A Red Light – 12th September 2023

A red light when there’s no one around
What a dilemma for the righteous philosopher!
“Go, go, go, go”, the passengers cried
Out of nowhere, a truck obliterates them all

found in pictures here
18th May 2024 – Submitted to FOWC with Fandango

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Today I’m feeling:

Pretty good. A little run down from a weirdly exhausting day and I’m not excited for the rest of the week. All my classes were simple but the last one of the day is always a little frustrsting as these impatient grade 8s want to leave as soon as they can. Me too!

Today I’m grateful for:

The plentiful snacks I have around that have carried me through my busy early evening with taking to the vet again for one more blood test. I’m grateful he’s all back to normal too.

The best thing about today was:

Having to take Tigger to the vet meant more time to listen to podcasts. The day has been good (apart from the news below) but nothing really stood out as being the best. Another day in a string of reasonable, positive happy days.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Talk is that for this coming holiday will only be ten days. I’ve already booked my flights to Australia and will be going anyway. It may mean losing some pay but no matter. David was quite disheartened by the news especially as last year we had four weeks holiday. I laughingly told him to fix his attitude and turn it around to ‘at least we have ten days holiday’ but I can understand his disappointment. It’s been a tough semester and he has the two terrible grade 8 classes that I had last year. It’s tiring for real.

After getting the good news that Tigger’s blood is back to normal I called Amy to give her the good news. In turn, she told me that along with Grandmum not eating, her dad was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer and will need to go for chemo. This will all put a lot of strain on her mum and also puts my travel to Australia in jeopardy. Bad timing but what can we do? I’m not so fussed about having to change plans or losing money on flight tickets but more dejected about the ever-increasing number of upcoming funerals that lay ahead.

What do I complain about the most?

As an English person I have no idea what I complain about because I am not conscious of ever doing it. Even I notice how much other English people complain!

 I ‘think’ I don’t complain about much these days but now that I am writing about it I know the sad truth. 

The thing I complain about most is my student’s behaviour. This I can accept as they are aged between 12 and 16 and I know what I was like at that age. It’s just behaviour, not the person. What I really would complain about is adults behaving in the same way. I don’t hang about many adults now pretty much for this reason. Other adult’s bullshit is tiring. They don’t have the excuse of being a teenager anymore.

And I know that the same criticism can be levelled at me too. Another reason not to hang around with adults. When I fuck up like that with my kids it’s all forgotten and forgiven in the same way I would do for them.