August cold and dank and wet...

Flanders and Swann got it right this summer:  
     "In July the sun is hot.  
       Is it shining?  No it's not.  
       August, cold and dank and wet 
       brings more rain than any yet."   
Actually, if there had been just a little less of the wet stuff, I'd have been quite happy: despite years in the Middle East, hot weather doesn't really suit me, and I tend to wilt in proper summer weather.  The cooler season this year preserved more energy than usual, though I have not always used it fruitfully.

Spring, when I last wrote, flew past in a blur of work, and the Easter holiday was mostly spent gearing up for the exam season.  The summer term gets less productive each year in terms of teaching, as GCSE and A level exams creep back a day or two from year to year, so even with an early return to the classroom after Easter, we had less than four weeks before exams started.  Once I'd coaxed and nurtured my own flock through their Theology papers, I was then straight into examiner duties which continued through overlapping papers, standardising, marking, awarding and reviewing until the end of July. 

Just before the end of term, my mysterious black cat had to be put down after a road accident, so there was one quiet, peaceful evening when I buried her under the apple tree and mourned the pet who had been my constant companion for more than 12 years.  A few days later, the departure of students for the summer brought a little leisure: I could get up a little later, read into the night, and fit in a few visits to friends and family.

Summer sees two family birthdays, second son in July and youngest son in August, so two wonderful evenings out in London punctuated the holiday. Now I no longer have any teenage children, and with my delightful grandson more than adequately grandparented by his maternal grandmother, my duty to society has been largely accomplished, and there's a gleeful sense of possibility in the air.  I hasten to add that grandson is a source of utter joy when I see him, and even more so for the blooming contentment he brings to first son and daughter-in-law.  I have promised to become a properly functioning granny when he turns into a snarling teenager and no-oe else can bear him, because that is when I really start to enjoy young people.  Perhaps that is why schoolmistressing is such a delicious profession: they actuallly pay me to teach a subject I love to young people whose education I enjoy.

But it is exhausting, and with the extra time devoted to examining responsibilities, holidays time is precious.   I've been doing some research on recusancy, and spent a wonderful day at Rushton Triangular Lodge and Rushton Hall in the only really seasonal weather of the month.  The odd picnic or meal out loses nothing by being on my own, though asking for a "afternoon tea for one" tends to fluster staff at even the most venerable venues. Driving through the Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire country villages with the roof down and the wind blowing through my hair, stopping to look round a church here or a ruin there, is the best kind of holiday, and I can do it all without having to pack a case or change any currency.
 
 
My heavier exam load and his fragile health have combined to limit time spent with my lover this summer, but with him on the mend and a brief hiatus between examining and the looming start of the school year, we plan a couple of days together before the summer ends.  I'm already starting to feel the bubbling excitement as the Michaelmas term appears on the horizon: new ideas to develop, new students to meet, new possibilities to explore...

After the rush, a lull...

Half term brings a wonderful sense of time out from the routine of school life, and this one especially offers time to look back over a very busy few weeks. Social events with colleagues and students, a concentration of parents' evenings, and the rush of marking trial exams, have all soaked up the few waking hours not already allocated to professional duties. The easiest way to deal with such pressures is to surrender any hope of "spare time", and accept that for a while, life is allocated unequally to work and sleep. In an ordinary job, such a regime would be unbearable, but this is not by any means an ordinary job. A lost Saturday in front of the TV becomes a riotous house dance in the fives court; a sacrificed Sunday evening or Saturday afternoon turns into a welcome chance to meet the families of the children I see every week to compare perspectives on their progress.

Fortunately, I have a most accommodating lifestyle. With all the offspring now fledged, I can be flexible outside the conventional working day, and with a few exceptions, touching base with them can be fitted around school duties. There was one potential exception recently, though.
However, my daughter-in-law, in a most dutiful fashion, delivered my grandson a week early, on the Saturday afternoon of my only free weekend of the term, allowing me the chance to race up the motorway and spend time with the new family without encroaching at all on school life. Needless to say, he is quite the most perfect baby ever born.


This lull in the term offers the chance to enjoy a different pace of life. After a weekend city break with my lover, the rest of the week holds other pleasures: a trip to London to wish daughter Happy Birthday, and a trip to the theatre with son number 2; a drive through the Cotswolds to visit my Dad, who has been feeling under the weather recently; lie-ins and the boxed set of "Goodnight Sweetheart".

There are things I have to do, though. With an eye to the exams in summer, I have school revision materials to edit and exam board materials to write, and there are plenty of jobs to do around the house. The joy is having the time to pace these chores, interspersing them with self-indulgent trifles, and doing them after enough sleep to feel energetic and motivated. So I am enjoying the lull, knowing that next week I will be plunging headlong into the mad rush towards Easter.

Amazing kids

So far I'm just on time keeping one of my resolutions: to write a post to this blog once every month. This means I have fewer events on which to draw, and less need to telescope time, allowing me the scope to reflect appreciatively on those things I encounter as I hurtle through life.

One such encounter was the shocking realisation that not only have all my children grown up, but that they have turned into the nicest adults one could wish to meet. I can't quite recall a single time when the tables turned, but this year, without question, it was them who did the work, and me who was looked after and entertained. Epiphany fell on a working day, so the plan was for all to gather while I was still sweating over a hot whiteboard. Five kids, a wife and a girlfriend were all in residence when I arrived home at 4 to find the roast in the oven, veg preparation in hand and under control in the kitchen, and chilled cava in a glass waiting for me.

I lifted not a finger, nor ruffled a single hair. The meal produced itself effortlessly under the expert skills and genial co-operation of various sons, and all was cleared and fed

into the dishwasher over the next couple of days by daughter - who also hoovered and wiped up the kitchen so that the house ended up cleaner and tidier after they had all left than it was when they arrived. We all had time for a leisurely drink in the Ellie before dinner, and it never got to my round.

Daughter-in-law and son's girlfriend have endless patience with the weird family rituals and remind me that a family is always a growing, changing entity. The meal was perfect, the family time together merry, and there wasn't a moment of stress in the entire event.

If having remarkable offspring is pleasing, watching one's pupils doing remarkable things is another kind of pleasure. In a moment of insanity earlier in the year, I decided that the third form could usefully dabble in my PhD field of theology and the internet. I slightly overestimated their familiarity with the technology, so it has been a steep learning curve, but here we are, three weeks into term, and each set has a page on their own website, a growing blog, and the faintest stirrings of a Twitter feed. There is so much hard work going into writing content and getting the hang of different kinds of online presence. What has surprised me most is the thoughtful creativity of students whose output is usually written answers to academic questions. Do have a look at the blogs of 3-1, 3-2, 3-3 and 3-4 to see what I mean.

By the time I get round to writing the next post, I expect there to be another amazing kid in the family: more about that after the event. Watch this space.