all gone now

The same hill, the same day. This time the photo was taken from the staff car park of my current school.

Where has all the snow gone? From the west we see loads of snow - a snowfest even. From the North... nothing. Can 90 degrees really make such a difference? And why is there no inbetween stage - where is there the 'just a little bit of snow' section? You know what would be a real disaster? Imagine you were having a snowball fight and found yourself on the dry side of the snow boundary while your adversary was positioned in snow world. Disaster.

Anyway, these are the questions I asked my Dad as I picked him up from the airport today - well, not the snowball fight one, I wouldn't want him to think I had failed to advance beyond primary school mentality.

He mumbled something about the ocean and wind direction but I was too busy trying to avoid driving into the back of an extremely badly driven red Nissan to take it in properly.

the last of it

where'd it all go?

The first proper snow of winter! Hurrah! I’m a big fan of snow. We don’t get enough of it anymore.
I’m sure I remember long periods of time filled with snow related fun when I was a child. Daily snow ball fights, snowmen that seemed to last months, death defying toboggan runs that had been honed to perfection over the course of a week. We built an igloo at primary school once. I remember carving out the blocks of snow, hardening them, stacking them, packing them and polishing them. I don’t remember actually going inside though – it didn’t look very sturdy and I wasn’t that brave.
Now we never seem to get big quantities of snow – and any we do get never seems to hang around long. There is no longer a big thaw in February; instead we get lots of little ones after each fall of snow throughout the winter.
I don’t know whether I can blame it all on global warming but it’s a convenient rationale so I will anyway. Cause and effect. We ignore all caution in some kind of development race – ergo – we lose all that’s good about winter.
But today is looking good. What started as a few stray flakes drifting down has become a steady curtain of white in the time that it has taken me to write this. The world will be white in the morning – it’ll be glorious; it’ll be pure; it’ll be clean; it’ll make my journey to school over the mountain a bit interesting – oh dear.

Update: I woke up this morning to find that the snow had all disappeared overnight. Thee wasn’t a single sign that it had ever been there. What did I tell you! Although, on the plus side, it did mean I didn’t have to set off for work half an hour early

coleraine in the snow

not another day off!

“See you on Monday – oh no, that’s right – Tuesday. We get Monday off, don’t we?”

“Wednesday.”

“What?”

“Wednesday. See you on Wednesday.”

“Why?”

“Snow. We get Monday off for St Paddy’s and then it’ll snow so hard that we’ll get Tuesday off as well.”

“No - really?”

“Trust me.”

So proclaimed the highly regarded meteorologist photocopy guy Geoff. As I often do I had stopped off in the reprographic room on my way out of school. He seemed so certain, so assured of his prediction that I didn’t feel the need to question him further. Photocopy guy Geoff had said it would happen so it would happen.

I now want you to look at the above photo. Study it hard. It’s a little image I took this morning (Tuesday.) I like to call it Snowscape – Sans Snow.

Lest you be in any doubt there is definitely no snow in the picture.

Dry roads and blue skies dominate the photograph. We did not get Tuesday off.

Pupils are of the opinion that teachers fall into two camps when it comes to unexpected days off. They tell me that there are the teachers who are so grateful for a moments rest that they embrace the opportunity to sit at home and sip soup with relish. Then there are the teachers who hate days off – they can’t stand the idea of pupils out in the streets during day light hours. They hate the idea of young people having fun rather than copying out text in badly lit rooms.

Of course they aren’t a hundred miles from the truth. Teachers do have mixed emotions about unscheduled breaks in service. As a sub I hated them – I didn’t get paid for days I didn’t work. Even now I’m not so keen. Don’t get me wrong – every teacher appreciates time off and the chance to take a breather is always welcome. It also means that there is less time to get through the work we need to do at school. For teachers already pushing their pupils to meet their coursework deadlines this is very annoying. Even in my job I find that everything goes crazy while I try to get caught up on a missing day.

So what is the moral of the story for today? Well I think it has to be: If you want 36 copies of a worksheet for your year 8 drama class go to photo copy guy Geoff. If you want to know the weather – watch Angie Phillips.

it snowed today - in my car

It's odd how events can build up detail by detail to a somewhat unexpected eventual effect.

Take today for instance. I bought a Starbucks latte - not unexpected so far. It was too hot to drink immediately so I set it on my dashboard and set off. I drove below a flock of starlings that made a mess of my car if you know what I mean. I drove to a drive thru car wash to clean it. For some reason the car wash wasn't working so I decided to drive round to the front to inform a member of staff. The windows had steamed up while I was stopped and I couldn't open them because they were covered in... well... So with my vision impaired I drove - bumped into a kerb - my coffee went all over the dashboard, the seats, the floor. I cried.

Luckily i had wipe things which I was able to use to clean up the dashboard and upholstery things for the seats and floor. Unluckily some of the coffee had gone down the vents and I couldn't get at it - so I left it to dry.

My car smells of stale coffee (It wouldn't even have been so bad if it was Costa Coffee - I like the smell of Costa Coffee)

The thing is, once I returned to the car after a while and the coffee in the vents had dried, I turned on the engine. Air came up through the vents and with it little flakes of dry soya milk floated up and around the inside of the car. It was a beautiful moment. Unexpected, slightly icky, but very very beautiful.

life is like a snowball

Life is like a snowfall - nice and pretty to look at but bloody freezing when some skitter of a 10 year old lumps a bit of it at the back of your neck.

This morning I awoke to a white world. Very picturesque. I walked across the yard noticing just how big my footprints were (could this be related to the size of my big feet?) I cleared my car and set off along the unsullied road - beautiful. half a mile later I joined the main road where the glistening white turned to brown sludge. How quickly things change.

I work with children - lots of them. Sometimes I struggle to believe that these street savy teenagers were once innocent and naive. But sometimes... just sometimes one of them will say something that will remind me that these are not yet fully formed cynical adults - there is a glimmer of that innocence hidden behind the smart comments and dishevelled uniforms.

And now. as the pupil beside me keeps remarking, the snow is falling again - who knows, maybe it'll cover up that horrible slush with a fresh layer of glistening virgin snow.

snow is falling, all around us, children fighting everywhere

then the snow started and that made it worse that is not fair well look for yourself below to see how class it looks.

http://aspergers-syndrome-student.blogspot.com/


Yes, indeed the snow started. Unfortunately not quite enough to close down the school. In fact looking out now I can't see any evidence it happened at all. Just as well I got a couple of photos. This is probably all we'll get this year - and with the whole global warming thing we may soon have to ask the eskimos for some. My pupil wrote a blog all about Jade and her Eskimos - check it out.