A poignant moment

Ethel - my little car - had her last day on the road yesterday. We went for a little drive last night. It was nice.

This would be proof that I have far too much time on my hands if it weren't for the fact that actually I have a ridiculous amount to do. This is in fact proof that I am a procrastinator extraordinaire, but seriously, how much more fun is it to make a satyrical memorial video for your car than, say, write a justification for a lesson plan or a reflective commentary on a maths problem?

Yes, I am well aware that I am probably the only person who finds this funny!



I am such a geek!

*drumroll please*

I GOT THINGS DONE TODAY!! I know, shock horror, please no one faint. Today I have:

• Taken notes on the autism books I got out of the library
• Done even more ironing (and yet still the pile seems to get no smaller. I have enchanted laundry!).
• Done a whole pile of washing up that has been in the sink for way too long.
• Gone for a walk in order to not be a total slob and actually get some form of exercise today (I considered going for a run, but really, let's not get too carried away, eh?).

Anyway, that's actually pretty much all I've done, but it took a long time, so there. I also managed to sleep through meeting my friend for breakfast. That was quite an accomplishment. Apparently, when I set my alarm last night I managed to turn it off by accident and without realising. Yes, the same alarm I have had for about 3 and a half years and have used every day since then. I woke up at 20 past 10 when my friend text me to ask if I was on my way as I was supposed to be there at 10. OOOOOOPS!

Tomorrow I am meeting another friend at lunchtime (aha, can't possibly sleep through that one!) and going out with some other people in the evening, so I need to ensure that I once again have a PRODUCTIVE day and do some USEFUL things.

I have made a decision about moving. And I have decided to go ahead and move in with the girls. Which feels a little scary, to say the least, but I think it'll be good. As trite as it sounds, I think it is character building to live with other people and put up with their habits and idiosyncracies. And have to deal with their reaction to yours. But it all got a bit crazy because I spoke to the girls just before Christmas and they said their landlord wasn't happy for me to move in after all because I'm just a student and don't work. My lack of a steady income beyond my student loan would put his insurance up apparently. Anyway, it finally all got sorted a week or so ago, with the landlord agreeing that I could live there but not have my name on the contract and so I got a text message saying it was okay for me to move in. On the 10th February.

THE. 10TH. OF. FEBRUARY!

That is just over a month away! So alongside having to get this assignment done, there is also a lot of practical stuff I need to get on top of and don't even get me started on the state of my car, which the garage have pronounced "unfixable" WITH THE SAME PROBLEM THEY ALLEGEDLY FIXED BY REPLACING THE ALTERNATOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO!!! Or whatever, not unfixable, but fixable at a price WELL over the value of the car, which equates to the same thing really.

So I need to sort out a whole load of stuff in order to move, like, for example, what am I going to do with my cooker and my washing machine and my sofa? And do they have broadband, please say they have broadband. Part of the point behind breakfast this morning was to chat about details like this with one of the girls I'm going to be living with, but of course I had to pick today to have a complete meltdown in terms of alarm clock operation.

So I still have lots to do. But the excitement doesn't even end there because I got back from my walk to find two of my neighbours in the lobby because the fire alarm kept going off. Every time they reset it, it went off again, which, you'd think, would indicate an actual fire, but the light was flashing to indicate a fire in the communal area, i.e. where we were standing and there was a surprising lack of fire or smoke. So we ended up calling the landlord so someone could come out and reset it properly, and setting the alarm to "silence" which is a lie, because it still beeps quite loudly every 5 seconds or so, but not as loudly as the piercing squeal of the actual alarm.

Anyway, the day's not over yet, and maybe I will attempt to convert my copious and illegible notes into the beginning of a legible leaflet. Or maybe I'll just do that tomorrow.

Talkin' 'bout procrastination

That whole efficiency thing I had going for a while? Yeah, that was just a phase. Regular service has been resumed. I am hopelessly inefficient.

I started my 7 week block placement today and realised I hadn't yet made contact with my Link Tutor - the guy who has to come in and observe me teaching 3 times over the next 7 weeks. We were told to make contact with our tutors over a week ago. Oops!

Also I was supposed to have read through the school's policies and medium-term plans. Yeah, didn't do that either. Also I need to purcahse some kind of sandwich filling this evening, otherwise my sandwiches are going to be pretty, well, empty and tasteless tomorrow. I feel so disorganised that I don't think I will ever get organised. It frustrates me so much.

But school was fun. One of the kids has this weird patch shaved out of the side of his head. The teacher and I were debating whether or not he'd had a lobotomy over the holidays, but it turns out his dad accidentally left the cover off the clippers and instead of giving the kid a number 2 all over, gave him a 0 in this one single stripe, but then the kid's mum wouldn't let the dad do 0 all over, so the rest was done as usual with the clippers on a number 2. But the poor kid has this practically bald patch. It does look funny.

I got to leave pretty early as my teacher had netball club after school so there wasn't much for me to stay for. Instead I got to deal with the crazy people who drive down the country lanes I have to take to get to school. It's insane. Most of the lanes have a 40mph limit, which personally I think is crazy as they are rarely wide enough for two cars to comfortably fit down side by side and are full of blind corners that are so sharp you have to take them in 3rd gear. And yet some maniacs still whizz down there at 40, practically taking my wing mirror with them. Not to mention the idiots who seemed to conveniently forget that when a car is parked on their side of the road I have right of way, but just continue bombing it down the road, swinging out around the parked car and nearly plowing into my front bumper. Get off the road, morons!

Well I'm going to sit down and have a cup of tea and then try and get something productive done (we'll see!) before I have to go out again. I've been going to a new church for a couple of months and one of the girls there invited me out for dinner. I'll check back in later if I have anything interesting to say.

Productivity down 50%, Amusement up 200%

Well, it has been a long couple of days. I haven't stopped and yet I really haven't got very much of anything done (story of my life!).

I met up with my friend J in London yesterday and we had breakfast in Cafe Rouge before heading across the river to the Tate Modern. It is often said that as a nation, we Brits like to queue. OMG, the queues! The slides on the lower floors had massively long queues to get on them (mostly children, flippin' half term holidays grrrrrrrrr) and the slides on the upper floors required a ticket, which was free, but there were none left. Wah! So we didn't get to go sliding after all. Which was so annoying because the slides looked so cool!


We went to the bookshop there because I wanted to see if I could find useful stuff for school, which I didn't. Again, totally unproductive. But there were these totally cute lego-type figures of artists with their artwork. They were available to buy for the bargain price of £325! But they were cute. Here is Dali with his lobster phone:

So we then decided to go to the Saatchi gallery. We considered getting a boat down the river, but ultimately decided a stroll down the South Bank would be quite pleasant, so we walked down to County Hall. Before we got there we decided we were quite hungry, so crossed the Hungerford bridge and ended up walking right up to Covent Garden and had lunch in Walkabout.

After this we walked back across the river and up to County Hall. Only the Saatchi isn't there any more! I can't believe we didn't know this. Again, totally unproductive. So we walked BACK across the river and headed up to Leicester Square. I did however manage to take some pretty cool pictures from the many bridges that we crossed.

These are the best I think, but I may well upload the rest to Flickr at some point in the near future.

Anyway, we went to Leicester Square and possibly the best place in the whole of London - the Haagen Dazs Cafe!

And we saw the pancakes and everything was good. Then we ate the pancakes. Oh, man was that good?! Then we walked back up to Covent Garden to meet another friend of ours.

I'd hoped to have had my car back and to go to the cinema with Ali last night, but my car was still at the garage, not being worked on but just sitting there whilst my mum and step dad tried to contact another mechanic they know of. So I was carless and figured I may as well stay in London.

The three of us went back to Walkabout and had some wine. Then we went to Victoria to meet some other friends - friends I hadn't seen in about 2 years. So it was proper reunion-styley! The wine did flow and J came back to stay at mine, being slightly the worse for wear.

This morning I had to go and pick up my car and book it back in for next Thursday. I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do for transport whilst it's in the garage. Ugh, so much to think about!

So then I dropped J at the station and then drove to another friend's house so we could go shopping. I spent the day with her and got home at like half ten this evening! Madness I tell you! But fun madness.

I leave you with a picture of me on Waterloo bridge. The wind is blowing my hair and has crafted it into a suspiciously mullet-like shape. I nearly wet myself laughing when I saw this picture. But as you can see from the picture below, I in no way shape or form have a mullet. Okay!