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it's 2.15 am. lisa's asleep, roxy the dog is asleep. I however am still writing my pesky essay. ihave 2,500 words but still need to write another section so I may have to cut back. still it's all quite peaceful- a glass of wine, some tortilla chips and dip and some sigur ros in the background. could be worse.

this term is history

not long til stevemas day now, i mean christmas day. sorry sometimes i forget who everyone is making the fuss over, and i seem to have just about made it to the end of term. of course i still have my essay to do but at least all the lessons are out of the way. i've actually learnt a whole lot of history myself this term. strange having to teach a topic one day that you have only learnt about yourself the night before. it's kind of good because i'm still interested in it myself when i'm passing it on to the kids, for example over the last couple of weeks i've taught about welsh pirates, how to attack a medieval castle, the american frontier and how america could have been named after a welshman rather than that italian guy (amerigo vespucci).

lisa and i have also decided it was time to step out of the country again so looked for which flights looked the cheapest and most interesting.we found out that apparently you can go all the way to the latvian capital Riga for about £30 return which is amazing really seeing as its just about in russia. so off we are going for a few days in january.

(just thought i'd make the post a bit christmasy)

the difficult 14th blog post

i notice some of us are slowing down in our frequency of blog posts so i thought i would throw another tuppence worth in. actually i should be doing my pgce essay but obviusly have been putting it off all day. watched two very good dvd's though- the station agent and motorcycle diaries. but i might still get this essay done. a mere 2500 words which isn't too bad. at least it's near the end of term.

just as a christmas notice i wanted to invite all and sundry to the 3rd annual christmas eve coffee at soloman grundy's in withington. 10.30 am we were thinking. it's not really so much a birthday thing more just a get together. so there you are hope you can make it. unless of course you are some random psycho reading this. well hey why not come along aswell. the more the merrier.

Bryn Y Mor

almost time for work at my second home, the Bryn Y Mor pub. it is an amazing place and the best part is that you wouldnt think it so many people dont see it, which i think makes it special.
i cant figure out why its so great. its like a soap opera crossed with a church and a bit of family thrown in. working there has been such an experience, its made me question things and think in different ways and i really wasnt expecting that when i started there.

there is every different type of person there, teachers, laborers, artists, drs, dealers of different sorts, ive got to know them in a way i probably never would have been able to otherwise. i guess the main thing is that everyone is there socially so relate differently then they would at work or other setting.
the main characters:
mr v - the millionaire, art dealer, landlord and boss to half of swansea, very troubled. a wife he bought from the internet. i didnt think things like that actually happened, how naive was i?! he laughs about it himself so i dont feel bad mentioning it. it is crucial to understanding him. major drink issues. however one of the most perceptive men ive met. sees a psychiatrist regularly and likes to tell me about it.
hamlet hamlet hamlet dave - repeats everything he orders at least three times. on first meeting him i thought he was your average swansea elderly man. he cant speak very well and has troubles understanding people. some people pity him in, but he is so happy. he is always alone, always laughing and talking to himself. im not saying this to make a joke of him, but he is so satisfied. and ages ago he tried to ask me some things about myself and so i told him, a year later he remembers every detail. he dosent know what day it is but he can remember everything about everyone he has met. a great man.
the laborer's - they can come as a package. mainly men 20s and 30s. most of which have at least one child who lives else where. its always the womans fault. ive never met a group of such hard done to men! most started building as a side job, but swansea, the graveyard of ambition. not that being a labor is a bad job, but none of them actually want to be doing it. the main down side is the lifestyle it leads to that seems unavoidable. casual work hours, every night in the pub, broken relationships.
dread rob - a man that represents many others in the bryn. a wise and almost slightly past it surfer. a lifestyle of casual jobs, too much pot, but so many stories. great stories and great adventures. one of my favourite characters. a weekend dad who loves his son more than life itself. such crazy passion and enthusiasm for life and can be found partying the night away well after the rest of us have gone home.

and so many other but now i have to go and spend the day with them. such a great job, everyone should work in a pub!

mondays, eh

so this is my lift home from work, or rather WAS my lift home before we were in a head on collision opn the way home today. thankfully no-one was too hurt. the seat belt saved me much injury, although leeanne the driver cracked a bit of her sternum. anyway thought it would be worth putting the photo up. this is just after the other car was pushed away ( just incase you were wondering what we had a head on with) oh and lisa had to call the police to get a guy removed from the pub. mondays eh!

the post with no title

ok i concede. these pgce's are really quite hard. after a weeks teaching im exhausted (at that on a half timetable). and i probably shouldnt even mention how many times this week i've thought about jacking it in. that said some of my lessons went really well (even got quite a few 'goods' on my lesson observation forms from my mentor). but it is the weekend now so no more talking about school.

apart from that our rocky has some family to stay so there are now two little things with sharp claws to greet us in the morning ( and of course twice the amount of poo) . Thankfully one the relative a smaller sister going by the posh name of lady montegue by her previous owner is bound manchester way to lisa's mum's house this weekend. so although it's only a flying visit you might be able to catch us this weekend if any of you are missing us too much.

there was another significant event to my week. the latest robert jordan book came out- book 11 in his wheel of time series and thankfully the penultamate book. the series has taken about a decade to get this far. he's the type of author who thinks why use 1 word when 20 will do. but the whole thing is addictive no matter how long it is. am i right deirdre?

1066 and all that

d-day is coming. that is teaching d-day. maybe a shouldn't use historical metaphors when i'm writing about my history teaching- it could get confusing. another invasion is in fact coming. On monday i begin teaching a variety of year 7's about the Norman conquest, and then later in the week some year 9's about the first world war armistice (did you know jelly babies were originally introduced in 1918 as "peace babies" to celebrate the end of the war, they only changed their name in the 50's).

I should have started this monday and i was all psyched up and prepared to but the classes hadnt got to the right point to hand over yet- which isnt surprising as the history teachers at the school do some completly random topics that go off in amazing tangents. I also have the privilage of having the very latest of classroom technology to work with on this placement. yes i know you will be amazed. we a have a roller blackboard. i bet you teachers thought i was going to say we had an interactive whiteboard and a projector for powerpoint (or even a whiteboard for that matter).

I even got to sit in on my first parents evening today, although we were mercifully allowed to bow out early.

so yes indeed. monday morning the normans shall be invading a classroom near you.- well near me.

quite exciting

Feel excited right now about so many things.

jones, emma and doug in aus, argentina and china, that makes me excited. three beautiful friends, well and happy in amazing places.

im excited about the ridiculously blessed lives steve and i get to live.

ive been disillusioned about 'development' over the last couple of months, everything that ive studied and pretty much spent the last two years thinking about seemed pointless. caring about people in lesser developed countries, wanting to work with the people in these countries to develop the lives they want and the things they need and have an absolute right to, was suddenly being called a 'profession'. how is that a profession? as though you have to have a qualification to be part of these things. and it struck me that if this is the case, then what are we saying? that the actual people of the country arent qualified to help themselves? or that a person with a qualification from a developed country who has never even lived in a developing country is better qualified to 'develop' the country than a person who lives there and has participated in the country and the community all their lives? that bothered me. i dont want to be one of those 'developer' people. i really have no intentions of ever being a professional!
but then that really excited me, because i can still take part in all those things that i said, without living up to this western, london office job, fat cat arrogant and oh so wrong mentality. and i feel like somehow ive got one over on these people. maybe that makes me more arrogant than them! and maybe ill change my opinion. but thats ok.

and im really excited about moving back up to manchester next year. i love it here in swansea and really wasnt looking forward to leaving, but now i have more community / youth / cafe ideas and i really see no reason for them not to happen.

and a really nice and cool and incredibly talented friend has just had his second book published and the website is http://www.sawhorse.co.uk/

and there are other things, so you see, its all quite exciting

connection terminated

i think roxy must have noticed me playing an old Mission Impossible game on a N64 i borrowed from the guys upstairs and decided that the international espionage life was for her. let me explain....yesterday we finally got our broadband connection up and running (after a couple of hours of plugging and unplugging stuff and calling the technical helpline).

all was fine and rosy until we walked into the room this morning. Roxy had infiltrated the other side of the room that is normally cunningly sectioned off by a surfboard. Here she was confronted by her first challenge- which wire to cut? is it the black wire or the white one? we can only guess that after minutes of nervous sweating she decided that it was best to err on the side of caution and chew through them both- the broadband wire and the phone cable. so ended our utopian internet connection. Fortunately those saturday afternoons as a child watching McGiver paid off and we were able to cobble together another connection.

we are certainly going to have to watch this one closely.

Me and the Doc

20 years of Neighbours. Who'd have thought it?

Through the good times and the bad, Neighbours, a faithful companion.

Here is a salute to Dr Karl.....

He's had it tough with that "jezabelle" (to quote Suzzie K). Yes I know he left good old Suz for a younger model but blame the script writers, not the Doc. And not to be confused with his fake band The Right Prescription, his real life band "Waiting Room", begin their second UK tour in November. Check http://www.alanfletcher.net/ for details.

As for me, I have Costochondritis. That's a real thing. Its poorly ribs. But to have an 'itis' always perks you up a bit. Apart from that things are pretty great.

spirited away

finally got to see spirited away this morning. nothing more to say than we were not dissappointed.

blogs and dogs

so yeah apart from a blog this is the latest addition to our life- a puppy that we have called roxy, although the guys in the flat upstairs insist on calling her brian (i think they have been watching too much family guy). we're not quite sure what she is-bit a a mongrel really but we do know that she does three things pretty well: poos, chews and snoozes .

early bloggers

i know everyone seems to be getting a blog at the moment but i didn't quite expect to see one for this guy.

gunpowder treason and plot

bit strange when you see that people are actually reading your blog. cool though. so today's intresting thing i found out is kind of topical since we're coming up to guy fawkes night. this picture shows the area ( about 490m or 1/3 mile in radius) that would have been wiped out if the gunpowder plot had suceeded. i think i always thought that it would have just brought down the chamber which in inself would have killed the King and all the government, top clergy and judges. really the 2500kg of gunpowder would have been like a 5/11 for 17th century london. also quite relevent considering the recent bombs in london and the numerous terrorists threats.

the other thing i was reading was that it could have all been a massive set up so the King and the government of the day could crack down on the Catholics. there lots of little things that don't add up apparently like how a group of catholics (who were treated with suspicion anyway) could buy 36 barrels of gunpowder that was stored in the tower of london.

the first bonfire night was actually straight after when people found out that the king had been saved. people spontaneosly lit bonfires all over london in celebration. the next year an actual act was passed through parliament to desinate the day as a day of thangiving.

just some thoughts to muse on for when you all go to watch the bonfires and fireworks next week.

begin the begin

i feel like i've made quite a few leaps in my life in the the last few months so a blog was almost inevitable. not sure if i'm just just keeping up with the crowd or whether i think i'm going to create a vital historical source for future generation s(just started a History PGCE so my head's full of stuff like evidence and sources at the moment). it's probably just because we've just got the internet in our house finally and i've been hooked on what everyone else is writing on these things.

in case you we wondering the title of the blog is part of a quote from Northern Exposure. if you haven't seen it there's an episode where Chris in the morning is building a trebuchet to hurl a cow through the air but a distraught when ed tells him that monty python have already done it. As "repetition is the death of art" he struggles to find something else to fling. the final scene sees chris catapult a piano after coming to the conclusion (with the help of jung) that it's all about the journey and "the self is that which is in the process of becoming" and therefore "it's not the thing you fling; it the fling itself!"