Well this will be my first full week back at work and I’m hoping it will see me feel like I have regained control of my life. So far, since the pleasant start to the year on the cruise, I have felt like I was carried along on a flood of events outside my limited control.
The seemingly useless return journey from Birmingham airport was not a good start although this was tempered by a good natured Sikh taxi driver taking us home from Wolverhampton station for a fare that would have had the Funchal taxi drivers throwing themselves of the side of the mountain.
We then had Annette suffering with her chest infection again (still not right) and my trip up to SOT for an outpatients appointment. I had not considered this worthwhile but, it looks like they are finally trying to find out why I get no rest from sleep.
We managed to drag a replacement washing machine from Emma’s empty house into our home with nothing more serious than a whack in the eye from a rebelious hose and it appeared to be working. Two days later the door to the washing machine burst open and dirty water flooded the kitchen. When I’d finished moping up I saw that the bvery same pipe that had whacked me in the face was connected to the sink drain at an angle – must have twisted when I tightened it and had clearly been siphoning the waste water back into the washer.
A quick re-adjustment of the errant pipe and a few low key threats to turn the machine into scrap if it dared to leak again and so far all has been well.
Monday, we were surprised to find it was our turn to have Alicia and as Annette was so ill I was despatched to collect her. I now know why it sometimes until 1030 to get Alicia back to our house. She was asleep when I got to Joy’s and we ended waking her up after 0900. She was full of mischief and didn’t want to get dressed. We had a hunt for the ‘noisey monkey’ (Gibraltar ape with loud screetching cry) and her giraffe to take along to play with at our house.
Feeling like Groucho trying to control the antics of Chico and Harpo in full swing, I eventually got her into the car and secured her three toys on the seats next to her. While I was getting her buggy out of the car she was banging on the front door. So much for ‘yes grandad’ when I told her to wait for me. We then finfishe doff my breakfast together and she started on the presents from the holiday: an elephant whistle you blew into its arse to activate and a loud yapping dog with demonic looking eyes that lit up behind dame Edna styled galsses. We just new joy and Dan would love this, I pointed out to Alicia she would see all the light up parts better at night in the dark.
My return to work was also mixed up. The girl Ambrose thought to be a waste of time, because English was her second language had made remarkable progress at school and been given three awards including a coverted bronze ‘super star’ badge. Meanwhile two others I had been teaching had decided to quite – no great loss by my opinion and it looked like I might regain my Tuesday at home. However, two other children wanted to move to Tuesdays! Fate you are a cruel beast.
Despite the changes at work and Ambrose shuffling cupboards and computers around like they were a Chinese puzzle, I managed to get my planning complete and orderd him more tonner before he ran out. I am secretly holding one tonner back in reserve. However, Wednesday comes and a girl, Bisma, turns up and apparantly she is now one of my pupils! Fortunately, I like making things up as I go along and managed to jury rig a lesson for her.
Meanwhile I have been hunting for the Grail Quest figures up the loft. We had a pretty good committee meeting and it was desided to try and get the game out to Derby this year. I have found the game but, there is no sign of the rules or the figures. I remeber collecting all the rules I had made for participation games into one folder, so I am pretty confident I can find that but, the figures were mostly borrowed from club members and think they may have been returned.
And so the tide of unreality has carried me along to this new week and I really do hope I can bring order back to all this headlong activity. It would be nice to find all the computers are working and that I have not got any more surprise kids turning up. Annette has to wait until March for an appointment at New Cross but, will probably gom back to work tommorrow. By comparison my ride downhill at Funchal was a bump down the curb.