Directing Traffic

I seem to have been out every night for one thing or another. I did a lead climbing lesson on Monday (woo-hoo! I can change my membership card to read Lead Climber!), then I went to see Kenton Cool talk, which was fab. We are still looking at schools for Donny and Mel, and we went to see the fourth such high school open evening on Thursday.

It makes for some late nights for both me and the kids and consequently tempers have been a little frayed. Mel in particular has been hard work, refusing to sleep at night and refusing to get up in the morning. Hormones are kicking off all over the place.

I don't know how I kept my eyes open at work on Friday, but somehow I was still there at 5pm with a pile of stuff to take home over the weekend. :o(

I decided to take a different route home. It is a little longer, but every now and then I fancy a change. Just out of Worcester I had to stop because there was an accident. I was maybe the 4th person to arrive. A car had gone under a lorry and was totally mashed up. I was amazed the guy driving it was alive, let alone talking. He wasn't walking though and had concussion and shock. The lorry driver was OK, but his lorry now had seized brakes and was blocking the road.

There were three people fussing with the injured driver, so I made myself useful and directed traffic to turn around and go back the way it had come. An hour and a half later, I was still there, turning vehicles back and giving random directions to lost drivers. Police, ambulance and fire-engines had been and the chap had been whisked off to hospital, but no-one had managed to shut off the road. Someone lent me a fluorescent jacket as the dusk set in, as I was starting to wonder if I would be the next casualty ( standing in the middle of the road, wearing a black sweatshirt in the dark).

Eventually, back-up police must have arrived and stopped the traffic further down. Five minutes later, they got the lorry moved and opened the road again!

I took this naff picture just as I was leaving. You can see the state of the damage.

Cool Lectures

King's School in Worcester is putting on a series of lectures courtesy of their Himalayan Club. I went to see Kenton Cool talk last week. He lives up to his name, having climbed Everest eight times and lead Sir Ranulph Fiennes up both the North Face of the Eiger and to the top of Everest in various expeditions.

He was an entertaining speaker, too, regaling us with tales of Ranulph's eccentricities. Despite being an immensely successful polar explorer, Sir Ranulph, if you listen to Kenton's version of events, is joyfully clueless. His essential supplies allegedly include several packets of jelly-babies and hundreds of English tea-bags. Actually, I can sympathise with Ranulph about the tea-bags. I took tea to India too. An Englishman (or woman for that matter) can't cope without a proper cup of chai.
Kenton ended the talk by getting a member of the audience to clamber in to a down-suit, balaclava, hat and rucksack whilst inside a small tent set up in the middle of the floor. Needless to say the result was a semi-collapsed tent and a lot of laughter.

King's supports a school in Ladakh, which has recently suffered weather damage from a cloudburst. They auctioned off a couple of shirts and a lump of rock from the top of Everest, raising over £300 for the school in the process.

I enjoyed the evening, though I have no plans to climb Everest, or the North Face of the Eiger, for that matter. My trip up Cadair Idris was enough for me (see Gorillas in the Mist entry in my travel blog). That was quite chilly enough and a down-suit might have come in handy!

Warning!

Is anyone else bothered about warning signs aimed at people with less common sense than a toddler?

There clearly needs to be a 'idiocy law':

"Things that people generally work out before they learn to read, do not need signs."

I do not need jam jars labelled with "Open by hand"; I do not need to be told that things are "Slippery when wet"; I definitely do not need to be told that fireplaces are hot.

Fly on the Wall (OK, window, but you know what I mean)

The bathroom was all steamed up, as you would expect after a long hot shower, with vanilla scented shower gel and oodles of hot water. My bathroom has colourful virginia creeper dangling over the window, and the sun was shining straight into it, flashing all those gorgeous reds and greens right at me.

I noticed a fat fly crawling slowly across the textured pane, leaving a weird trail behind it in the steam. It took me a moment to work out what it was doing. It was making little round blobs and tiny footprints. I think it was wandering across the landscape of my window, slurping up the condensation.

Too Little Time and a Sore Shoulder

Did I tell you the one about the house with no heating fuel? They froze though the winter and had no hot water until one day the Tax Credit Fairy repaid them the more than two grand that they owed them. Unfortunately by the time they coughed up the cash, the heating pipes had burst and silt had clogged up the tank. It cost the poor little homeowner nearly that much to get the heating working again. Still, it's nice to be able to have a hot bath once in a while.

I'm back at work again and it's actually going quite well. I kind of like it, though I'm loathe to admit that anything to do with teaching could be anything other than totally stressful. I have even stayed late a couple of times voluntarily!

My kids are also settlingy into their new classes. Saskia and Eartha are in the same group at last, getting the same lessons, although not allowed to sit next to each other. Donny and Mel have a teacher, whom they describe as strict, though I suspect she's not that scary really.

Mel has a self-esteem problem. He takes everything anyone says to him to heart. He's very low at times and really doesn't like to go to school. I don't know what to do with him. Both he and Donny are getting hormones all over the place too. Eeew! Smelly and moody!

I got Donny a new second-hand bike. Her old one fell apart in many interesting ways about two years ago. The new one is a total hit now though. The kids have spent the past week cycling up and down and round and round. I got a couple of freebie bikes off the internet and did them up, so the smaller ones have some bikes that fit them too.

Some time ago, I pulled my shoulder, possibly at Go Ape (in May). It wasn't really a problem, but it didn't go away either. At the start of September I went to the chiropracter, who did his thing and leant his entire weight on it. The pain was excrutiating and thereafter I have had trouble moving it. It is weak and even turning the steering wheel or changing gear is a problem. I thought it was going to sieze up altogether and become a frozen shoulder. I had one before, when the big twins were babies. It was a major problem because I couldn't do anything, like wash my own hair or get dressed, so I desperately don't want another one.

It did start to get a bit better, after a couple of weeks, but then I did some fabulous climbing (4+, superb ascent of the grey holds on Wall 12) and the morning after it was like a lead lump attached to my upper torso. I think I need to rest it again. :o( I'm clearly going to have to be very careful with it from now on.

Poetry Corner

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again,to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

- John Masefield

Or alternatively Spike Milligan's version

I must go down to the sea again,
to the lonely sea and the sky;
I left my shoes and socks there -
I wonder if they're dry?

Looking Really Pleased.

I don't do cooking. I really don't. So when the kids said they wanted to bake Grandma a birthday cake, I said "Go on then!" and went and hid upstairs.

The resultant giggles, sticky kitchen and gloop covered clothing didn't wholly prepare me for the green gungy 'disasterpiece' that the kids produced. You can see from Grandma's face just how thrilled she was to receive it too. (It tasted like dumplings mixed with pancakes. Kind of heavy. The 'icing' was made from flour, sugar, water and food dye.)

We had some friends from Sheffield down for a couple of days. Angela and Russ and two of Ange's kids - Rebecca and Steven. It was lovely to catch up with each other. It's been a few years since we last got together. We refrained from offering them the birthday cake.

Today I went over to Much Wenlock to see Ruth, whom I used to work with. We had lunch at a cafe and took a walk down the lane. All these house martins were swooping around an oak tree. They just kept going round and round. It was quite magical.