives in 8 days, and, although I want to make sure that there's plenty of food in so that I can cook for her and she won't starve, I also need to ensure that all the really nice food has already been eaten, so that she can't have any. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Seriously though, I'm going to the supermarket. Then I'm going to cook up a tasty meal, and finish my lesson planning. Then to bed. My nice, new bed...

Oh yeah! Cheeeeeeeese....

Ah, it's Monday again. Another weekend over, another four days of school. This weekend was an interesting one. I was so busy on Saturday, but it was all fun. Let me fill you in:

I got up and did some lesson planning, before heading to Tim's at eleven to pop to Headingly. We were intending to see if Oxfam still had any second hand putters in to complement our set of golf clubs, but they didn't so we ended up purchasing a board game each. Good old Headingly. Full of charity shops and thrift stores. I picked up the classic Othello for a mere £1, while Tim got himself a mint condition Cribbage set, with oak board, for only £1.50. Bargain.
We met up with Butch's girlfriend, Katherine, and took the car to Morley, where we watched a good deal of Ultimate Frisbee at the indoor tournament there. Butch and Andy were playing for Curious Bacon original six, and Rob was supposed to be on the Jedi Legends team. But he defected, and played for the team that won the competition (whose name escapes me at present). Even though we didn't get to see all my housemates face each other in the end, it was a good afternoon, and we saw some excellent Frisbee. Something that my friends at college would probably laugh at me for.
The other thing that would tickle them is the way that I spent my evening. After a bit of grocery shopping, Tim and I headed back to mine, where we made fresh pasta. We rolled it out into sheets using my pasta machine, then made ravioli with different kinds of cheese. We used Stilton, Windsor Red, Lancashire, Gouda, Bleu d'Auvergne and black peppercorn cheddar. Then we put it all in a box, and sealed the lid. Off we headed to Toby's house.

So then, the first meeting of Ches Moi, our cheese society. Since its inception last Sunday, the membership has risen to a staggering 25, each with their own special Ches Moi name (I'm Ches Ventura, no prizes for guessing why). Butch is The Grate One, as he will always be the leader. There's also a monthly election for The Grate One's right hand man, known as The Grand Fromage. He chairs the meetings. Well, it was ridiculous. We watched a Powerpoint presentation that Toby (this month's Grand Fromage) had made for us, focussing on the aims of Ches Moi, and the cheeses that we would be concentrating on for that meeting. We rose for the society's anthem (Chan Chan), we all greeted each other with our special handshake. We descended into nothing short of complete silliness. Then I cooked the pasta, and we served the cheese and crackers. There were 12 of us present (Ches Andham, our secretary took attendence then the minutes of the meeting), and ten different cheeses: Bleu d'Auvergne, Stilton, Welsh waxed Cheddar, Blacksticks Blue, Danish Blue, Peppercorn Cheddar, honey and herb Cheddar, a very strong Cheddar, Windsor Red, and Dolcelatte. We ate the lot. It was incredible. I have to say, I didn't feel so well after all that, but it tasted SO GOOD...

Sunday? That's another story. Church was great, and I did a bunch of stuff in the afternoon too. But it was a different kind of day, and I'm not going to give you a run-down of it just yet. Perhaps later. As for now, the bell just rang to signal the end of lunchtime, so I'm back to class. I taught games this morning, and it was pretty hectic. I was on my own for it, and that was an experience in itself. The class was loud, and a bit unruly, but I got there, I think, and I've established some sort of order for when I'm in charge. I think there's probably more to write on that subject, and who knows what will happen this afternoon? I might well continue this later. Until then, my name isn't Cheese anymore. It's Gordon Pritchard...

I never signed up for this...

On Thursday, I learned the very sad news that one of the pupils from the school I worked at last year, died this week. To be honest, he was very unwell, and it isn't a huge surprise, but that doesn't make it any easier. For those of you that don't know, I worked in a school for children with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD). My mom also works with children like this (although she takes more of a managerial role these days), but my dad pointed out that there was a period of two weeks where she had to attend four funerals. It seems that it doesn't get any easier over time, and it's never easy to accept. But it kind of comes with the territory, I guess.

Otherwise, school was good this week. Wednesday was superb. More observing in class, but we have music lessons on Wednesday mornings, and it all got very silly. The teacher and I get on very well, and everything descended into complete stupidity. The kids really enjoyed it too... After school, we went to a short tennis competition that the kids were in. They really appreciated my appearance, I think, and we got some good hang out time. It's not that often that you can chat to the kids out of school, and it made them more relaxed with me.

College was really good yesterday too. I was so fed up with this lecturer that we have had for the past three weeks, that I just decided to go to the other group when I got there. I knew that the guy that taught them was really good, and completely different from the lady that we had. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and found that the lady was off, and we were all together with the other guy anyway! Very pleasing. We had a fantastic day, and it was all rounded off with some great work to do with drama in a primary school classroom. We experimented with different techniques, and it all got pretty hilarious. It just made me realise how much better the last three weeks could have been, and how much more I could have gotten out of it...

Right, there's sleeping to be done. I know it's not a school night, and that's why I'm still out of bed at 1:30. But there's a Frisbee tournament in Leeds tomorrow, and all my housemates are playing. I'm going there with our next door neighbour, and Butch's girlfriend. We're not heading there till about three, but we have a bunch of stuff to do first, and it requires being up and about reasonably early. And after all that, there's the first official meeting of our cheese society; Ches Moi. But that's another story. I have a bunch more stuff to write about - it's been a pretty intense week, and the things to post about are racking up - but I'm going to have to draw the line, and come back to this later. Till then...

All the cool kids...

Are making records. Well, that's what we've been doing, anyway. On Friday night, our good friend Matt drove up from Peterborough with a 24 track hard disk recording unit. We brought in a whole bunch of other equipment from various sources, and some duvets, and built us a studio in the basement of the house on Talbot Mount (see picture). We managed to get down 9 tracks in one day, which was pretty impressive. There's still the vocals to record, and then we have to master it all, but things are going well. Keep an eye on our website to find out more, and to check out when you can get to one of our shows...

Back in the real world, I've got it easy at school today. Rather than teaching, which I was doing some of last week, today I'm back to observing. It's a reasonably easy task that basically requires watching the teacher, making notes on what they do, and then helping out a bit in the class for the lesson. Even I can manage that. One little gem from this morning though: The children were learning how to make notes on a text. They were given three paragraphs, which they had to shorten to something that made sense and contained all the major information. One girl, I noted, had written that the mercury from batteries can poison the soil. However, a slight mis-spelling on her part led the sentence to actually read 'the mercury from batteries can poison the soul'. Brilliant, and probably true.

Went for another run tonight, but couldn't take the pace that Rob kept with his mighty legs. Cut it short. Still felt pretty good afterwards though. I then cooked a tasty treat for everyone, and Butch went off to meet his girl. More about her at a later date, no doubt. The evening was rounded off with a lovely cup of chai tea, brewed by yours truly. I'll post in the next couple of days about how I did it, and how you can do the same. Until then...

Just an observation...

And that's all it was. I got myself a little bit worried about this morning, because my link tutor from college was coming to do his first formal observation of my teaching. As it turned out, I had no cause for concern. I was in the ASC (Autistic Spectrum Condition) class, which was a bonus because I feel much more confident in there. I'd planned an activity, and the kids actually whizzed through it, which was a miracle in itself; they all sat at the table and did the work. I found another resource that we could use for a numeracy lesson, so we did that, and then did some individual work programmes; such was the effeciency of the pupils this morning. All this contributed to the rather pleasing report that my tutor gave me at the end of the session. I'll let you read it:

Professional values and practice: High expectations of all children. Demonstrates positive values to all children.

Knowledge and understanding: Good knowledge of what constititutes an appropriate learing environment for children with particular needs.

Planning, expectations and targets: Detailed planning in place to meet specific needs of children. Challenging expectations set.

Class management: Good selection of resources. Teaching and learning time managed effectively. Purposeful learning environment.

Teaching: Work had pace and variety. You gave careful attention to pupil errors and helped to remedy them.

Monitoring and Assessment: Monitored children's responses in detail to activities throughout the session. Used a lot of constructive feedback.

Inclusion and equal opportunities: Clear understanding of how children's learning is affected by their intellectual development.

Targets for development: Consider how you could identify a specific 'learning objective' within your planning for this session.

I'm not sure how much sense that makes to you. Basically, he was also ticking little boxes that referred to certain targets which I must acheive in order to gain Qualified Teacher Status. The comments are in keeping with the standards that I have achieved during the lesson that he observed.

I actually really enjoyed the lesson, and the feedback he gave me is very useful, but I only realised after I'd finished talking to him (after he'd done the observation) how tired I was. It had really taken it out of me. I think that the thing I can most easily liken it to, is taking your practical driving test. I was pretty calm about the whole affair, and I wasn't particularly worried about it, but I was aware that he was there, making notes on everything that I was doing, so I made sure that everything was done by the book. In the same way that when you take your driving test, you concentrate very hard on making sure that you check your mirrors at exactly the right time, keep both hands on the wheel in the correct position, and generally drive with more caution, perhaps even than you had when you were learning. And it's a pretty tiring experience.

What the Butcher saw...

I came in from work last night to find Butch watching one of my favourite films, City of God. I saw it in the theatres when it came out, and then didn't watch it for years, despite the fact that I received it for my birthday on DVD. I finally got round to viewing it again on new year's day, very early in the morning, when I was waiting to go to the airport to fly back to England. Bethany was supposed to watch it with me, but she fell asleep. Despite the fact that I was incredibly tired, and watching it on a 7" portable DVD screen, I was once again wowed by the cinematography, incredible acting, and the harsh reality of the violence. The plot's pretty good too.

I was very pleased then, having been exposed to it again last night, to find that my very good friend James had written a review of it for digital-coffee.com. You can read the review here.

In other news, I went for a run last night. That's right, a run. I'm swimming tonight too. It's all part of a new initiative to get me in shape for my wedding. I know that there's a year to go yet, but trust me; the baggy sweaters do a great job of concealing a lot of extra weight that I shouldn't really be carrying. It's not the only change to my lifestyle either. But more on that later. Right now, I'm going to go have my lunch in a classroom. Then go for a swim. Then maybe I'll watch City of God again...

Nerves...

Well, who'd have thought it? I just took my first part of a lesson, and I was so scared! I have no fear of the kids, and I'm more than happy to work with them in smaller groups, but this was the first time that I've had to stand at the front of a whole class and write on the board. The first time that I've had to actually teach them something entirely new.

We were looking at time, and counting in five minute intervals between designated times. They caught on really quickly, and I was fairly confident that they'd achieved the objective of the session. Then the teacher came and took over for the rest of the time. She observed me as I taught, and gave me some valuable feedback, which you can find below:

Introduced the topic. You need to ask child rather than look at the whole class. Direct questions.
Good. Let children see their own mistake and work out the answer to correct themselves. Ask them to say how they worked things out (eg 14x5=70). Drew out well the 60 minutes = 1 hour.
Always ask the child to explain. Some do this automatically. A child's explanation is sometimes better than ours, as some children listen to other pupils better.

I feel much more confident now, as I feel that I've got over the biggest hurdle, and I've also recieved some valuable advice into the bargain.

It was a funny morning too. When we first came into the class, one child was showing me the latest addition to his pencil case - a bendy pencil. It looks like, and works like a normal pencil, but you can bend it to a certain extent. The boy next to him also had one. He was so pleased with it, and very keen to demonstrate how bendy it was. But he was a bit too rough, and snapped it in half... Ha ha ha ha. The other hilarious incident from this morning was in games. We were in the gym, and the children were in pairs, throwing a ball to each other, and catching it with one hand. The teacher asked them to use the hand that they use the least i.e. if you're right handed, catch with your left; if you're left handed, catch with your right. One boy announced proudly that he could catch equally well with both hands. The teacher told him that he should use whichever one he wanted. I had to laugh when I saw the look on his partner's face, as she threw him the ball for the first time, and he fumbled it and dropped it on the floor. Priceless...

A fun weekend was had, all in all. I went to a party on Saturday night at a very posh house. Full of people who thought that the most fun thing you can do at a party is stand around chatting politely with people of the same social class as you. We went outside and caused a ruccus. Butch invented a game where you had to kick cookie over a fence. Some random guy that realised we were having much more fun than anyone else came out and had a go. But his shoe came off and flew into next door's garden. Hilarious...
I got up a bit late on Sunday as a result though, and only made it to church for the Word (which Mashworth explained was a particularly significant name for it). The sermon was really good, and challenged me on a couple of things. Basically, it was looking at Annaneus and Saphira, and how they edged closer and closer to sin, playing chicken with it, until they took the final step; when what they should have done was run the other way when the idea came to them. I had a bit of a chat with God afterwards, and agreed with him some ways that I can avoid falling into the trap of playing chicken with sin. Really useful stuff, actually.

In the afternoon, I cleaned the house finally, so it looks great again. My parents have just got back from the Carribean, and they brought me a bunch of gifts and stuff. Hilariously, after I made the decision that morning to stop drinking alcoholf for the forseeable future, they gave me a bottle of fine Trinidad rum. Nuts. Not sure what I'll do with that... It was good to see them though, and they told me that they're decorating my old room, so the bed that's in there at the moment is going spare. I need a new bed, so they're bringing it up for me. And my old wardrobe, which I can paint. I was planning to decorate my room in February when Bethany's over, so that works out really nicely.

We had some great cheese last night too. A superb mature blue stilton. Ate it with Tim and Butch after a game of Fluxx. I thoroughly recommend this game to all that can get hold of a copy. Along with Scrabble, it's our favourite game for 2006.
Right, that's quite enough of that. There's work to be done. Catch you later...

Nothing changes...

It doesn't matter how many times I come back to Lincoln, it's always the same. My Best Man, James, is back for the weekend from London, so I too made the journey across into England's equivalent of Hicksville. As I could have predicted, James and Sujee, despite announcing that they would 'definately be there by 11' didn't turn up until midnight. Any normal people would have seen this as a good chance to have a few minutes catching up, before going to bed. But we were in Lincoln. At Damien's house. So, at quarter past twelve, we strode out of the house, and towards any pub that would still serve us beer. We didn't get in until quarter to four. Ah, a good time was had by all though. We went to Dogma, where I bumped into a good friend that I haven't seen for ages. Damo bought the drinks, and we sat in the corner and laughed until we cried. I haven't laughed that much in ages...

Before any of that could happen, though, I had to go to college. My second day back in university, and it was dreadful. The week before had just been an introduction to the English section of the course, so it was fairly general. But yesterday proved that our lecturer for the subject is pretty terrible. I just thought that our class was very sedate, but when the other group came to join us in the afternoon, I discovered that the problem lay with her. She just stands at the front and talks for two hours. If you try to make a contribution, she will shout you down and belittle you. It was pretty awful.

I never expected to enjoy the college part of the course as much as the being in school; one of the reasons that I love the idea of taking this route into teaching is that I get really hands on experience, and learn through doing the job. I'd rather not be sat in a room, listening to someone talk to me about it. It's interesting that, as a teacher, she demonstrates none of the good practice that she teaches us about. Remind me to do my best to avoid falling into that trap. Things will lighten up, I'm sure. Two more weeks of this, and then we're onto another subject, with a different tutor. And I'm still learning something, so all is not lost.

On my way over to Lincoln, I have to go through my home town of Worksop. I gave my sister a call, to tell her that I was going to stop off at McDonald's for a bite to eat when I got there. It turned out that she and her boyfriend were heading there at the same time as me on their way to his house, so we rocked up at the same time. We spent about an hour and a half, just talking and being silly. And laughing a lot, actually. Last night was a good night for laughing. We talked about our jobs, and had a great time. It was an unexpected bonus of the weekend. And it's only just begun. It's Saturday morning, I'm in Lincoln, and it's a beautiful day. I'm going to head into town with James soon, go meet some more old friends and have coffee. Then back home to Leeds, where I will practice with the band, and follow it up with a visit to my friend's birthday party. Good times. All this, and more, to come, when we play I don't have to work weekends any more...

Wordplay...

One of the reasons that I love the English language so much is that it's so complicated. Just when you think that you have a rule worked out for something, you find the exception. It makes things more interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn't make it particularly easy to explain rules of English to a group of 8 year-olds.

This morning, we were looking at pre-fixes. The task was to look through a dictionary, in groups of two, and find words that begin with ad- or al-. Then, the aim was to decide whether the ad- or al- in that word was a prefix or not. To help in this difficult objective, we explained the meaning of each of these pre-fixes; ad means 'moving towards' and al means 'in a state of...' In itself, those are pretty abstract concepts. Now try applying them to every word that uses those pre-fixes. Now try explaining your reasoning to a bunch of children aged 8. Then get them to work some out for themselves. I'm quickly learning that this teaching lark is a lot harder than it first seems. Trying to motivate children to do things is hard enough. Trying to get them to do things that they don't understand is practically impossible.

Out of school, I've been living wild. Monday night was the craziest. I went to the pub with Matt Ashworth, Tim next door and Rob Littler. We took a game of Scrabble with us. That's my idea of a great night out. The pub, with a word game. It seems that we weren't alone in this; the man at the table next to us had got a cryptic crossword that he was puzzling over. I won't bore you with a play-by-play of our contest, but I will tell you that it was very close; all decided in the last three words played. I'll also tell you that I was victorious. I remain unbeaten on my home turf of Leeds, and I intend to make sure that this remains the case...

Lunchtime...

I just had a cup of soup for my lunch. Well, a cup of water and powder. Why is it that no matter how much you stir those things, there's always a huge lump of slime at the bottom? One day I shall invent the perfect instant soup.

This morning has flown by. I started off in the class that I'm usually in when I go into mainstream. We did literacy, and continued where we left off the other day; writing descriptive settings. The class teacher is excellent with me, and put me with a more able group today, so that I could see a bit more of the range within the class. I'm learning so much, and I feel very privileged to be able to train in this way, picking up things from the practitioners. It will be interesting, I think, to see how Butch gets on when he starts his course in September, as he will be taking the more traditional PGCE route, the majority of which is spent in college as opposed to school.

We had an assembly this morning, which was fantastic, as it gave me a chance to see how the school funcions as a community. Being in the partnership room with the kids with ASC, I don't get much of a chance to experience this aspect of school life, so it was a lot of fun. Even more so because it was a singing assembly. A lovely lady came in for the first of a series of monthly sessions, to try to get the school singing. We did a couple of school hymns, including Praise Him, a classic from my own primary school days. Superb stuff.

I did, as I hoped I would, avoid having to do any exercise this morning, by getting out of PE. I went to the class next door instead, and did a literacy lesson with them too. It's quite advantageous for me to do so much of this subject at the moment, as that's what we're concentrating on for the first 4 weeks of college. Hopefully I'll be able to put some theory into practice in the classroom, and take some of my practical experiences to college with me. I'll let you know if my expectations are fulfilled over the next few weeks...

Suited and booted...

And ready for another day in mainstream classes. I got even more dressed up today, and have gone with the full suit for maximum smartness. Even though all I'm likely to do is sit and make notes on what happens in class. College was good on Friday, but I have to be honest; I didn't learn an awful lot. It was pretty much a day of introduction onto the course, and it was a good chance for the tutor to get an idea of how much experience we had. As a result, we talked a lot about what we already knew, but it will provide a good foundation for what we're about to learn. It was rather odd to be back on the other side of a desk, listening to someone else talk, and making notes. I had a brief moment where I actually had to consider the possiblity that the past 18 months had not taken place at all, and I had been at university the whole time, but common sense prevailed.

Right, I know this was a short post, but I need to go make my presence known in class. Perhaps I'll be desperately needed for something this morning. Otherwise, I'll just watch what happens, and let you know of anything exciting. I knwo that the kids are going to do PE this morning; I intend to come to the computer and do some work here instead of running around. Catch you later...

NEW FOR 2006!

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while now. We're compiling a list of things that are hot this year. Here's what we have so far:

Eating blue cheese - Blue cheese is awesome. Be it blue Stilton, Danish blue, blue brie, double Gloucester blue, Shropshire blue, or one of the many other fantastic mouldy cheeses, spread it on your crackers, your bread, your bagels; eat it in chunks or wedges; enjoy it with a spot of port or even just a glass of water. Blue cheese is great, and everybody's eating it.

Contradictions - that's right; everyone who's anyone is contradicting themself this year. Check out this lovely little excerpt from confetti's little book The Groom's Wedding. This very useful book tells you all the things you need to know to be the groom at a wedding. So, with reference to how to stand out at your wedding by your choice of clothes:

'If you're looking for something really different, the frockcoat is a popular choice.'

I don't think that we need to say anything else about that.

Teenagers whispering in shopping malls - This is going to be huge this year, trust me. They're everywhere. Blocking doorways, sitting on steps, hanging out outside washrooms. The list goes on. Whispering conspiritorially. Perhaps they're plotting something, I'm not sure. All I know is that everywhere you look in a shopping mall there's groups of kids whispering to each other. It's what all the cool kids are doing.

Alliteration - loads of literate lunatics all over the land are letting loose lots of like letters. If you're not constructing sentences overflowing with this poetic tool, then you're nobody in the literate world this year.

So, the list isn't exhaustive by any means, but it is in place. Observe it, learn from it, live by it, and you'll be cool.

Another possible entry for the list is blogging in England. I know that it's been very popular over in Canada for ages now, and some people over here caught wind very quickly. But it seems to me that lots of people that I know have just suddenly got their own blog. The pick of the bunch is this one. Steve Darke, front man of the wonderful Band Club, and station manager at Leeds Student Radio let's loose his opinions on pretty much everything (with an emphasis on music). Beware, some of the language is a little choice, but the blog is fantastic. I like it so much that I'm putting a permanent link to it on my sidebar...

In other news, my housemate, Butch, fell out of the shower the other day (he informed me last night). He was, apparently, performing a particularly vigorous rendition of the Christian classic, Lord I Lift Your Name on High, with actions, when it all got a bit to much for the space he was in; he tripped over the side of the bath, and ended up sprawled all over the washroom floor. Superb work, Mr Butch.

College was great yesterday, but I think that this post has been long enough for most people to digest. I'll let you know more about the course and what happened yesterday next week. Have a great weekend, guys...

O2 much to ask...

I made you a promise on the last post. I said that I would put up a picture of myself looking smart. I can't, thanks to my cell phone network provider. O2, who make it possible for me to make and recieve calls and text messages, sent my phone off for repairs last week. You may remember me telling you that it was broken. I had a voicemail message from them last night, saying that it was ready to pick up when I wanted. I went and got it back. I was very happy about that. But when I tried to make a telephone call, the person on the other end of the line couldn't hear me. So I tried another call. They couldn't hear me either. The microphone is broken. I thought I'd make the best of having the phone anyway, and had Rob take a picture of me in my posh togs with it to put on here. But when I tried to link the phone to a computer, it didn't recognise the fact that there were pictures on the memory stick. That's broken too. Now I have to take the phone back again, and have them fix it. That means another week (or more) without a phone, and another two trips into town to visit the shop. I'm not altogether impressed. If I'm honest, it's a bit unacceptable.

As for the rest of my morning yesterday, it was great fun. We did some writing work, and I got involved in the activity, helping one or two of the less able children. They were very happy to have me around, and I learned an awful lot. I'm looking forward to Monday now, when I get to spend the day in there again. I'm in college tomorrow, for my first day of lectures on the course. I'll let you know how it goes. But for now, I have to get back to class. There's work to be done, you know. I can't stand round here all day chatting...

An observation...

Things are going well. I've only done half the morning so far, but I've made three pages of notes. I can't see this lasting - it's going to settle down a little. I'm just taking note of every single thing that happens in the classroom at the moment. I'll give you some examples when I have a bit more time, but recess is about to finish, and I'm going to have to rush this somewhat. It's been fun so far though, and the class teacher is being really helpful. We get on well anyway, so that's a good start.

On a slightly different subject, Sgt Steve made comments on a few of my recent posts. For those of you that are new to this blog, or haven't read it in a while, or don't read the comments, he posed a question:

Hey Question to everyone, when I read mark blog I pretend as if Mark is reading it to me so I get the proper english accent and the mark twist put on it. Is it just me who does that????

What do you guys think? Is it just Steve, or is it across the board. I have it in good faith that Bethany does the same. She told me herself.

I look real smart today. Normally I wear sneakers to work, with a t-shirt and hoodie, and phat cords. But today, as I'm in mainstream class, and not crawling round on the floor, I'm in shirt and tie (!), a nice sweater (thanks Mom and Dad) nice pinstripe pants, and smart brown shoes (thanks Bethany for shopping with me). Man, I look good. I mean really good. Hey, everyone, come see how good I look! I think I'll get a picture taken, and post it on here. Nobody will believe me otherwise...

Get on with it...

So, this morning I begin my course proper. I've been doing some paperwork and stuff towards it, but I haven't yet begun observing lessons. Until now. I was supposed to be in a mainstream class observing what goes on all day Monday (which is why Mr. Mullet was taking my place), but the class teacher that I will be with was off sick. She's back today, so I can go ahead and start watching what she does. This is a very important part of my course, particularly in the beginning, because it enables me to gain some hints and tips on classroom management, and lesson structure. It also helps me, because I make notes on what I see, and these go towards my evidence file, which is what will eventually be assessed to see if I should be given QTS (Qualified Teacher Status).

I'm off to the classroom now. I'll let you know how it goes...

The phantom mullet...

For those of you that don't know, or can't see the picture properly, I've gotten myself a mullet. Several things are to be noted regarding this haircut: a popular question is (to me) 'Doesn't Bethany want you to cut it off?'/(to Bethany) 'Don't you want him to cut it off?'. The answer to this question is always that Bethany has wanted me to grow a mullet for some time now, and is rather pleased that I did so. She didn't like the moustache, though...
Still on the subject of my hair, an interesting thing happened today. To understand why the following anecdote is funny, you must realise that I modelled my awful hairdo on the styles of two people in particular; Barry Chuckle from the Chuckle Brothers, and a man that lives just over the road from me. His haircut is quite terrible in appearance (although I suspect he rather likes it). So, today was my first official day on my teaching course. As I will not be in the classroom on Mondays, the school has provided a Learning Support Assistant to take my place every week. I was first in this morning, so I was left in charge of making sure he knew where he was going. Imagine my surprise (and consequent shame) when I discovered that the man who was allowing me to train to teach was none other than the ape-drape wearing chap who lives across the street. I found it difficult to keep a straight face...

As I have noted above, I have, today, begun my teaching course proper. Unlike most courses that result in Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), this one is an employment based route into teaching. This means, effectively, that I spend most of my time in school, and only go into college one day a week. Initially I spend my time mainly observing qualified teachers, and making notes on what they do, but I progress, as the year goes by, to taking the classes myself. This should be quite interesting to others, as well as myself, because I think that it will give some insights into the teaching profession, and give a glimpse of the work that is involved in training to teach. I have made the decision, therefore, to blog about the things that I experience whilst I am on the course. The question is, do I do it here, on this blog, or do I create a new one, specific to the subject? Let me know what you think. In the meantime, I'm going to go brush my hair...

Mom will flip...

Mommy Ventura, I mean. I'm blogging considerably more than my usual once monthly efforts at the moment, and I can't imagine that this won't take some people by surprise. Particularly my future mother in law. She's always saying I should blog more frequently, and so, as part of my attempt to get in with the in-laws, I'm here again. Of course, I'm only joking. I wanted to blog. Mom, you should get a blog of your own.

So, I fixed my computer. I formatted the hard drive, and while I was at it, took out the faulty cdr/dvd combo drive, and put in an old cd drive that was lying about instead. It's a bit annoying, because I can't burn cds, but I don't miss the dvd bit. I never used it anyway. And at least I have a drive that reads cds now. It's also meant that I can install my webcam driver, so I'm rather pleased with myself. I can't take all the credit for this act of reconstruction on my system; my housemate Rob did more than his fair share. What a star...

Today I purchased for myself a copy of the popular board game, Scrabble. It was all part of the casual day that myself and my neighbour, Tim, enjoyed. We headed into town after a few games of magnetic darts (I'm not going to get started on that one...) and went to run a few errands. We were rather pleased that we didn't have any constraints on our time to speak of, so we strolled around Leeds at our leisure. I was looking for the aformentioned word strategy game, and intended to come home with a copy. We tried so many shops, but few stocked it (to our surprise). We eventually went back to the original shop that we had found it in, only to discover that someone had seemingly purchased all three copies that were in stock only hours before. Not to be perturbed by this, I bought a device that allows the board to be rotated easily, and headed to Argos, where I located the game in the Laminated Book of Dreams, and headed over to recieve it from the Pale, Mythical Warden of the Treasure.

I won't bore you with further details of my day, from our ride back home on the bus, to a trip to the supermarket with Butch, on to some Monty Python, and the establishment of my throne as Scrabble King of Village Place. Needless to say, it was a stinking good day, and a real blessing to have a weekend with no obligating commitments.

There's only one thing that sucks about this weekend. Not only is my lovely fiancee in another country (which I kind of get used to), but this weekend she's away doing an encounter weekend. She's out of contact. No phone calls for me to make or recieve. No emails waiting in my inbox when I get in. I miss her, and it sucks. I'm aware that the last time that I voiced my opinion on a matter similar to this, I was shouted down, so I'm not going to go on about it. I just wanted to say how I felt. And to tell her, when she reads this, that I love her...

If it ain't broke...

Then it probably doesn't belong to me. It's been a funny few days since I got back from Canada. The culture change always gets me more when I come back here. I don't know if it's because I feel more at home in Canada, but I always find it harder to start driving on the left again than I do to start driving on the right. I find it harder to say 'toilet' than 'washroom'. I suspect that I find it harder to go back to work than I do to turn up and bum around with no job to do for a couple of weeks. But the way of life is easier there, I think, and my fiancee's there too, so I guess I'd rather be there.

My computer is having issues, so that's something I have to fix. I don't know quite what's wrong with it, but the hard drive is a bit tired, so I think that I'm going to format it this weekend, and start afresh. That should speed things up a bit. My cell phone broke, so I took that in to be fixed. It's going to take two weeks before it returns to me, and I forgot to copy all my numbers out of it first, so I have an old cell phone, with no way of contacting most of the people that I want to contact. When I was taking my phone into Leeds to the shop to have it fixed, I parked my car outside an apartment complex at the top of town that I used to live at. I happen to know that, although there is a huge steel gate at the entrance, during the university holidays, they leave it open all the time. True to experience, when I arrived, the gate was open, so I drove in, and Butch and I walked into town. On the way back, I bumped into our next door neighbour, Tim, and petitioned him to come back with us, rather than on the bus. I thought it might save him time. When we got back to the car, the gate was locked, and nobody there knew how to unlock it. We had to walk home. I did manage to get it the following evening though.

The computer in our living room has sadly passed away, and my playstation is deteriorating rapidly. It currently displays a bit of an unwillingness to play dvds all the way through, which is a bit annoying. My cordless phone has given up the ghost. It seems that I've come back to everything getting a bit broken. Fortunately, this doesn't include my life. I'm healthy, I have a good future to look forward to in Canada. Plans are taking shape, and the preparations for my teaching course are also in full swing. I can't wait to get back to church. My band is going to record this month, and everything seems pretty good. So, who cares if a few of my material possessions are a bit rubbish? Not me...

Hockey gloves...

So, my wonderful fiancee's parents (and my future parents) bought me these awesome hockey gloves for christmas. They're Bauer, and they're black and orange, which perfectly matches the Steelers jersey. I like them so much that I'm going to do everything in them from now on. So, let's see how I get on with this blog. If I don't manage to type it correctly before then, have a happy new year, guys...

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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

So, it's Boxing Day. That means yesterday was Christmas Day. As most of you know, I've been in Canada for a week now, and I'm spending the season with Bethany and her family. One of the things I was looking forward to most was the idea of a white Christmas. Beacause England isn't known for its snowy scenes, Toronto was a much more promising location for this festive fantasy, and I was very pleased when I arrived to find that there was a good deal of the cold, white stuff already on the ground.

Unfortunately, by Christmas eve, it was raining, and the temperature was above freezing. The snow was melting, and it was all rather annoying. Just before Bethany and I went to bed on Christmas eve, we prayed a slightly childish prayer, that it would snow on Christmas day.

We woke up in the morning, and, true to the weather forecast, the rain was falling. Nevertheless, we had a great day, and lots of lovely presents and time with the family. Then, around seven, we looked out the window, and it was snowing! The weather forecast said this wouldn't happen! We looked out again after about an hour, and the flakes were bigger than I have ever seen. Bethany thinks that she only ever saw snow like that once before in her life. The biggest ones were about the size of an Oreo cookie... It was ridiculous. And it was wet snow. Packing snow. The funnest kind. Bethany and I went out to make a snowman. It was amazing. And we came back and had hot toddies and hot chocolate to warm up.

It was just another example of God providing above and beyond what we'd asked or expected. We hoped for a trip to Canada; I got business class and a cheque into the bargain. We hoped for a romantic trip to Montreal; we got engaged. We hoped for a bit of snow; we got the biggest snow we ever saw. God is so good!

Devinez quoi...

So, the pictures say it all... I told you the story about the airline giving me all that money, and I really felt that God was giving it to me for a reason. So, I planned my course of action. On Monday, Bethany and I drove to Montreal with our friend Tobi. I was so happy, because I got to drive there, which is what I wanted to do all along. Well, on Tuesday, after a great day downtown (which, by the way, is incredibly beautiful at Christmas), we went out for a walk, heading for a restaurant that Tobi had recommended. We saw this beautiful church, with a view of the mountain, and covered in snow. We walked to the top of the steps of the building, and the bells started to ring. Bethany asked me if I could hear them, but I didn't respond, as I was too nervous... I got down on one knee, and produced a ring from my pocket, and asked Bethany to marry me.

She said 'are you joking?', three times before she said yes! Man, I was so nervous... Anyway, we're very happy, and we're looking forward to our life together. Right, I'd best go. I'm spending Christmas with her family, and we have a bunch of stuff to do. And I have a wedding to plan. Merry Christmas, gang...

I always do this...

Man, why is it that I only ever really blog when I'm in Canada? I mean, it's well over a month since I blogged last, and the one before that was written over here too.

So, I'm here once again. This time for Christmas. You wouldn't believe what happened to me on the way here. I travelled down to London on Thursday night, where I visited an excellent pub at Great Portland Street, the name of which escapes me. James and I drank Timothy Taylor Landlord, and the Owner of the pub put my suitcase in the cellar for me. We took the bus up to James' house in Golders Green, and I spent the night on his floor, using a towel for a mattress, and an empty duvet cover as my blanket. Next to a radiator that was hotter than the sun.

I didn't sleep so well, but I was up and away on time, and we enjoyed an unexpectedly good breakfast in a Weatherspoons at Baker Street station. After this, we parted ways, and I headed, with my suitcase, enormous backpack, and hand luggage, to Kings Cross, where I could change trains for the airport. Everything was going to plan. Then I arrived at the terminal building, to see the line of all lines for the check in desk. I waited for an hour, and then I was told that the flight had been overbooked, and I wouldn't get on it. I was sent over to a ticket desk, where I was told someone would sort me out. I thought this kind of thing only happened in the movies...

Well, I spoke to the guy, and he sorted me out with a flight the next morning at nine. He gave me vouchers for all the meals I'd be around for, and he got me a hotelf for the night, with transfers. Then, as is Air Canada policy, he gave me a hefty cheque (or check, depending on the way you look at it). I went away rejoicing at my misfortune!

So I spent the night in this hotel, hanging out with a young Canadian couple who now live in Cardiff, and were trying to head back to see the family. I didn't get much sleep, but that didn't matter much, because I knew that I had the flight to catch up. I got back to the airport in plenty of time, and as I checked in, was told that I had been upgraded to business class. It was UNSTINKINGBELIEVABLE. I'm not kidding, it was hilarious. You imagine me, in first class? Ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm off to Montreal for a couple of days with Bethany now. We're driving up with Tobi, and coming back on the bus on Wednesday. It's going to be pretty awesome. More upon my return. Peace out...

Gunpowder, treason and plot...

I don't know how long you've been reading this blog. If you're one of the people that's been checking my sporadic posts for more than a year, then you may remember my entry from November 3, 2004, Four. Stinking. Years.

I'm not going to repeat everything that I said a year ago; if you want to know, then read it yourself. But I'll tell you that, as the photograph testifies, I finally fulfilled my dream of attending the big celebration at Roundhay Park last night. And very enjoyable it was too. I went with a group of good friends, and it was everything I thought it would be, and more. We ate toffee apples. We watched fireworks. We enjoyed the heat of a huge bonfire. I purchased an overpriced, underflavoured cheeseburger. We revelled in the 400 year past torture and execution of a group of conspiratory Catholics. Check out the rest of the pictures in the Kodak gallery...

Wife skills...

Today I sat and ate lunch in the TACF Riverside Cafe with a good friend of mine, Jonathan Puddle. I wish I could do this more often than I currently do, but unfortunately, there's a little matter of living on different continents. Jonathan was eating a tasty tuna pasta lunch prepared for him by his new wife, who is a good friend of my beautiful girlfriend. In this meal was a vegetable that was initially impossible to identify, but then we realised that it was just broccoli chopped up really small. I mean really small. We had never known it was possible to cut that particular vegetable into pieces of that size until now, and as a result, we came to the conclusion that only a wife would be able to do it.

Could this be the case? Is it possible that at some point during the wedding ceremony; the transition from woman to wife, she gains the ability to do new tasks? Things that would have been impossible before the lawful joining together of herself with a husband? Could it be that the ability of a woman to perform such skills as the minute chopping of broccoli is inextricably linked to marriage?

Head count...

We're going downtown today. We planned it on Saturday, and finalised the idea yesterday. We wanted to get all the stuff that I need to do downtown finished early in the week so that we're not rushing to do it later. We decided to leave by nine am so that we got there and had as long as we wanted. It's now ten after ten, and Bethany is just BRUSHING HER TEETH.

Last night we went to Walt's. Well, it's a Boston Pizza now, but it SHOULD be Walt's. It didn't even make me think I was in Boston. There was one Boston Bruins hockey jersey on the wall, and nothing else remotely connected to that city. Show me a picture of Frasier Krane, or Sam Malone, or any other member of the cast of Cheers, and I'll immediately bring Boston to mind. But this place did non of that. The staff were friendly and we had a good time, but it just wasn't Walt's. That place has a lot of good memories for me.

I found a manakin's head in my suitcase this morning. Bethany and her HILARIOUS sister put it there when I was in the shower. It didn't scare me though. How many manakins have YOU found today? I anticipate on seeing a lot more, as I'm heading downtown soon. Although that could never happen now - Bethany just called my mom, and they could be talking for HOURS...

Busy...

So, Bethany's mom says it's about time I blogged. But then I found out there's a Leafs game on TV. So I'm going to watch that. Sorry.

Isolation...

So, here I am in Leeds. I love Leeds. I've lived here for 4 years now, and it really is one of my favourite places in the world. I particularly enjoy life here during the summer, when the district that I live in empties itself of students, and everything becomes a bit quieter. But sometimes that can work against me. My housemate, Rob, has been away for most of the summer, working for a sound company in York. Bethany has been and gone. Afam (my other housemate) works a lot. So I'm sat here in my room, thinking that there's nobody around. All my friends are elsewhere. To make it even worse, my good friends Maija and Jonathan are getting married today, and I can't be there because it's in Canada. Many of my friends will be at the wedding. My girl will be the maid of honour. But I have to go to work in Stinking Starbucks. (The alliteration there was unintentional, but rather pleasing).

You could be forgiven for thinking that I'm being miserable. Well, I'm not. True, I'd rather be in Toronto right now, but it's very unusual for that not to be the case. The thing is, I just yesterday recieved a comment on my blog from a girl called Christie, who apparently lives in Leeds. I assume she found me because she was looking for people livin in this fine city. I read her blog, and it was good. Then I had another comment from her today. So I read her blog again. She had already blogged this morning! And it's about mundane stuff! That's brilliant. So it seems that those little comments, and her blog, have made me feel less isolated. There's someone here who writes blogs about little things that happen to them, and I like that. Suddenly I feel a lot better about missing out on the wedding. Go check out Christie's blog, maybe it'll inspire you to post too...

Where have all the good posts gone?

So, here I am again, writing pretty much for the sake of writing. Every now and again I realise that I haven't posted for a while, and that I should do so. Invariably, this leaves me with a blog to write, and nothing really to write about. Nevertheless, I do intend to start writing some articles for magazines and newspapers, so perhaps it's time I learned to get over my writer's block.

What am I going to write about? I don't know really. I could tell you about what I did this weekend, or what I've been doing with my summer vacation. I could tell you about a spiritual experience that I've had recently, and what it meant to me, or I could talk about the different aspects of working for a multi-national coorporation. I could tell some jokes, or give you the recipe for the FANTASTIC chicken I cooked last night. But I can't think of an original way to do any of those things, so I'll just leave it at that. Voila. One more pointless post to add to the list...

Ridiculous...

Ok, so I figure it's about time I blogged. Even J has noticed that I'm terrible at doing this regularly. Hmmm. Not much to say really though. Bethany has left the country, and I'm selling out for Starbucks to bring in a bit of extra cash while I'm not at school. The band is taking a break for the summer, and I'm currently working on the new website.

Only thing of note really is the bizarre comment on my last post. I appear to have recieved spam on my comments page. It's from someone trying to get me to study with them, which is something I don't want to do. The best thing about it is that the (clearly automated) message claims that the author was reading my blog, when they figured that I'd be interested. Surely anyone reading the blog would have realised pretty soon that I don't live in the States, and therefore would have no reason to study there. How silly of them.

My favourite spelling error of the week goes to a seller on Ebay, the wonderful online auction site. It's a guy trying to sell some roller skates; quads. He claims, and I quote: "The plates are Skater plates, made of very tough but flexible resin plastic with enormous front stoppers. These are incredibly tough and never brake."

Not really the greatest selling point - brakes that don't work. On that note, I'm going to go play a little hockey. Have fun kids...

It's a contest...

So, Bethany and myself just had an argument. That's right. We couldn't decide who was best. I said everyone liked me way more than her, and when I move to Canada, everyone will want to be with me and not with her. She said that everyone liked her more, which is clearly not true, because she's so rubbish.
There's only one way to solve this problem. Post a comment and tell us who you like the best. Then we'll add up the votes. Problem solved.

Very annoying...

Now, I'm not normally one to support the work of Bill Gates. I don't really have many good things to say about Microsoft, and I am pleased to announce that I use the superb Mozilla Firefox internet browser, as I know many of you do. (If you don't, then I recommend that you start. You can download it for free here.) However, I do sometimes converse with my friends using MSN Messenger. I appreciate that this endorsement would seem to suggest that I am the sort of person who would ditch my ethical standpoint because of peer pressure, but that's the sort of person I am.

I realise that by choosing to blog about this subject (the primary point of which I have yet to make), I may be revealing myself to be somewhat in the dark ages of instant messaging, but so be it. I recently downloaded a version of Messenger Plus which, amongst other things (that I have largely yet to discover) allows you to create your own personalised status. This, may I say, is brilliant. Aside from being far more interesting than just choosing a status from a small, predetermined list, it gives one the ability to let people know what you're up to, rather than leaving it to their imagination. It's sort of a very brief blog. For example, today I was able to inform my co-messengers that rather than just being busy doing some generic task, I was, in chronological order, sleeping, working, searching for a housemate, playing Risk and finally, in a short time, back to sleeping. far more interesting, I'm sure you'd agree.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I was informed of this development in software by my former housemate Martin Oxby. Do check out Martin's site, not least because he has linked to The Salvator Darlings on it. It is a little out of date at the moment (something I'm sure he'll put right when he has time), and he does tend to overuse the exclamation mark (a little pet hate of mine), but he's a good guy really.

In other news (my, this is a long blog, isn't it?), Bethany has arrived in the country. AS I suspected, this has served only to make things harder for us. Knowing that the Atlantic Ocean no longer divides us, and the distance has been cut by aproximately 3,300 miles, it is particularly irritating not to be able to see one another. However, I'm counting down the days until, in just over two weeks, I see her for the first time in four months.

So, it's good news. Bethany is coming, I think I may have found us a housemate (albeit a week into the new tenancy agreement), I have an interview for a teaching course in September, and I'm feeling really well. Oh, and it's Canada day tomorrow, so that's quite fun too. Not that I get the national holiday, you understand, it just gives me the chance to annoy people by pretending to be Canadian even more than I usually do.

You may also be interested to note that 'Microsoft Operating Systems' can be anagrammed to form 'Competitors' grossest infamy'. Brilliant.

Summertime...

It's too hot to blog.

Going up...

Don't get me wrong, if I was like my friend Alex, who suppports Hull City football club, I'd have been really happy this season, going up into the Championship instead of staying down in League One. I wouldn't have complained at all. But that would have meant that I would have missed out on yesterday.

Yesterday was the play off finals to see who would gain that final place of promotion into the next league. I'm not going to go into an in depth commnentary of the game, that would be silly. Some of you probably saw the game. If not, you'll be able to read more at the Sheffield Wednesday website. All I'll say is the game had everything. We were in the lead, then we were tied, then it looked like we were going to lose. There was a penalty, and extra time, and eventually, we won. We deserved it - we were the better team. The atmosphere was electric too. Before the game, we were all out in the streets, just grinning, and waiting for the match. We took 40,000 supporters; from what I gather, more supporters than any other team has ever taken to Cardiff Millenium Stadium.

So yeah, if I'd have been like my friend Alex, or indeed, like my friend Ben, who supports Luton Town, I would have been happy with the promotion. I would even have saved myself £40. But it was worth £40 of anyone's money just to be in Cardiff yesterday, let alone inside the stadium. Come on Wednesday!

Too long...

It's been far too long since I last posted. Everybody knows that. At least you haven't been waiting for this one as long as readers of Monsieur Le Crayon's blog. He didn't post at all between September 27 and May 12. That's almost 8 months!

Back to business. I had a rubbish week last week. It started off ok, but kind of went downhill. I discovered on Tuesday that my school that I work in is due to close in three years. This doesn't directly affect me, as I intend to be elsewhere by then, but it certainly doesn't give the place a great working atmosphere. When I got home, I chatted to my good friend Jacob Murphy, who is coming over to visit me today from Canada (more on that later), and who is due to move to England, and into my house, in September. Unfortunately, he's decided not to come over, which meant that I don't get to live with him any more. That got me down a bit more.

On Thursday, my car was broken into, and my best coat and bag were stolen. The annoying thing is that there was nothing of any real value in there. The thief escaped with my diary, some swimming shorts, my pipe, and a sandwich. But I can't afford to replace the coat or the bag. To top all of this off, my friend (and probably yours, if you're reading this) Will Elder passed away from cancer. I don't think that there's anything more I can say about that.

So, this week has been an improvement. Not really an obvious one, just a bunch of stuff that I'm excited about. I was really looking forward to Jacob's arrival yesterday, but due to an error, he missed his plane (I'll let him tell you more about that) and so he arrives today. It wasn't a major problem, in fact, it left me with an evening to finish some jobs, so that's good. I'm also really looking forward to tonight's gig. Jacob's supporting us, so that's going to be awesome. For more info, check out The Salvator Darlings website. If you can get down there, it's at the Cardigan Arms on Kirkstall Road in Leeds. Tickets are £2 on the door, and it promises to be a bit of an extravaganza...

So, here's to an even better week ahead. I have next week off work, and I have Jacob with me. We have plenty planned, and I intend to fill you in as we go. It's funny how sometimes things don't obviously become better immediately, but you know that you've got past a rough patch. A breakthrough, you might call it. But not a break in. I've had quite enough of those, thank you...