This is just a quick update to say that I know I haven't blogged in a while and feel a bit bad about it. Things are busy (as they generally are during term time), but good. I mean really genuinely good. That's not to say that the existential worry about the job has gone away entirely but it has receded quite a bit, which is... well, a huge relief quite frankly. My classes this year are pretty decent and, thanks to the positive judgement from Ofsted last term, the school has a much more positive vibe. That's not to say that the structural difficulties that made life so difficult last time around have magically disappeared (management is as remote as ever, for example), but the sense of pressure and the subsequent knee-jerkism have lifted somewhat. In short, I feel like a half-decent teacher again. Which, you know, is nice.
I've also become a grandfather. Which is incredible, really. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but my granddaughter is lovely and I'm rather afraid I've become a stereotypical doting granddad in no time at all. :D
And I did say I'd share some pics from our visit to France in the summer. It was the first time I've ever visited the country and, to the French members here, I can only say that your country is just so beautiful. I fell in love with it and can't wait to go back. Anyway, here are some pics...
We were out in the country and went on walks most evenings along the country lanes. I can't emphasise enough how peaceful it was and how relaxing it felt just being there hundreds of miles from home and having this wonderful scenery around us. It was fantastic. :)
Limoges was the nearest large town/small city (it's where we flew into) and we spent a bit of time wandering around the cathedral before having lunch at a cafe in the city centre. We met a very nice chap who made and sold his own porcelain. We started our conversation with him in French, but his English was way better than our feeble attempts at the French language.
One afternoon we went for a walk through the nearest village to where we were staying. It was the middle of the afternoon, scorching hot and no one was about apart from us and a couple of workmen installing shutters on the windows of the local general store.
French graphic novels. I put this here because, being a bit of a comic geek and not having seen a graphic novel selection in a supermarket quite like this one before, I naturally took a couple of photographs. This aroused the suspicions of a nearby store employee who came over and politely asked me what I was doing. This was the first real test of my ability to communicate in French and I failed pretty abysmally, in the end resorting to the tried and tested "Pardonnez-moi. Je suis Anglais." which seemed to placate him. Whether he now thinks all Englishmen have a weird fascination with French comic books, I honestly don't know. Anyway I bought a French hardback graphic novel (and very lovely it is too) and then spent about twenty minutes figuring out what the back cover blurb was saying. Generally, I found written French much easier to translate (I did get a B in my French O level but flunked the subsequent A level pretty badly) than spoken, which sounds amazingly beautiful but, when spoken fluently, can be quite difficult to follow. I might take some lessons before I go over again.
All in all, though, that French holiday was probably the best I've been on in a long long time.
I'll try to post some more stuff over the next few days. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than check out the feeds of @feral69 (who is a beautiful gothic goddess whose pics are as varied and impressive as she is captivating) and one of my favourite Italian models @tanyabat, whose new profile pic should be plastered to the sides of very tall buildings the world over. Both of them have some fantastic pics to peruse and I highly recommend their blogs.
That's me done for now. Hope you're doing well. See you soon. :)
